Metro

Second Ave. on snail rail

Construction on the Second Avenue Subway is really making all the local stops.

The $4.5 billion MTA mega-project has suffered yet another setback, this time due to shaky apartment buildings.

MTA crews can’t carry out permits for blasting underground rock near the two unstable structures near East 92nd Street until both are shored up, the MTA and city Department of Buildings said yesterday. Both had to be evacuated in June.

While the delay won’t push back the subway’s overall July 2017 completion date — which was recently changed from 2015 and originally slated for 2012 — workers since July have resorted to digging with machinery instead of using faster blasting methods, officials said.

One of the buildings — 1772 Second Ave. — has already been stabilized, the MTA said. Tenants returned there several weeks ago.

“It was pretty awful living in a welfare hotel,” said one of the tenants, Jane Foss, who recently returned after living in a hotel. “We still don’t have gas for our stoves and ovens.”

She said she was told the building had been equipped with angled metal supports to act as a “shock-absorbing system.”

Work on shoring up the second building, 1768 Second Ave., is scheduled to begin next week, the MTA said.

The MTA hopes to begin blasting rock for the subway tunnel in mid-November.

MTA spokesman Jeremy Soffin called the building conditions “pre-existing.”

“We do not expect the delay to impact the overall project schedule,” he said.

The buildings were evacuated in a frenzied rush in June.

Tenants scrambled back from vacations and work to grab personal items before they moved in with friends or checked into hotels.

City documents show that the two buildings had structural issues for years. By 2006, one was leaning north by 10 inches, and another had a crumbling facade, records show.

But residents and business owners say vibrations from the construction have only worsened the problems.

The MTA denies that charge, and says all of the vibrations meet building standards.

tom.namako@nypost.com