Origins The earliest origins of the Flushing Line emerged on February 22, 1885, with the founding of the
East River Tunnel Railroad. The railroad would construct the
Steinway Tunnel under the East River, connecting the
Long Island Rail Road in Queens with the
New York Central Railroad in Manhattan. However, the East River Tunnel Railroad Company went out of business. On July 22, 1887,
Walter S. Gurnee and
Malcolm W. Niven founded the New York and Long Island Railroad Company (NY&LIRR). They soon began planning for the tunnel. On June 3, 1892, construction of the tunnel commenced near the intersection of 50th Avenue and Vernon and Jackson Avenues. However, several failures and hindrances, which included an underground spring preventing the extraction of rubble, resulted in the termination of the project on February 2, 1893. Work resumed in 1905, The Flushing Line was extended one stop from Vernon–Jackson Avenues to Hunters Point Avenue on February 15, 1916. On November 5, 1916, the Flushing Line was extended two more stops to the east to the
Queensboro Plaza station.
Construction under the Dual Contracts The
Dual Contracts were formalized in March 1913, specifying new lines or expansions to be built by the IRT and the
Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT). The Dual Contracts involved opening the
Steinway Tunnel as part of the new Flushing subway line. The route, traveling under 41st and 42nd Streets in Manhattan, was to go from
Times Square through the tunnel over to Long Island City and from there continue toward
Flushing., seen in 1920 At Queensboro Plaza, the line met the BMT's
60th Street Tunnel, as well as a spur from the
elevated IRT Second Avenue Line on the
Queensboro Bridge. From this point east, the Flushing and Astoria Lines were built by the City of New York as part of the
Dual Contracts. They were officially IRT lines on which the BMT held irrevocable and equal
trackage rights. Because BMT trains were wider, and the platforms had been built for the IRT, normal BMT trains ran only to
Queensboro Plaza, with a transfer to
shuttles, using elevated cars, that alternated between the
Astoria–Ditmars Boulevard and Flushing–Main Street terminals. IRT trains simply continued from the Queensboro Line and Queensboro Bridge onto the lines to Astoria and Flushing. The line to Flushing was originally called the Corona Line or Woodside and Corona Line before it was completed to Flushing. The segment of the viaduct above Queens Boulevard, from 33rd to 48th streets, was made of concrete rather than steel because it was intended to serve as a gateway to Queens. The Flushing Line was initially derided by opponents, as it passed through agricultural areas rather than connecting populated places, as previous lines had. Rapid development quickly followed once the Flushing Line was operational, with six-story apartment buildings being erected directly on the former fields, and several major firms building housing for their workers along the route. By June 1917 ridership on the line was exceeding expectations, with 363,726 passengers using the Corona Line that month, 126,100 using the Queensboro Plaza station, and 363,508 using the Queensboro Subway. BMT shuttles began to use the Flushing and Astoria Lines on April 8, 1923. Service to 111th Street was inaugurated on October 13, 1925, with shuttle service running between 111th Street and the previous terminal at
Alburtis Avenue (now 103rd Street–Corona Plaza) on the Manhattan-bound track. The line to Main Street had been practically completed at this point, but had to be rebuilt in part due to the sinking of the foundations of the structure in the vicinity of Flushing Creek. Once the structure was deemed to be safe for operation, the line was extended to Willets Point Boulevard on May 7, 1927. This extension was served by shuttle trains until through service was inaugurated on May 14. On that date, the opening of the station was formally celebrated; it coincided with the opening of the Roosevelt Avenue Bridge for cars and buses. Wooden elevated rolling stock had to be used by the BMT, as the Flushing Line was built to IRT clearances, and standard steel BMT subway rolling stock were not compatible.
