A historic announcement was made inside the MTA's Madison Avenue boardroom this morning: The groundbreaking for the Second Avenue subway will take place at 10 a.m. on Thursday, April 12 — a mere two weeks away. The ceremony will be held inside a tunnel, which might suggest to literal-minded folks that ground has in fact already been broken. Of course it has! In fact, there have been two previous groundbreaking ceremonies for the star-crossed subway — first in 1925, again in 1972 — but MTA executive director Elliot Sander, who made the announcement, promised this morning that "the third time's a charm." Plans are in place, he noted, for noise mitigation and sidewalk navigability and tunnel-boring machines so badass they require assembly in Italy. Naturally, actual work won't start until several weeks after the ceremony. —Alec Appelbaum

The Line That Time Forgot [NYM]