April 11, 2008
Fulton Street Transit Center Follies
What's another delay of 12 to 18 months for the Fulton Street Transit Center? The proposed hub, which would link 11 different subway lines and has been in the works for years, was originally supposed to open this year, but costs for the hub have escalated, from the initially planned $750 million to well over a $1 billion.
The MTA's president of capital construction Veronique Hakim claimed the MTA was making progress (well, they have decided to reduce the height of the dome-oculus from 50 feet to 10 feet), but now there's talk of moving a performing arts center planned for the World Trade Center to sit above the hub at Fulton Street and Broadway. Of course, Grimshaw, the architecture which designed the hub, pointed out to the NY Times, “Transportation infrastructure makes lots of noise and vibration. A performing arts center requires a certain amount of acoustical isolation. They’re not natural bedfellows.”
All this talk and lack of action is making some weary--per the Sun, Downtown Alliance president Elizabeth Berger told the City Council, "Connections to the 11 subway lines is essential to Lower Manhattan. We can't settle for less and we can't wait any longer." And below are some of the MTA's renderings (caveat: they are from an early MTA capital construction presentation) of what it hopes the hub will accomplish.
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This would be a good thing. Why does this city have such a hard time investing in its infrastructure?
They should let a company sponsor it, paying for part of the cost. The "J&R Station" or something like that.
#1, because we're cheap.
Fill up the holes they have been digging, patch Cortlandt Street on the Broadway BMT, and end this waste of time already. Concentrate on improving the trains we have and keep the stations clean.
Either that, or have Trump build and run a transit hub. Developers sure can knock down buildings and build new ones quickly.
www.forgotten-ny.com