Western expansion In July 1920, the
New York State Public Service Commission announced it would extend the Flushing Line two stops west to Times Square, with an intermediate station under Bryant Park. The western end of the Bryant Park station would be east of Sixth Avenue, while the eastern end would be about west of Fifth Avenue. The 42nd Street Association, a local civic group, regarded the station as very important. On November 9, 1921, the New York State Transit Commission opened up the contract for the extension for bidding. The extension would take a slightly different route than the one specified in the Dual Contracts. The original proposal had the line constructed under 42nd Street to a point just to the east of Broadway, which would have forced riders transferring to the
IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line to walk a long distance. The Times Square station would be designed at a lower level than the two existing stations at Times Square. It would have two upper mezzanines connected by passageways: a mezzanine east of Seventh Avenue extending to Broadway, and one west of Seventh Avenue. Escalators would connect these upper mezzanines with the lower mezzanine, and a provision would be made to permit the installation of an escalator to the east of Seventh Avenue. There would be two entrances at street level at each of the western corners of 41st Street and Broadway, and two entrances at the northeastern corner of 41st Street and Seventh Avenue. The project was expected to reduce crowding on the 42nd Street Shuttle by enabling riders to use the Queensboro Subway to directly access Times Square. 24,000 of the estimated 100,000 daily shuttle riders transferred to and from the Queensboro Subway. The line was to extend as far as Eighth Avenue to connect with the proposed
IND Eighth Avenue Line. Powers-Kennedy started excavating the line westward from Grand Central in May 1922. The Flushing Line extension was to run beneath the original line from Vanderbilt to Fifth Avenue, running as little as under the original line. The tunnel also had to pass under a sewage line at
Madison Avenue. The construction of the Fifth Avenue station required underpinning the
New York Public Library Main Branch and extending the library's foundation downward. The contractors had completed the tunnels to Fifth Avenue by May 1923. Local civic groups advocated for the Fifth Avenue station to be used as a temporary terminal while the permanent terminus at Times Square was being completed. By the end of 1923, the Transit Commission had allocated $50,000 for the construction of a temporary crossover east of the Fifth Avenue station. The temporary terminal at Fifth Avenue was nearly complete by February 1926. The station had two entrances on the south side of 42nd Street (one next to the library and the other next to the park). A third entrance was placed within the
Stern Brothers building on the north side. These entrances connected with a mezzanine above the platform. The platform was to be long, though only a section would be used initially. In fall 1926, it was announced that the line would be completed by January 1, 1927. On February 8, 1927, the
New York City Board of Transportation informed the New York State Transit Commission that work on the Times Square station was sufficiently completed to enable the start of train service beginning on February 19, 1927 with the completion of work to a point between Eighth Avenue and Seventh Avenue. Plans for the construction of an extension of the line to between Eighth Avenue and Ninth Avenue to provide a physical connection with the IND Eighth Avenue Line were underway. On March 1, 1927, the opening of the line was set for March 15, the third time an opening date was set for the line. Work had been postponed given the amount of work that remained to be completed. The opening of the line was about a year behind the April 29, 1926 date specified in the contract. The delay was the result of surprisingly difficult construction. The Board of Transportation had withheld retained percentages, as allowed in the contract, penalizing the contractor, and trying to incentivize it to speed up work. No retained percentages were provided to the contractor until February 1927.
Eastern expansion The eastern extension to Flushing–Main Street opened on January 21, 1928. At this time, Corona Yard opened, with the inspection shed and some yard tracks available for use. The remaining tracks opened on April 16, 1928. Currently and historically, the IRT assigned the number
7 to its Flushing Line subway service, though this did not appear on any equipment until the introduction of the
R12 rolling stock in 1948. The BMT assigned the number 9 to its service, used on maps but not signed on trains.
