New York assesses damage, looks to rebuild - Transit update - Brief Article

Railway Age, Nov, 2001

As New York City struggles to recover from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority estimates it will cost $4.1 billion over three years to repair the city's damaged subway tunnels and stations, improve security, and recoup lost revenue.

The attacks on downtown New York City severely damaged one of the world's busiest underground transit hubs, where 15 subway lines converge in a dozen stations within blocks of the World Trade Center, and PATH trains from New Jersey import thousands of workers daily. It has crippled the west side of the city's financial district and forced thousands of area employees to reinvent their daily commute.

Several NYC Transit subway tunnels and stations were damaged or destroyed, though officials now say some may re-open sooner than originally expected. The PATH station below the World Trade Center was damaged as well, and has been closed since Sept. 11, along with the Exchange Place station in Jersey City on the opposite side of the Hudson River. Only now, more than a month after the attacks, are NYC Transit and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey officials able to get a clear idea of the extent to which their facilities were affected and just how much work needs to be done, and at what cost.

Peter Kalikow, chairman of the MTA, says that his agency hopes to receive a substantial chunk of the state's $54 billion request for federal aid to put toward transit, and expects full payment on its own $1.5 billion insurance policy to help meet the costs of repairs and improvements. Possible fare increases and service reductions have been widely criticized as means for accumulating capital, and most officials hope such measures can be avoided.

Meanwhile, a $17.1 billion capital improvement plan the MTA began in 2000 "remains intact and will go forward."

The NYCT subway stations that were severely damaged or are currently closed include the Cortlandt St., Rector St., and South Ferry Stations on the 1 and 9 lines; the World Trade Center station on the C and E lines; and the City Hall, Cortlandt St., Rector St., and Whitehall St. stations on the N and R lines.

New York City Transit President Lawrence Reuter says that the damaged stations along the N and R lines could be re-opened within the next few weeks, rather than the original prediction of six months. Once these stations are restored, the N and R trains, which have been replaced by the Q and W trains in Queens, Manhattan, and Brooklyn, would return to normal operation, reducing some of the current commuting confusion along those lines.

Nearly 1,800 feet of subway tunnel in downtown Manhattan was destroyed when the Twin Towers collapsed. Many of the tunnels caved in under the weight and pressure of the debris. At the Cortlandt St. station, the I-beams that support the tunnel ceilings buckled, but did not collapse.

The sixth basement level beneath the World Trade Center, home to the PATH train station, is flooded. A lone PATH train sits empty underneath the World Trade Center, cut in half, with three of its seven cars crushed by debris.

A vital portion of the "bathtub," the enormous underground concrete box that formed the foundation for the Twin Towers and that keeps the Hudson River from breaching various parts of the area's transit tunnels and stations, was structurally compromised by the building collapses. The entire bathtub itself is now filled with rubble. Engineers have been monitoring water levels around it during the recovery effort, and are evaluating all necessary actions to be taken to prevent any further damage.

A plan proposed prior to the terrorist attacks that would have shut down 53 manned NYCT token booths throughout the city has been put on hold, for now. Security concerns following the initial attacks and recent anthrax and bomb investigations in subway stations have put an emphasis on having MTA personnel presence in all stations. Though the booth phaseout plan may eventually be reintroduced, the temporary reprieval has saved hundreds of MTA jobs for the time being.