$11B 'East Side Access' At Grand Central Opening Next Year: Cuomo

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — Sometime next year, commuters heading to and from Long Island will get long-awaited access to the East Side of Manhattan through an enormous, $11 billion project being wrapped up in the bowels of Grand Central Terminal.

All major construction has now been completed for the East Side Access project, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Thursday, calling it "the biggest transportation project being implemented in North America."

It will open next year, Cuomo said, in line with the December 2022 target date that the MTA previously set. He made the pronouncements in a news conference at Grand Central, shortly before he led reporters on a tour of a few of the eight new tracks being constructed beneath the station.

First conceived in the 1960s, East Side Access has been beset by construction delays and cost overruns. When work began in 2006, it was initially expected to be completed by 2013 and cost just $6.3 billion.

The work is, of course, ambitious: construction required burrowing about 14 stories below Grand Central. Roughly eight blocks of tunnels are also being built under Park Avenue, connecting to the existing 63rd Street tunnel under the East River, which dates to the 1970s.

Once it finally is complete, East Side access will serve up to 162,000 daily riders, many of whom may have previously been diverted to the LIRR's West Side terminus at Penn Station. (Ridership could rise even higher thanks to the Midtown East rezoning, officials have said.)

Outside of Midtown, East Side Access also includes major improvements to the Harold Interlocking, an enormous railroad junction in Queens. Work there, along with the Manhattan tunnels, is now finished, Cuomo said.

Within Grand Central, a new concourse will add about 350,000 square feet of new space, along with 25 storefronts and new train entrances along Madison Avenue between 47th and 48th streets.