Daily News from New York, New York • 137

DAILY NEWS, MONDAY, DECEMBER-4, 1978- 41 (Continued from page 4) was "ghastly." That color was raisin, a color that had been selected after considerable contemplation by the environment team. "We selected raisin because it's pleasing to the eye and covers up the steel dust left in the wake of trains," she explains. "Well, we started painting the Fifth Ave. station and I'll tell you it looked ghastly under those lights." If Wagner has her way, a lot of the oldness, the quaintness in many stations may remain, though cleaned up and polished. "Some stations have chandeliers, stained glass, tile mosaics," she says.

"These should be preserved. "The subway system isn't something that should be left to deteriorate and become abandoned for new routes. It isn't something that some archeologists dig up years later. It should be a landmark." The Metropolitan Transportation Authority talks of cleaning up all stations during the diamond jubilee celebration. Noise reduction is also a priority.

Waiting on platforms has been an ear-splitting experience in stations with both local and express tracks. Express trains rattling sends off vibrations that have given earaches to many a straphanger. All that would be eliminated by sound barriers between tracks. Such barriers have been installed on the BMT 49th St. station in Rockefeller Center.

Those who have been privy to the muffling say it works. They say that sotto voice. In addition, new acoustical ceiling panels will be installed as part of the platform improvements. Jamaica station is due for complete renewal. sides1 iHhe river caff Ji tori T1 miles can hour if, i ir- News photos Dy Dan Jacino You can see the future at 49th St.

and Seventh Ave. (left) or at 42d St. and Sixth both in Manhattan and the future works. Diyeradl odd flUue lh rJHE UNDERGROUND RENAISSANCE has al-T ready begun at 20 subway stations slated to receive $68 million worth of improvements in the next two years. These stations are the first of 72 to be refurbished at a cost of $800 million, over the next six years.

Charles Kalkhof, chief of the Transit Authority's Maintenance of Way Department says: "The system is so large, people don't realize all the work we're doing on it." Here are some of the projects the riding public will see soon the nine biggest of the first 20 station modernization contracts. GRAND CENTRAL Because it handles more passengers than any other station, Grand Central should be the flagship of the system. Instead it's the worst station of them all. It's the most crowded and the dirtiest measured in terms of rubbish removed each" day. Work will begin soon on the revitalization of Grand Central's subway mezzanine, to be completed in two phases over the next several years.

There will be new walls faced with glazed brick, dramatically improved flourescent and mercury CaHE $2-3 BILLION 63d subway, its 28 separate links blasted out of Manhattan bed-11 rock, "cut and covered" below the streets in Queens and submerged in a pre-fab, four-barrel tunnel under the East River, is the city's first new rapid transit line in 40 years. It is almost certainly the last planned for this century. Construction on the other planned line the infamous Second Ave. Subway has been "postponed" indefinitely. By 1990, 80-mile-an-hour trains will hurtle riders along the new 63d-Queens line.

Called "Route 131,7 it connects with Manhattan transfer points for the Sixth Ave. IND and the Seventh Ave. IRT. The line will run eastward along E. 63d under the East River to Roosevelt Island, then along 41st Ave.

in Long Island City and through the Sunnyside rail yards to the existing Continental Ave. IND station. The line, also called "the Bypass" in Queens will then continue along present IND track to merge with the partially-complete Jamaica extension to a final stop at Springfield Blvd. near Conduit Avenue 14 miles in all. The section between Long Island City and Central Park is called 131-A, and is scheduled to have highspeed cars roaring through it by 1934.

The trip will take less than four minutes. The river section, a square-sectioned tube, 38 feet on a side containing four tracks (two for the Long Island Rail Road), was fabricated in a shipyard and submerged six years ago. Its dimly-lit, ominously silent tracks are rusted from moisture. At its eastern portal, a hand-painted sign reads: "Welcome to Mole City." The river tube stops short against Manhattan rock at the East River Drive. At Third the tunneling picks up again, hollowed out over the last two and one half years to Park Ave.

on its way to connect with completed sections at Central Park. Above the street at Lexington Ave. stands another monument to American engineering, a beige, 40-foot tower temporarily obstructing vehicular traffic on E. 63d St. Few motorists caught in the daily bottleneck realize the tower contains a mind-boggling elevator for dump trucks, the first of its kind.

