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Earlier this week, the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) completed tunneling for the first phase of the Second Avenue Subway in New York City when a tunnel-boring machine broke into the existing tunnel and reached the Lexington Avenue-63rd Street station.

The completion of the tunneling marks “a major milestone” for the $4.5 billion project, which will establish service from 96th to 63rd streets as an extension of the Q train, MTA officials said in a prepared statement.

The 485-ton, 450-foot long tunnel-boring machine mined a total of 7,789 linear feet, averaging 60 linear feet a day. The average depth of the tunnel is 70 feet.

Phase I of the Second Avenue Subway will serve more than 200,000 riders daily, reducing crowding on the Lexington Avenue Line and restoring a transit link to a neighborhood that lost the Second Avenue elevated line in the 1940s, MTA officials said.