The Chambers Street subway station at New York City Hall features cracked tiles and vaulted ceilings with peeling paint that dangles like urban stalactites. The tiles on nearly every pillar look like someone smashed them with a baseball bat.
A major renovation was planned for the historic station until New York Gov. Kathy’s Hochul’s pause on congestion pricing ripped a $16.5 billion hole in the MTA’s budget for construction projects. Now, the MTA has shelved plans to upgrade Chambers Street, along with four other stations.
“It's terrible,” said Djeano Jean-Romaine, 56, while standing in the station. “Looks dark and dingy, especially towards the end [of the platform]."
Coincidentally, the station closest to Romaine’s home in Queens, the Briarwood-Van Wyck Boulevard station, is also on the MTA’s list of stations with deferred improvements.
“It's not that bad, but it also looks old," Jean-Romaine said. "It could use some new tiles, the stairs could be redone, a little cleaner. So that's unfortunate."
The other stations that will not receive upgrades, at least for now, are Brook Avenue and 138th Street on the 6 line and 190th Street on the A line.
During a presentation to the MTA board on Wednesday, Tim Mulligan, a deputy in the transit agency's construction department, said the MTA was prioritizing a “safe and functional system” as it decides which projects to pursue after Hochul stopped congestion pricing from going into effect on June 30 as planned. The MTA had been counting on $15 billion tied to the tolls on drivers traveling south of 60th Street in Manhattan.
The Chambers Street station on the J line has become a symbol for disrepair in the subway.
The MTA budget is so tight, Mulligan said, that $3 billion in “state of good repair” projects have to be deferred. Among those projects were the facelifts for the five subway stations, including Chambers Street.
“We don’t have sufficient money to do it," said Mulligan. "These are needed and prioritized. [We’re] simply running out of the resources to do the full volume we wanted to do."
MTA Chair Janno Lieber assured the board that if the pause on congestion pricing is lifted, the projects would still be ready to go. But he warned that the longer they’re shelved, the more they’ll cost due to inflation.
“A lot of the planned work is planned very carefully so that we're not disrupting the system too much,” he said. “The old saying was ‘time wounds old deals' when I was in the real estate business. But time wounds all projects.”
Hochul conceded that the timeline on MTA projects may be pushed back, but said in a statement on Wednesday that “there is no reason for New Yorkers to be concerned that any planned projects will not be delivered." She said now is not the time to turn on the congestion pricing tolls, citing the economic burden on drivers and the city’s economy.
But Harlem resident Andrew Maloney wondered what type of message is being sent at the Chambers Street station, which serves several grand courthouses in addition to City Hall.
“It's a missed opportunity,” Maloney, 54, said. “Certainly if you upgrade the station, you get a better feeling with the consumers and they're more likely to actually want to utilize the subway, particularly when you're coming to a landmark place such as City Hall, the courts.”
Another commuter, Melissa Medina, expressed a more sweeping perspective.
“The whole system needs a facelift," she said. “But we're New Yorkers, we're used to being disappointed.”
