Grand Street station (IND Sixth Avenue Line)

New York City Subway station in Manhattan

The Grand Street station is an express station on the IND Sixth Avenue Line of the New York City Subway. Located at the intersection of Grand Street and Chrystie Street at the border of Chinatown and the Lower East Side, it is served by the D train at all times and the B train on weekdays. Opened on November 26, 1967, this station was one of two added as part of the Chrystie Street Connection. The station has two tracks and two narrow side platforms, located approximately 30 feet (9 m) below ground. In the original plan for the station, this would have been a four track, two island platform station, with a transfer to the Second Avenue Subway. The fourth phase of the Second Avenue Subway, if built, would include new platform(s) with connections to the existing platforms.

The station was built as part of the Chrystie Street Connection between the Sixth Avenue Line and the Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges. The Chrystie Street Connection was first proposed in 1947 as the southern end of the Second Avenue Subway (SAS), which would feed into the two bridges, allowing Sixth Avenue Line trains to access the Jamaica, Fourth Avenue, and Brighton lines in Brooklyn. The next year, the New York City Board of Transportation (BOT) indicated that it would award contracts for the construction of an 890 feet (271 m) section of tunnel between Hester and Delancey Streets, including a station at Grand Street, as part of the SAS project. Work had been expected to begin in mid 1952 but was delayed because of engineering difficulties. By 1954, the BOT's successor, the New York City Transit Authority, had asked the city for $37.3 million to begin constructing the Chrystie Street Connection. In mid 1957, the New York City government solicited bids from contractors to construct the various parts of the connection. One of the contracts was for the construction of a station at Grand and Chrystie Streets, serving trains to and from the Manhattan Bridge. Because there was a large number of senior citizens living near that intersection, the station was originally planned to contain many ramps and "a minimum of steps". A groundbreaking ceremony for the connection took place on November 25, 1957. The connection was projected to cost $100 million and provide capacity for 52,000 more riders an hour between Brooklyn and Manhattan. Construction of the station started in 1962, and the entire seven block length of Chrystie Street was closed until 1964. By March 1964, the new connection was expected to be completed within the next year. Later that year, the tracks in the new connection were laid. In contrast to subway tracks on existing lines, which contained wooden cross ties, the new tracks were installed on rubber pads attached to the concrete track bed, thereby dampening noise from trains.

The first part of the connection, including the Grand Street station, opened on November 26, 1967, when the link between the Sixth Avenue Line and the Manhattan Bridge north tracks opened. The connection was fully opened on July 1, 1968, with the opening of the 57th Street station and the opening of the connection between the Sixth Avenue Line and the Williamsburg Bridge. Upon this station's opening the routes of the B and D were rerouted via the new connection. BB trains were relabeled the B, and began to run to Coney Island via the Chrystie Street Connection, the Manhattan Bridge north tracks, Fourth Avenue Line express tracks, and the West End Line. D trains were rerouted from the Culver Line to run to Coney Island via the new Sixth Avenue express tracks, the Chrystie Street Connection, the Manhattan Bridge north tracks, and the Brighton Line. to December 1988. During this time, this station was served by the Grand Street Shuttle to the Sixth Avenue Line, and there was no subway service from the station to Brooklyn. The Grand Street Shuttle also operated when the north tracks were closed again from April to November 1995; the closure caused nearby vendors' business to decline. A third entrance was added in 1999 to accommodate the station's growing ridership, which in turn was spurred by the growth of the Chinese population in New York City. The MTA proposed closing the Manhattan Bridge's northern tracks again in 2000, running a shuttle between Broadway–Lafayette Street and Grand Street. Many Chinese New Yorkers expressed opposition to the plans, as there would no longer be direct subway service between Grand Street and Brooklyn. The New York Times wrote that many of the station's 27,000 daily riders were "Chinese Americans who live in Brooklyn, come for fresh fish and produce, herbal medicines and household supplies", and that community members feared a decline in business when the Manhattan Bridge's north tracks closed. The MTA also agreed to operate a shuttle bus to the Canal Street station when the bridge's northern tracks were closed in 2001. Regular service was restored in February 2004.

There are three staircase exits: two going up to the northeastern corner of the intersection of Grand and Chrystie Streets, and one going up to the northwestern corner. The station originally only had the two street stairs to the northeastern corner of the intersection, but due to growing ridership over the years—mainly by commuters from various Brooklyn neighborhoods to Manhattan's Chinatown—the third staircase to the northwestern corner was added in 1999.

In addition to connecting the BMT Nassau Street and IND Sixth Avenue Lines, as well as the Sixth Avenue Line to the Manhattan Bridge, the Chrystie Street Connection is one of the few completed sections of the SAS. The Grand Street station was built to serve as a transfer point between the Sixth Avenue and Second Avenue lines. Phase 1 of the project on the Upper East Side opened on January 1, 2017, with Phase 2 in planning and two other phases with no funding commitments. During modern planning, it was considered to utilize the cross platform provision, known as the "Shallow Chrystie Option", or to place the tracks under Forsyth Street one block east (the Forsyth Option), both of which could tie into an existing tunnel near the Chatham Square station site south of Canal Street. This tunnel, known as the Confucius Plaza Tunnel, was built in the 1970s along with several sections in Upper Manhattan used for Phases 1 and 2 of the SAS. Both these options would require extensive usage of cut and cover construction methods, creating large amounts of disturbances to the local community, environmental issues, and possibly requiring the demolition of existing structures. Current plans, however, have the Second Avenue platform to be built below the current one, though a free transfer will still be provided. The "Deep Chrystie Option", as the selected proposal is called, would instead place the Second Avenue Subway platform below the Sixth Avenue Line tracks, to create the least amount of community disturbance by utilizing tunnel boring machines. Cut and cover methods would be utilized only at the station site. The Second Avenue Subway platform and the new entrances/exits would be ADA accessible. To the north of the station, the Second Avenue Subway tunnels would curve to travel under Sara D. Roosevelt Park rather than directly below the Sixth Avenue Line tunnels under Chrystie Street, to avoid steel piles and other obstructions dating from the construction of the Chrystie Street Connection. To the south, the unused tunnel between Pell and Canal Streets could be used as an ancillary facility with the new passenger service tunnels located beneath and slightly to the west.