Aug
29
WTC Transit Hub — eight years away — to feature altered design
ByAccording to recent reports, by the time Port Authority gets around to wrapping work on its World Trade Center Transit Hub, we’ll have lived through two more Presidential elections not counting the current race. Downtown Express reported last week that the Hub won’t be open until 2016 at the earliest. Meanwhile, The Times reports that, due to rising costs, Santiago Calatrava’s design is going to be drastically modified. The no-column approach may be scrapped all together.
So by the time this project is completed — if the Port Authority can meet its ambitious timeline — at least 15 years will have elapsed since the 9/11 attacks. No wonder people are clamoring for someone who can Get Things Done.
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[...] last week I noted that the Santiago Calatrava-designed World Trade Center transportation hub may be on the chopping block, the Port Authority isn’t quite ready to give up on their ambitious plans for the downtown [...]
Instead of having a Robert Moses like “dictatorship,” we could do something similar to what the California transportation department did after the huge quakes more than a decade ago: offer deadline-based construction incentives. If you finished before a reasonable deadline, the contractors were rewarded. If you finished after, then they would be fined. Of course, stringent checks and balances would be needed to ensure quality and safety, but this method proved extremely effective in restoring California’s highway system. Now all we need is the cash for it.