Rutgers Tube, which carries the F subway line under the East River between Manhattan’s East Broadway station and the York Street station in Brooklyn, was the last Metropolitan Transportation Agency under-river crossing to be rehabilitated after Superstorm Sandy hit the New York City area in 2012.

All pump tunnel and station work was allowed to proceed only during the train’s weekend outages—an aggressive schedule considering the project broke ground in August 2020 and was completed by May 2022.

To achieve this, the project was divided into 23 design packages, also with multiple sub-packages. As a result, there were no delays in design approval to hold up construction work.

COVID-19 did not slow the project’s pace. The team implemented safe-site protocols, mitigated labor and material shortages and regained lost schedule time, according to its submission form.

Overall, the tube upgrade protects the tunnel from future storms with expanded pump capacity, tertiary pump power sources and portable weir walls near tunnel entrances to protect against street level flooding.

In addition, a smart lighting system in the tunnel can be set low during normal periods to allow train conductors to easily see signals and set brighter in a construction zone when maintenance must be done.

The $100-million project was completed at budget.