Unrealized eastern expansion The Main Street station was not intended to be the Flushing Line's terminus. While the controversy over an elevated line in Flushing was ongoing in January 1913, the Whitestone Improvement Association pushed for an elevated to
Whitestone,
College Point, and Bayside. However, some members of that group wanted to oppose the Flushing line's construction if there was not going to be an extension to Whitestone. In January 1913, groups representing communities in south Flushing collaborated to push for an elevated along what was then the LIRR's
Central Branch, The Bayside extension was tentatively approved in June 1913, but only after the construction of the initial extension to Flushing. In 1914, the PSC chairman and the commissioner committed to building the line toward Bayside. However, at the time, the LIRR and IRT were administered separately, and the IRT plan would require rebuilding a section of the Port Washington branch between the
Broadway and
Auburndale stations. The LIRR moved to block the IRT extension past Flushing since it would compete with the Port Washington Branch service in Bayside. The LIRR president at the time,
Ralph Peters, offered to lease the Port Washington and
Whitestone Branches to the IRT for rapid transit use for $250,000 annually (), excluding other maintenance costs. The lease would last for ten years, with an option to extend the lease by ten more years. The PSC favored the idea of the IRT being a lessee along these lines, but did not know where to put the Corona connection. The only group who opposed the lease agreement was the Flushing Association, who preferred a previous plan to build the Corona Line extension as a subway under Amity Street (currently Roosevelt Avenue), ending at Main Street. The PSC's chief engineer wrote in a report that a combined 20,600 riders would use the Whitestone and Bayside lines each day in either direction, and that by 1927, there would be 34,000 riders per day per direction. Negotiations continued to be stalled in 1917. but the IRT withdrew from the agreement a month later, citing that it was inappropriate to enter such an agreement at that time. That plan was revived in 1939. The BOT kept proposing an extension of the Flushing Line past Main Street until 1945, when
World War II ended and new budgets did not allow for a Flushing extension. Since then, several
New York City Transit Authority proposals for an eastward extension have all failed. and free transfers to the
IRT Third Avenue Line were offered at
Grand Central. These transfers were valid until May 12, 1955, when Third Avenue Line service ended. On October 17, 1949, the joint BMT/IRT service arrangement ended. The Flushing Line became the responsibility of IRT. The Astoria Line had its platforms shaved back, and became BMT-only. Because of this, routes through the then eight-track Queensboro Plaza station were consolidated and the northern half of the structure was later torn down. Evidence of where the torn-down platforms were, as well as the trackways that approached this area, can still be seen in the ironwork at the station. During the joint service period, the elevated stations on the Astoria and Flushing Lines were only able to fit nine 51-foot-long BMT elevated or IRT cars, the rough equivalent of seven 67-foot-long BMT subway cars. After the BMT/IRT dual services ended in 1949, the
New York City Board of Transportation announced that the Flushing Line platforms would be lengthened to 11 IRT car lengths, and the Astoria Line platforms extended to 9 BMT car lengths. The project, to start in 1950, would cost $3.85 million. Identification of Trains and Routing Automatically (IDENTRA) was implemented on the line in the 1957 and used until 1997, when a route selector
punch box with B1 Astoria, local/express buttons was installed at the 10/11 car marker on the upper level of Queensboro Plaza. IDENTRA used a removable round circular disc type
radio antenna assembly, slide-mounted on the small mounting brackets that were attached on the front of
R12,
R14,
R15, and
R17 cars that were assigned to the 7 route, which had been used on the line since 1948. Similar to the use of radio transponders in the CBTC installation, the system used the antennas to determine whether a train was running local or express, and then accordingly switched the track at interlockings near the Queensboro Plaza and Flushing–Main Street stations. This move reduced the number of signal towers on the line from 9 to 2 However, in practice, train frequencies were not necessarily increased. According to an experiment performed by the
Long Island Star Journal in 1957, rush-hour headways ranged from 6 to 15 minutes between local trains, and 2 to 6 minutes between express trains. In 1953, with increased ridership on the line, a "super-express" service was instituted on the line. The next year, the trains were lengthened to nine cars each. Subsequently, the trains were extended to ten cars on November 1, 1962. With the
1964–1965 World's Fair in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in April 1964, trains were lengthened to eleven cars. The Flushing Line received 430 new
R33S and
R36 cars for this enhanced service.
Decline and rehabilitation train of
R36 cars at 33rd Street–Rawson Street, in the
Redbird paint scheme|alt= As with much of the rest of the subway system, the IRT Flushing Line was allowed to deteriorate throughout the 1970s to the late 1980s. Structural defects that required immediate attention at the time were labeled as "Code Red" defects or "Red Tag" areas, and were numerous on the Flushing Line. Some columns that supported elevated structures on the Flushing Line were so shaky that trains did not run when the wind speed exceeded . This was particularly widespread on the Flushing and the
BMT Jamaica Lines. On May 13, 1985, a 4-year-long, $70 million project to overhaul the IRT Flushing Line commenced. It forced single-tracking on much of the line during weekends, and the elimination of express service for the duration of the project. The MTA advertised this change by putting leaflets in the
New York Times, the
Staten Island Advance, the
Daily News, and
Newsday. The project laid new track, replaced or repaired concrete and steel structures, replaced wooden station canopies with aluminum, improved lighting, improved signage, and installed new ventilation and pumping equipment. Expanded service was provided when the Mets played home games or when there were sporting events in
Flushing Meadows–Corona Park. Paradoxically, Flushing local trains had better on-time performance during the construction than before it started. The $70 million rehabilitation project on the Queens Boulevard concrete viaduct was completed six months early, and express service was restored on August 21, 1989, without stopping at
61st Street–Woodside. This led to protests by community members to get express service back at 61st Street station. The reason for the discontinuance on the Flushing express was because the MTA felt it took too long to transfer between locals and expresses. The service was also due to fears of delays on the line when locals and expresses merged after 33rd Street–Rawson Street. The change was supposed to enable local trains to stop at 61st Street every four minutes (15 trains per hour) during rush hours, but according to riders, the trains arrived every 8–10 minutes. The community opposition led to service changes, and expresses began stopping at Woodside again a few months later. On weekends between January 19 and March 11, 7 service was partially shutdown so that switches at the Fisk Interlocking could be replaced. The $5 million project was not done in conjunction with the work between 1985 and 1989 because the 23-year old switches were not due for replacement. The work began on April 5, 1993. When the viaduct reconstruction finished on March 31, 1997, full express service was reinstated. Throughout this entire period, ridership grew steadily. In spring 2018, express service west of 74th Street was suspended temporarily so the MTA could fix the supports under the center track at 61st Street.
