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Is New York going about
the process of rebuilding Lower Manhattan backwards,
sort of cart before the horse? Some people who
know about development in New York City
think so and are urging changes - a shift in
priorities, or at least a broadening of them.
First on just about everyone's list is selecting an
appropriate memorial and determining how much of the
16-acre disaster site it will occupy. Beyond that, the
debate has been so dominated by discussions about
building buildings of one kind or another, including a
"transportation hub," that little attention
has gone to what the area needed even before Sept. 11
- major improvements in mass transit so people can get
into and out of downtown more easily than they can
now.
Perhaps the public thinks the planned
"transportation hub," to be built with
financial help from Washington, is the answer. It
isn't. The hub would untangle the Byzantine
connections between subway lines and link the PATH and
subway systems. But as now configured it would change
nothing fundamental. It would add not one new subway
or commuter line, and provide no airport connection.
Unless government comes up with more ambitious plans,
will the developers build the buildings downtown that
everyone is talking about? "This is a classic
example of a field of
dreams," said Meyer S. Frucher, former president
of the Battery Park City Authority. "If you build
the infrastructure they will come. If you don't, they
won't come. And you will be giving away enormous
amounts of subsidies that will not be beneficial in
the long run." With the office vacancy rate
downtown so high now, it makes more sense to focus on
improving mass transit rather than trying to build
commercial space, Mr. Frucher contends.
Some leading business groups also say they want better
transportation for the area, including high-speed
access to the airports. So do some members of the
Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, including
Louis R. Tomson, its president. "I'm hoping a
consensus will emerge that the most important thing
for Lower Manhattan is that we have a hook and an
advantage - that we be able to get to both airports
easily from here," Mr. Tomson said yesterday,
referring to Kennedy and Newark Liberty International
Airports.
So far, discussions of a memorial and real estate
development have so dominated the debate that matters
of mass transit have barely penetrated the public
consciousness, though downtown's transit disadvantage
is not new.
Until the early 20th century, Lower Manhattan was the
center of the city because of the harbor. Then came
air travel, subways and commuter train stations and
the center of town moved north. Traveling downtown
from Midtown added up to an hour to most people's
trips. "What we have now is the exciting
possibility to in some ways restore the transit
advantage God gave Lower Manhattan, to have man give
it back," said Kenneth T. Jackson, president of
the New-York Historical Society, who welcomes the
promised hub but would like to see additional
improvements.
THERE is no lack of imagination around for upgrading
transit in Lower Manhattan. The ideas include building
an extension of Metro-North from Grand Central
Terminal and of
the Long Island Rail Road from Atlantic Terminal in
Brooklyn; constructing a subway shuttle from Jamaica,
which would also provide an easy transfer from the air
train now under construction between Kennedy Airport
and Jamaica; extending the air train directly to Lower
Manhattan from Jamaica; extending the PATH train that
links Newark and Lower Manhattan to Newark's airport;
and building a direct subway link to J.F.K. by
piggybacking on the long-planned Second Avenue Subway
with an express line that also stops
downtown. The Regional Plan Association first made
that proposal three years ago.
Paris, London and Tokyo had similar problems and
managed to build extensions and links between rapid
transit and commuter rails, noted Robert D. Yaro,
president of the association. "If you want to be
a global center, that's what you do," he
said. New York is not Tokyo. Community
opposition and financial complications are inevitable.
Mr. Frucher proposed bonding against federal
transportation appropriations, and Mr. Tomson
suggested that a piece of the federal aid for downtown
could go to transit improvements. No doubt there are
other financing methods.
The funny thing about government is that it somehow
finds the money - once it decides what it wants to do. |
