Hudson Tubes PATH WTC station's reopening two years away

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[1]Thursday, November 29, 2001

See Long Fixup for 1 - 9 Trains

By PETE DONOHUE Daily News Staff Writer

It could take at least three years to restore No. 1 and 9 subway service downtown, a transit official said yesterday. The line's Cortlandt St., Rector St. and South Ferry stations have been out of service since the collapse of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 ruined the tunnel in that area. "We would want to have it done in three years, but that is very ambitious," Connie Crawford, director of the Transit Authority's engineering services division, said at a Manhattan panel discussion on transportation.

Exactly what will emerge from the rubble is uncertain, Transit Authority spokesman Al O'Leary said. The authority could rebuild the existing line along its current route. But there are many questions, such as what will be built on the former site of the towers, that remain unanswered, and the line could be shifted, O'Leary said. "That line opened in 1918," O'Leary said. "The downtown area is very different. It doesn't serve Battery Park City
well."

TA President Lawrence Reuter "feels we should take this opportunity to replace the line below Chambers St. with one that better serves the downtown area," O'Leary said. The N and R station at Cortlandt St., which was not heavily damaged, could reopen in about six months, Crawford said. But O'Leary cautioned that any reopening must first get the go-ahead from city officials overseeing the cleanup efforts. "It's not our clock, it's not our timetable," O'Leary said.

The discussion was sponsored by the Society for Marketing Professional Services and moderated by Charles King, a director of project development at the Weidlinger Associates engineering firm, at the Williams Club on E. 39th St.

PATH Plans

Meanwhile, the Port Authority is considering an accelerated construction project that would allow the PATH station under the Trade Center site to resume operation in about two years, said Chris Ward, PA chief of strategic planning.

Under that scenario, the PA would reopen two long-closed entrances to the station north and south of the Trade Center site, one on Vesey St. and one on Liberty St.

The station itself suffered "modest damage" although it
will cost millions to rebuild tunnels crushed in the collapse
of the south tower, Ward said.

[2] Thursday, November 29, 2001

Subway stations' reopenings three years away

NEW YORK CITY -- The reopening of three subway stations damaged by the destruction of the World Trade Center is at least three years away, a chief engineer at New York City Transit told the Associated Press Wednesday (November 28). "We would want to have it done in three years, but that is very ambitious," said Connie Crawford, director of NYC Transit's engineering services division.

In addition, restoration of PATH train service from New Jersey to lower Manhattan is expected to take at least two years, said a senior manager at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the train line. "The target is do it in two years, if that is feasible," Louis Venech said. "A lot of that depends on the site recovery and clearance process, however, so we are somewhat beholden to that in terms of our timetable."

Crawford and Venech spoke at a panel discussion addressing the future of rail transportation in the metro region following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

For the subway's No. 1 and No. 9 lines, transit engineers are looking at two possible plans to restore service to the Cortlandt Street, Rector Street and South Ferry stations, Crawford said. One option would be to repair the tunnels and stations along the existing alignment.

A second option would be to divert the tunnel westward just north of where the trade center stood, run it southward to Battery Park and to build an entirely new South Ferry station.

"Either way our base plan -- if we can get the funding -- is to restore that entire line to current standards," Crawford said.

The decision as to which plan will be used is expected by the end of December. Costs are expected to be more than one billion dollars, most of which will be covered by insurance, Crawford said.

Meanwhile, service to the Cortlandt Street station on the subway's N and R lines is expected to return in about six months, she said.

"We lost our southbound platform exits, because they exited into the Trade Center," she said. "We're looking to put in some interim stairs and that's going to take about six months."

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