Planned Subway Routes in Manhattan
1. IRT Trains Over the Manhattan Bridge
A stop and tunnel for this proposed line exists, and is an unused level underneath the Nevins Street subway station in Brooklyn.
2. 8th Avenue Line to Williamsburg
3. Manhattan Queens Connection at East 76th Street
4. The Second Avenue Subway
The Second Avenue Subway is on here, because although a portion is being built, it’s a scale down version of what was envisioned, and there isn’t money (yet) to complete anything beyond the first phase, between 63rd Street and 96th Street. I addition, as the WNYC map mentions there were various other plans to have it connect to Throgs Neck, under the Harlem River, along the Metro-North tracks, and into Brooklyn–all which have come to naught. Check out photographs from inside the construction of the Second Avenue Subway here.
Brooklyn
1. S. 4th Street, The Underbelly Project
Underneath Williamsburg at South 4th Street there’s a 6-track station of the IND line that was never opened. In 2009, over the course of a year, street artists PAC and Workhorse invited 100 street artists in and out of the station to create work there overnight. dubbed The Underbelly Project. The idea was to create an underground gallery, but as PAC describes, apart from recruiting artists they could trust from pre-existing relationships, everything “happened organically along the way.” This video tells the story and shows the art well, and the project went on to be replicated in Paris. Whether the art still exists in the NYC subway station remains a question, but most we’ve spoken to feel that the MTA sealed off the station and it has remained relatively untouched. Second Avenue Sagas has a great explanation of the unused subway station.