Phase 2 of the Second Avenue subway extension is barely limping along. 

Gov. Kathy Hochul on Tuesday announced the state will devote $54 million from discretionary funds to restart work to extend Q train service from 96th Street north to 125th Street on Manhattan’s East Side.

The money will help pay for the relocation of utility lines along Second Avenue and nearby streets while officials determine how to cover the cost of the rest of the project. 

The total cost of Phase 2 of the project is nearly $8 billion, partially covered by the MTA capital budget, which was supposed to be funded by congestion pricing. 

Hochul in June announced that she had decided to “indefinitely pause” the tolling program. 

“The pause is not going to affect our ability to move forward on critical projects and other areas,” Hochul said at a press conference Tuesday. “I will look at them on a case-by-case basis during this pause time to make sure we don’t delay critical projects.”

Back in January, the MTA awarded its first construction contract for the extension of the Q train up to 125th Street in Harlem, to relocate underground utility lines to create a station at 106th Street. Stations are planned for 116th and 125th streets as well. 

The total contract awarded was for $182 million; the governor’s funding announcement covers around 30% of that.

It is unclear where the money covering the remaining portion of that contract and the rest of the project will come from. 

“While they figure everything out, funding to keep it going, that would be fantastic, because either way it’s going to take probably a couple years,“ East Harlem resident Jeremy Rosenblatt said Tuesday. 

“I know they’ll get it done, but I don’t want them to take forever to get it done, because it took them forever to do this one,” Rodney Futrell, a Q train rider, added about the first phase of the Second Avenue subway. 

When congestion pricing was put on pause, the MTA’s head of capital projects said it didn’t make sense to do the work to relocate utility lines without the assurance that the project was going to be funded.

Now, with the governor’s funding, that work will restart as the agency figures out how to fund the rest of the capital program. 

In a statement, MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber said the agency was grateful to the governor, adding in part that the funding “puts MTA in a position to keep the overall Second Avenue Subway Phase 2 project on schedule while Albany resolves how to fund the $15 billion outstanding for the MTA’s 2020-2024 Capital Program.”