Will there be a new New York City subway line?

Answer 1

Yes! As of now, there is only one subway line that runs all the way up and down (north/south and south/north) the East Side of Manhattan: the 4-5-6 line (color code green), aka the IRT, aka the Lexington Avenue Subway. On the West Side, there are two lines that run up and down Manhattan: the A-C-E line (color blue), and the 1-2-3 line (color red), aka the BMT, aka the Broadway line. (The 4-5-6 green line, and the 1-2-3 red line, were the first subway lines in Manhattan. Back then, they were called the IRT, or the Lexington Avenue line, and the BMT, or the Broadway line).

Since there is only one subway line on the East Side that runs all the way up and down, it's really, really congested all the time. And it's even worse at rush hour: since the train goes from the Upper East Side -- the richest neighborhood in the city -- down to Wall Street, the Financial District, and City Hall and the courthouses, at rush hour most of the white collar people in the city are taking the exact same train at the exact same time. Sometimes it's so crowded, you literally have to push and shove your way into the car, and fight for a space to breathe.

So, a new subway line is being built, the 2nd Avenue Line. The Second Avenue Line will be called the T train, and its color code will be light blue (as opposed to the dark blue A-C-E line).

Second Avenue runs north/south through Manhattan, two blocks east of Lexington Avenue. The city has been waiting a long, long time for this: the first plans for the 2nd Avenue line date back all the way to 1929. The line will open one segment at a time, with the first segment due to open sometime around 2013.