are there any emerging technologies that could dramatically lower the cost of subway construction? A major decrease in construction costs seems to me to be the best way to get more built.

Yes – planning the routes decades ahead of time, so that the city can avoid putting unstable buildings on top of the street or laying utilities underneath it. Also, avoiding corruption and incompetence helps a lot. New York’s subway costs are four times those of Tokyo not because Japan has better technology; it’s because Japan has better management.

All of these ideas to enhance the capacity and utility of the SAS would easily cost several billion dollars. No one, myself included, has proposed a credible source of funding. Drifting slightly off topic, are there any emerging technologies that could dramatically lower the cost of subway construction? A major decrease in construction costs seems to me to be the best way to get more built.

Simply put, we cannot construct anything running under 14th Street. A subway line already exists there. Underpinning any existing line is the most expensive and dangerous item that is encountered in subway construction. When subway lines are underpinned for newer lines, as was done in 1973 for Rte 131A (remodified) it is to allow lines to pass under each other at right angles but never one under the other. It was done only once before for the construction of the 6th Ave subway below the H&M Tubes. In that case, the H&M was shut down and rebuilt. I don’t think anyone wants the 14th Street line shut down for an appreciable amount of time.

But suppose money mysteriously pops up from somewhere. Then another issue makes its appearance. East Village and Alphabet City are located on landfill that closed up the old Collect Pond (site of the infamous Five Points) and several underground streams. Any subway there would have to cut into bedrock with significant dewatering as was done for the remediation of the Northern Manhattan stations in the mid 1970s. Is this the best use of MTA money?

IMO, handing out reduced transfer Metro Cards from bus to subway for residents makes more sense than that which was proposed.

Before we start proposing new lines for Manhattan it is important to keep in mind that subway construction is expensive and when we consider the utility and sewer relocation, underpinning and all that landfill that exists east of 3rd Ave, it really gets expensive — prohibitively expensive.

Certainly lots of people would not cycle, and this should not be a substitution for an LES route.

(I live in nearly tram-free west Berlin now, before that on a busy tram line in Prague, and much earlier on E. 10th at 2nd and E. 10th at Ave. C)