A steady stream of trucks disappears into the structure to be lowered into the subway excavation, a cavern with a cathedral-like vaulted 70-foot ceiling. Believe it or not. traffic would be even worse without the tower. As for the erstwile Second Avenue line, designed-during the booming 1960s and first okayed in 1952, -to relieve congestion on the Lex, the line will be sealed like a tomb. So far, $63 million has been sunk into the project.

"Con Ed and the telephone company have been told to finish up whatever work they were doing and clear out," says a spokesman for TA chairman Harold Fisher. "We're going to coyer the excavation, then repave -tat -street'1' lighting, acoustical treatments, new floors and less congested off-street entrances built into the private commercial landscape. HERALD SQUARE All the types of improvements at Grand Central will also be made at Herald Square, and aesthetic improvements on passenger platforms will be included. UNION SQUARE The "greening" of the Union Square mezzanine on the Lexington Ave. line will feature the closing of underused corridors.

Existing passageways will be widened. The most heavily used walkways will be free of turnstiles, which will be moved to new, widened off-street entrances. Retail activity will be strengthened by the new look, and most concession stands will be removed a 12-month job. STILL WELL AVE. TERMINAL, IND LINE, BROOKLYN This elevated terminal will be torn apart and emerge with a new, airy look.

Architects plan the removal of unsightly protective concrete around steel beams. The sheathing will be replaced with special, painted-on coatings. The terminal will be among the first to enjoy the benefit of quiet, continuous welded rail track a 24-month job. METROPOLITAN AVE. STATION, MYRTLE AVE.

LINE, BMT, QUEENS During the next two years this wooden elevated station, having suffered major damage from a fire will be completely rebuilt. SUTTER AVE. STATION, CANARSIE LINE, BMT, BROOKLYN The deteriorated wooden platforms at Sutter Ave. will be replaced with pre-stressed concrete slabs. This $550,000 job is low on aesthetics but high on service.

MARCY AVE. STATION, BROADWAY JAMAICA LINE, QUEENS This antiquated station was completed in 1900, and unlike other stations on the line, it was never rebuilt. Under a $1.7 million rehabilitation, longer, wider platforms to eliminate an 8-inch step-up to the floor level of the cars will be constructed. There will be a new roof, windscreen and lighting. WILSON AVE.

STATION, CANARSIE LINE, BMT, BROOKLYN Rain-drenched passengers at this station will be pleased to learn that a new, $400,000 canopy will be built to replace the leaky original. 42d ST.EIGHTH AVE. STATION, IND, MANHATTAN The system's most dangerous, this station will be the focal point of several federal and state anticrime appropriations, including the installation of closed-circuit television. (TomorfewrSmMtk'siUuig) Alosf and least used From teeming Grand Central to the subway's lonely waypoints in sections of the city that progress forgot, every token dropped into a turnstile counts as one "revenue passenger." Here are the latest annual figures on the busiest and the least used stations and number of passengers. MOST USED: 1.

Grand Central (IRT) 29,817,538 2. 34th St.Sixth Ave. (BMTIND) 23,074,229 3. Times Square (BMTIRT) 21,478,237 4. Penn Station (IRT) 16,508,587 5.

50th St.Eighth Ave. (IND) 14,839,134 LEAST USED: 1. Dean Franklin Ave. Shuttle, Brooklyn (BMT) 46,460 2. 62d St.

West End Line.rooklyn (BMT) 65.489 3. 22d Ave. Coney Island Line, Brooklyn (IND) 99.440 4. 215th Broadway local, Manhattan (IRT) 150,293 3. Whitlock Pelham Bay Park Line, Bronx tlrrn.