MTA gets go-ahead on facility for East Side Access LIRR.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority will not need to complete an environmental impact statement for a facility integral to the operation of the East Side Access Long Island Railroad station the MTA is planning to build beneath Grand Central Terminal, the Federal Transportation Authority has determined.

The FTA's ruling, while it was expected, an MTA source revealed, is significant nonetheless because it means that the above ground facility's construction can begin far sooner than if it had been ordered to complete the months-long hearing and public review process required by an EIS. The timesavings afforded by the FTA's decision will likely help the project stay on budget by avoiding the yearly escalations in construction costs.

To be located on 50th Street between Park Avenue and Madison Avenue, the facility will house cooling and ventilation systems and fuel storage tanks as well as access elevators and loading docks for the station. Its construction wasn't part of the original East Side Access plan for which an EIS was completed in 2001 and its addition required an environmental assessment, which determined if the building would have an impact on the surrounding area by generating noise, pollution and traffic congestion.

The building will require the MTA to acquire and raze four low-rise buildings on 50th Street where the facility will be constructed, a process in which the source said the MTA will invoke the Federal Uniform Relocation Act.

The building was added to the station plan when it was discovered in 2001 that the station's ventilation system could be overtaxed if it had to provide ventilation for the tunnels in the event of an emergency, a concern that was heightened by 9/11.

Increasing ventilation capacity meant designing the 50th Street facility, where many other functions were soon consolidated. Construction on some portions of the $6.3 billion East Side Access project, up to 50% of which is being funded by the FTA, is already underway. Spanish construction firm Dragados and local firm Judlau Contracting Inc. were awarded a $435 million contract in July to bore the tunnels underneath Amtrak's Sunnyside railyards in Queens that will link existing LIRR tracks with the existing 63rd Street tunnel under the East River. Tunnel will also be bored in Manhattan from the western terminus of the 63rd Street tunnel at Second Avenue that will curve west and south under Park Avenue and connect to the new four- platform, eight-track LIRR station below Grand Central Terminal.