Staten Islanders, rejoice: the MTA is reopening the old South Ferry station on the 1 line!
At least, that's what it looks like in a video posted late Sunday night to Subchat, an online forum popular with MTA employees and aficionados.
The video, shot out of the window of a moving subway car as it turns around at the old South Ferry loop, shows a clean-looking station with the old IRT station tiling, plus five MTA employees at work.
Clik here to view.
Photo of ongoing work at the old South Ferry station. (Photo via Subchat.)
And that's not the only evidence that the MTA is working to reopen the station. Last Tuesday someone posted a photo to Subchat of what appears to be a new entrance to the old station under construction, and claimed that the MTA has widened the old, narrow entrance.
If true, it would be very welcome news for ferry riders coming from Staten Island, who currently have to trudge half a mile to the 1 station at Rector Street in order to travel up Manhattan's west side. The new South Ferry station will cost up to $600 million to rebuild—a shocking figure, given that it cost only $530 million when it opened in 2009, including excavation work—and could remain shuttered for three years, according to the MTA. (As a comparison, the rebuilding of the 1 train after it was damaged on September 11 took just a year.)
The MTA could not comment on the video—the latest from them is that they are "still assessing" the situation, according to Second Avenue Sagas scribe Ben Kabak—but this looks like pretty definitive proof that the effort to reopen the old South Ferry has advanced beyond the "assessment" stage.