Early 21st century upgrades Automation of the line orders on the 7 route, which runs on the Flushing Line In January 2012, the MTA selected
Thales for a $343 million contract to set up a
communications-based train control (CBTC) system as part of the plan to automate the line. This was the second installation of CBTC, following
a successful implementation on the BMT Canarsie Line. The total cost was $550 million for the signals and other trackside infrastructure, and $613.7 million for CBTC-compliant rolling stock. The safety assessment at system level was performed using the
formal method Event-B. The MTA chose the Flushing Line for the next implementation of CBTC because it is also a self-contained line with no direct connections to other subway lines currently in use. Funding was allocated in the 2010–2014 capital budget for CBTC installation on the Flushing Line, with scheduled installation completion in 2016. The
R188 cars were ordered so the line would have compatible rolling stock. CBTC on the line will allow the to run 7% more service, or 2 more trains per hour (tph) during peak hours (before retrofit, it ran 27 tph). However, the system had been retrofitted to operate at 33 tph even without CBTC. The first train of R188 cars began operating in passenger service on November 9, 2013. Test runs of R188s in automated mode started in late 2014. or 2018 after a series of problems that workers encountered during installation, including problems with the R188s. Completely independent of the CBTC installation is the 7 Subway Extension, which features both CBTC signals and
fixed-block signaling. The extension also increased line capacity. In 2001, a business and civic group convened by Senator
Charles Schumer argued that a proposed westward extension of the Midtown office district could not be accomplished without a subway extension, saying: An extension of the Flushing Line was then proposed as part of the
New York City bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics. The City wanted to get funding before July 2005, at which time the
International Olympic Committee would vote on funding, but due to budget shortfalls, the MTA could not pay to fund the extension. The subway extension was approved In October 2007, the MTA awarded a $1.145 billion contract to build an extension from Times Square to Hudson Yards. There is one new station at 34th Street and Eleventh Avenue to serve Hudson Yards. The MTA originally planned for
another station at 10th Avenue and 41st Street but eliminated it due to lack of funding. The extension's opening was delayed several times due to issues in installing the custom-made
incline elevators for the 34th Street station. The extension eventually opened on September 13, 2015. The 34th Street–Hudson Yards station's design has been compared to that of
Washington Metro stations, or to those of stations along London's
Jubilee Line Extension.
Station renovations In early 2012, the
45th Road–Court House Square station was closed for a complete renovation, which included the addition of elevators and a connection to the
Court Square–23rd Street station complex. Additionally, several stations along the line, including Vernon Boulevard–Jackson Avenue, Queensboro Plaza, 33rd Street, and 46th Street, are slated to receive elevators as part of the 2020–2024 MTA Capital Program. As part of the 2015–2019 Capital Program, the MTA would renovate the 52nd, 61st, 69th, 82nd, 103rd and 111th Streets stations, a project that has been delayed for several years. Conditions at these stations were among the worst of all stations in the subway system. Work was supposed to begin in mid-2020 but was delayed due to the
COVID-19 pandemic in New York City. The MTA hired
Judlau Contracting as the contractor for the project; in March 2023, Judlau leased space near the
82nd Street station for a construction office. , the MTA planned to begin renovating the 61st, 82nd, and 111th Street stations in 2023; the 52nd and 69th Street stations in 2024; and the 103rd Street station in 2025. ==Station listing==