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What's the estimate economic cost of a cut & cover, which shuts down a major NYC street for 1yr, vs the projected cost of a tunnelled subway line x2 (because modern government is always 2x the budget, at least)?

Some shops on the street could very well go out of business due to lack of local traffic... would they be compensated?

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Yeah I would assume that there is no way that they would be compensated for the lost revenue. I would also imagine calculating the lost revenue for those shops, and subsequently trying to get the government to reimburse them for it, would be prohibitively expensive both politically and financially.

Second Avenue Subway construction lasted a decade and the stations still had to be built as cut and cover (you do need access shafts to the stations).

In light of that cut and cover sounds downright peachy.

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