Old or New? Debate Rages Over Transit Downtown

But only two months later, a pitched battle over the money is already being waged behind the scenes, fueled by a debate that many say could determine the future of downtown: Should the money be spent only to improve the transit lines already there? Or should it also be used to bring in new train service, for the first time making downtown as accessible to suburban commuters as Midtown has always been?

The idea of extending commuter rail service into Lower Manhattan first emerged last winter, championed by a group of powerful downtown landlords, and it was largely viewed as an expensive pipe dream. But the dream has remained very much on the table, gaining political support and becoming a divisive reminder that, in a crowded city with ever-growing transit demands, $4.55 billion does not seem like so much money after all.

Proponents of new rail service, including the state's senior senator, Charles E. Schumer, and Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff, say they believe that downtown may recover but that it will not remain one of the world's financial capitals without better connections to the rest of the region and to Kennedy and Newark Liberty International Airports.

But critics of the plan, including some top state officials and many within the Metropolitan Transportation Authority itself, say that the cost of a new downtown rail line — estimates range from $1.9 billion to more than $5 billion — far outweighs its benefits, especially now, when the city is looking for money for several other huge, long-needed transit projects, like the Second Avenue subway and bringing the Long Island Rail Road into Grand Central Terminal.

So far, the fight has remained largely out of the public view, but there are widespread worries that it is growing and portends the kind of bitter divisions that led to the decade-long fight over Westway, a 1970's plan to submerge a six-lane highway under hundreds of acres of parkland and development along the West Side waterfront. It ultimately failed.

"The danger is that we end up in a traditional New York blood vendetta instead of a rational discussion," said Robert Yaro, president of the Regional Plan Association, an independent urban policy group. "We could end up with nothing if we get bogged down in that kind of warfare."

Ultimately, Gov. George E. Pataki, who controls the authority and is a central figure at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, will play the biggest part in settling the debate. But, characteristically, he has avoided the issue, leaving it, for now, in the hands of the transit authority, which has tried to dismiss it but has been unable to make it go away and is now actually involved with landlords in studying the proposal.

"I think it's a great idea," said Peter J. Kalikow, chairman of the transit agency. "But I don't know, in terms of dollars and benefits, whether it's a good thing to do now. When we do a project like that we think about bang for the buck: does it serve enough people to make it something we want to expend scarce capital on?"

Almost immediately after the World Trade Center attack, real estate forces, transit advocates and public officials all understood that a historic moment was at hand to fix many longstanding problems with Lower Manhattan transportation.

Simply rebuilding what had been destroyed — the 1 and 9 subway line, for example, which reopened last month — was relatively easy, because insurance money was available for those projects. But moving beyond that, to untangle and rethink the transit system, quickly began to prove much harder.

Over the last few months a long list of proposals was whittled down and a consensus began to build around a few: to create an underground concourse that would ease transfers between subway and PATH lines; to rebuild the PATH terminal and the Fulton Street subway complex, creating a kind of downtown transit hub; to rebuild the antiquated South Ferry subway station and dig a tunnel along Rector Street to connect two subway stations on that street.

But at the same time, huge forces — the Alliance for Downtown New York and John E. Zuccotti, chairman of Brookfield Financial Properties, the largest downtown landlord — were building support for a plan to bring the Long Island Rail Road from Brooklyn to Lower Manhattan, which would require building an expensive tunnel under the East River or using existing subway tracks.

Lower Manhattan is the third-largest business district in the country, behind Midtown and Chicago. But for decades, businesses have migrated to Midtown, where Grand Central and Pennsylvania Station provided easy access to Westchester County, New Jersey and Long Island.

The only way to stem the trend, says Carl Weisbrod, president of the Downtown Alliance, is to build transit lines to Long Island and the international airports. Mr. Zuccotti, for one, is especially concerned about Merrill Lynch, his largest tenant, whose lease expires in 2008.

"If the goal of Lower Manhattan's revitalization is to secure and enhance its role as a world-class business center," Mr. Weisbrod said, "then commuter rail and airport access must be the highest priority."

Transportation advocates and top transit officials complained that the railroad proposal might benefit 25,000 Long Island executives who work downtown, but it could inconvenience more than 100,000 subway riders.

But Mr. Zuccotti and his allies have persisted, devising a complex plan known as a super shuttle. It involves running a subway train on Long Island Rail Road tracks that stretch between the Atlantic Avenue terminal in downtown Brooklyn and the train station in Jamaica, Queens, which will also have light-rail connections to Kennedy Airport.

The super shuttle would run nonstop into Brooklyn and would switch onto the A and C subway lines before reaching Jay Street, the shuttle's sole stop in Brooklyn. After entering Manhattan, the super shuttle would descend from the A line into a new tunnel that would take it directly to the World Trade Center area.

But this would require rerouting the C line onto the F line in downtown Brooklyn, for the trip into Manhattan. The C would then rejoin its old route after the West Fourth Street station.

Critics say that there is a huge problem with this plan: the cost, which could eat up most or all of the available transportation money.

"There are people downtown for whom this L.I.R.R. issue is so consuming that they could dispense with all the other projects and it would be O.K. with them," said Gene Russianoff, staff lawyer for the Straphangers Campaign.

The only way to bring a new rail line downtown, he and others say, is through a new tunnel under the East River. But if there is anything that both sides agree on, it is that there will probably never be enough money to do that.

"If we have to wait to build a tunnel, we'll all be dead by the time it happens," said Kathryn Wylde, president of the New York City Partnership and Chamber of Commerce.

In just one example of the contentiousness of the debate, Senator Schumer recently came under withering attack from some of his own allies when he took the side of the new-rail proponents. He complained publicly that spending an estimated $700 million on the South Ferry subway station and Rector Street would undermine more ambitious efforts to remake downtown.

"We need what I like to call a grand Grand Central Terminal down there, and part and parcel of that is having all the train lines come there," Mr. Schumer said. "I was worried it would get cannibalized and so I decided to make my point, that we had to think large down there."

The debate continues to build, with widely differing predictions of success. A senior city official said that commuter rail and airport access to downtown are ideas "rising on the charts" politically. "In terms of changing the basic nature of Lower Manhattan," the official said, "there is probably nothing more important."

But some top state officials take a much more jaundiced view. "There's nothing wrong with it," one said. "But when the triage starts, what makes the cut?"

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/12/nyregion/12TRAN.html

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