Port Authority To "Terror-Proof" PATH Tunnels

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As NYC is beefing up security on the subway's "ring of steel" in September, the Port Authority is looking to protect the PATH tunnels. According to the Post, contractors are "toiling in the cloak of darkness" for the "hush-hush project" to install flood-prevention gates and bomb-proof metal plates, and they're being pressured to get it done before the WTC memorial opens next year.

The plan to reinforce the tunnels began in 2006, the same year officials stopped a plot to bomb a PATH tunnel. The ensuing report said that if a small explosive went off in one of the tunnels, the Hudson River would flow in at a rate of a million gallons per minute. They are also particularly vulnerable because they "lie in the soft riverbed, unlike other tunnels that are bored through the underlying bedrock."

Port Authority COO Ernesto Butcher insisted that once these repairs get done, there will be nothing to worry about. "The safety of our customers is the Port Authority's highest priority, which is why we have spent over $5 billion since 9/11 upgrading the security systems at our facilities," he said. "Hardening our PATH rail tunnels is one example of that effort."

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By Jaya Saxena in News on November 30, 2010 3:37 PM

Comments [rss]

potsmoker

actually its not terror proofing, its infrastructure protection.
hey already spent billions of dollars doing this all sneaky on the MTA river tunnels, millions of pounds of concrete and rocks were poured over the tunnels path along the river at a cost of billions of dollars.
terror means $$$$$$ and all that $$$$$$$ went to employ white middle class families who dont live in nyc and enriched the construction companies which are probably owned by the cousin of some senator and bloomberg crony, after all its hush hush not because its a secret plan, because WHO gets the $$$ is the shocking part, the people that cry wolf are the ones making $$$$$ from these projects

rcltrh

Next we will have to exit the vehicles and have a pat down and cavity search before driving through. Glad I rarely drive.

GentleGiant

The PATH has tubes not tunnels.

Gotham Extremist

"Port Authority COO Ernesto Butcher insisted that once these repairs get done, there will be nothing to worry about"

Never say never papi, when there's a will..............there's................