images via MTA presentation
The MTA’s project to make the 86th Street 4/5/6 station fully accessible is running well behind schedule, and riders will have to put up with the station’s cramped construction conditions for longer than planned.
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The project is now expected to be finished in the fourth quarter of 2027 instead of 2026, about a year later than planned, according to Craig Lader, co-chair of Community Board 8’s Transportation Committee. MTA Construction & Development presented the updated timeline at the committee’s meeting Wednesday night.The work is part of the MTA’s ADA Package 5, a bundle of 13 stations across all five boroughs that was awarded in December 2023, MTA representative Connor Irvin told the committee. At 86th Street and Lexington Avenue, the plan adds a new street elevator serving the downtown platforms and two new elevators connecting the upper and lower platforms in both directions. Those join the existing street elevator on the northeast corner. When it’s done, all three levels of the station will be accessible, the project team said.
Christopher Aleksandrowicz, project manager for the design-builder, said the trouble started soon after the contract was awarded. Scaffolding went up on the northwest corner, in front of Best Buy, right over the spot where two of the elevators were being built. The team expected the scaffolding to come down by summer, but it didn’t. So in late fall 2024, the MTA and the contractor decided to start on the northeast side instead, and crews are now working on both corners at once.
Power has also been a problem. The new elevators and upgraded communications, lighting and speaker systems need more electricity than the station’s two electrical distribution rooms can supply, so both are being upgraded from 800-amp to 1,200-amp service. Con Edison’s availability to provide that upgrade held the project up, Aleksandrowicz said. Crews have also dealt with unmapped utility lines and removed about 1,100 cubic yards of rock to expand the station’s lower mezzanine.
Lader pressed the MTA on what riders face in the meantime. He showed photos from a recent Monday morning, including cars swerving into the opposite lane on 86th Street to get around a stopped bus, and crowds so thick at the uptown turnstiles that it took him about a minute to get through. He said the narrow walkways along the construction walls leave almost no room to get on and off trains. He added that if the station ever needed a quick evacuation, “somebody could get hurt or even worse.”
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There’s some relief coming. Aleksandrowicz said the construction barricades on the northeast side should be pulled back before the end of this year, giving riders more room. The barricades on the Best Buy side should follow in the first quarter of 2027. The construction footprint will shrink but won’t disappear, he said. Much of the remaining work will be elevator and electrical commissioning, which needs less space.Peter Brighton, a vice president at MTA Construction & Development, also explained a recent stair closure that made the crowding worse. A water leak at the bottom of a stairway forced transit workers to close it as a trip hazard. The MTA traced the leak to a water line in the building above, not the construction site. The agency then stationed a worker at the stairs around the clock to mop up so the stairs could reopen, Brighton said. He said the building repaired the leak on September 25.
Not everyone was satisfied with how the delay was communicated. Resident Andrew Fine told the committee he first learned about it from a social media video, and said the MTA should keep the public informed along the way.
Lader also asked whether the new fare gates the MTA has proposed for some stations, including 86th Street, would be folded into the project. MTA government and community relations director Danny Randell said those projects are typically separate and that the agency would follow up.
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