Workers put final touches on toll booths located in the newly built World Trade Center Path Train Station.
By Todd Plitt, USA TODAY
Posted on 11/20/2003 9:48:45 AM PST by Dane
Quiet since 9/11, subway to WTC resumes Sunday
By Martha T. Moore, USA TODAY
The PATH subway line that runs under the Hudson River to Manhattan reopens Sunday after it was destroyed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks more than two years ago. The subway terminal will be the first space on the Trade Center site open to the public.
The train line and temporary station were built in 16 months at a cost of $429 million, mostly in federal relief money. The rebuilt Port Authority Trans-Hudsonline, or PATH, will eliminate a transit headache for thousands of commuters from New Jersey, who have had to take alternate routes to work since the Trade Center was destroyed. The permanent station, now being designed and scheduled to open in 2006, will cost another $600 million.
Those who built the station say it will be a concrete sign of progress in rebuilding Lower Manhattan. And it will be an emotional trek for those who have not ridden the train since the last PATH train evacuated passengers as the World Trade Center burned Sept. 11.
That same train will be the first one to enter the station Sunday.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the Trade Center site, operates the trains. About 67,000 riders passed through the old station daily. Now, it can accommodate 55,000.
The terrorist attacks destroyed the PATH station. The two tunnels to New Jersey were flooded from broken sewer and water mains, as well as from firefighters' months-long effort to put out fires in the rubble. The 1-mile-long tunnels, made of cast-iron rings 16 feet across, filled to the ceiling with water at their lowest point. Everything had to be replaced: the track bed, tracks, wiring and lighting.
The speed of reconstructing the station will add credibility to redeveloping Lower Manhattan, says Anthony Coscia, Port Authority chairman. A project that should have taken 30 months was completed in 16. It began in July of last year, after the debris was removed.
"This was all about being able to send a message about the rebuilding process," Coscia says.
There is little more prosaic than the morning commute, but for people who will stream through the station Monday, it could be poignant when they see a bank of eight escalators almost identical to those in the old station in the same spot. They will even see remnants of the old station: a set of glass-and-steel doors that leads to a city subway line.
Until recently, the doors were marked with orange spray paint from rescue workers, who sprayed "9-13" on them, the date they reached the doors through the rubble.
The station is still called World Trade Center PATH Station. "It was a conscious decision" to keep the name, Coscia says. The city subway line that ends at the site also continues to call it the World Trade Center stop. "It's what it will be to so many people in this region forever," Coscia says.
The three-level station is at the northeast corner of the Trade Center's "bathtub," the 65-foot-high retaining wall around the site. The rest of the pit is a staging area for construction vehicles.
The resumption of the subway service means the public will be going inside the "bathtub" for the first time since the attacks. But they won't see much of it. The station is open-air, but white translucent panels will block the view into Ground Zero.
Glimpses of the buildings that surround the 16-acre site will be visible through white screens. Printed on the screens are quotations about New York.
From Edgar Allan Poe: "The city is thronged with strangers and everything wears an aspect of intense life."
From Gene Kelly: "In Manhattan I walk faster than I do anywhere in the world because I am more exhilarated there than anywhere else."
Port Authority officials said they want the station to be a place where people keep moving. "We're trying to respect people's memories," says Lou Menno, the reconstruction project manager. "We don't want it to be a tourist attraction" or an ad-hoc memorial.
Before 9/11, Menno was general manager of the Trade Center complex. "This is the World Trade Center," he says. "I hate when anybody calls it Ground Zero."
Earlier this month, Menno rode a train on a test run into the rebuilt station. As the train rose out of the tunnel, his emotions welled up with it: "Oh, man, you get chills."
Menno has spent nearly all his 34 years with the Port Authority working at the Trade Center. He still looks for the twin towers in the skyline every morning as he drives into Manhattan from New Jersey. The Trade Center "has given me my whole professional career," he says. "And in its death, it's still taking care of me — as I'm still taking care of it.
Workers put final touches on toll booths located in the newly built World Trade Center Path Train Station.
By Todd Plitt, USA TODAY
Just one more reason why the terrorists want to destroy us. We can overcome devastation and rebuild. They cannot move past mud shacks and camels. Kudos to our American workers who did what seemed impossible.
Never forget or forgive...
I was in NY a few months ago, it was a weird feeling to see subway steps leading to nowhere.
this is what is looked like after 9/11.
These are offices I had JUST renovated and was frequently in.
I imagine. Next week, I'll take a ride through there.
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