By Gus Saltonstall
Those who live in the surrounding area won’t have to be told about the large-scale roadwork taking place over the last month on West End Avenue between 66th and 72nd Streets. There are trucks, orange cones, outdoor dining-like structures, open manholes, torn-up roadbeds, and more.
“The whole section of that neighborhood seems apocalyptic,” one Upper West Sider wrote in an email to the West Side Rag. “For the life of me I can’t find anything online about what they’re doing.”
The answer is a Con Edison project.
The electric company is “replacing cables in one of the manholes in the area,” a spokesperson from Con Edison told the Rag. “Cable work is proceeding around the clock to expedite the work as much as possible.”
The excavation for the project started on August 31, while the cable work began on September 15. The project is expected to be completed before the end of the month.
The top of the roadbed during the stretch of West End Avenue has been lifted off. The lack of pavement creates a very clear border on where the work-area ends.
A spokesperson from the Department of Transportation told the West Side Rag that the city agency will begin repaving the six-block stretch of West End Avenue soon after Con Edison finishes the utility work.
Con Edison is specifically replacing a component on an underground transmission cable to “keep service safe and reliable.”
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I have never heard of Con Ed needing to “lift off” the top of the roadbed in order to perform their work.
When DOT mills a road (“lifts off” the top of the roadbed), sometimes they discover some work that needs to be done to utilities – usually some sort of leakage. But replacing cables? They snake the cable lines through the buried conduits, just pulling it through. You don’t need the road milled to do that. Something smells fishy here.
What about between 66 and 65? The road has been repaved but no lane markers have been painted. There are supposed to be 2 traffic lanes in each direction and a left turn lane. With no marking whatsoever it’s dangerous. At least chalk something in temporarily
This is a massive project that has spanned years. The disruption to the community by means of dirt, dust, noise, traffic, 24/7 is very unpleasant. These are the guts of century old infrastructure. Replacing them is time consuming and costly. Can’t wait until it’s over!
I live on 72nd between Columbus and Broadway. Jackhammering began in April and was supposed be completed by end of August. LOL. Con Ed is taking the opportunity to replace more than one system (this started with natural gas leaks). Which makes sense – if you have to tear it up, do all the work now.
The project began Aug 31 and the work began Sept 15. Really?! Rookies! 72nd St between Amsterdam and Columbus has ongoing road work since early February. Love to read a story why the 72nd project is on it’s eighth month and where do the workers go when the work area is abandoned for weeks at a time. Until then, all of us here on 72nd St get to hear the buses and cars run over the large metal plates placed loosely in the road.
There’s a ton of underground Con Ed equipment in that area because of their very nondescript building at 128 West End between 65th and 66th. When they have the liquid nitrogen freezing equipment out it means they’re working on large feeders which are cooled with oil, called oil-o-static lines. So it’s a big job.
This article is underselling how bad the conditions are. First, the roadbed is also lifted off on Broadway in the same area, and on 76th street (at least), all of 79th street and the utterly trashed WSH off-ramp, there are giant plates covering part of 72nd street, and perhaps the more important thing that the photos here don’t show is that the exposed roadbed on West End south of 72nd and at the 79th St WSH ramp is in no condition to drive on – there are massive potholes everywhere, raised structures, often no transition from the raised surface to the lowered one, broken concrete everywhere, no traffic lines at all on a four-lane two-way traffic road, forcing cars to weave around the obstacles and it’s a miracle every time someone drives it and doesn’t damage their car. I could go off-roading and have a smoother ride. I have no idea how OCMC allowed all of this to happen at once over such a huge expanse of the neighborhood.
If truth be told, this street has been “under construction” since September of 2022, when a manhole cover blew off at the corner of 71st and West End.
It’s been longer than that! Started really going in Spring 2018. They keep digging up WEA at 70th street and covering it back up. Constant jackhammers. One would think they’ve made it to China by now.
To say nothing of Spectrum’s constant digging and filling in.
I am only concerned with the nitrogen tanks sitting right next to the buildings.
Are they safe?
They’re safe. They use them all over the city.
Does anyone (including the WSR) know if this is related to lengthy (in duration) electric fire that was coming out of a manhole at the 70th and WEA intersection roughly 2 years ago?
Cable work? That is not what the Con Ed sign (at 69th St.) said nor what one of the workers told me. I was told that they were replacing gas lines.
79th St was milled the evening of September 14 as well. I still don’t understand why you would need to mill the road to replace cables. We haven’t had crosswalks on our block for almost a month now!
Thanks for letting us know, especially since calls to CB7 and 311 provided no insight. A big question remains, when will it be finished?
Hi Stef! The project is expected to be completed before the end of the month.
Great, missed that.
I’m glad to finally know what is going on on WEA. I do wish they had given us information before the work started.
The work needs to be done and it isn’t something that can be done in a week or even a month. Major infrastructure work is disruptive but think what can happen if it isn’t done.
Con Ed has been working on West End between 70th and 68th 24/7 it seems…. they are there on weekends, late in the evening, etc. And in more than one location on WEA, so it’s hard to believe it’s just one manhole. They have at least 2 tents (covering manholes) between those blocks. And prior to this, they were at 71st. This project spans many blocks. I don’t believe they lifted off the top of the road simply to do this because the entire area is being resurfaced. Maybe they just took advantage of the scheduled roadbed construction. At least it will be nice and smooth when finished.