South Ferry

The system’s newest station will remain closed for a considerable amount of time. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

When last we checked in on the Sandy-ravaged South Ferry station, three months had elapsed since the storm, and the new southern terminal of the 1 train was in ruins. Work had yet to begin in earnest on the station reconstruction, and the photos were a stark reminder of the destructive power of salt water. Nearly every inch of the new station had been touched by the storm surge, and no one seemed to know when conditions would return to normal.

On the six-month anniversary of the storm, NBC News has again ventured underground to check out the conditions below the surface. Their piece — aimed at a national audience — rehashes a familiar story with with some small updates. Carlo Dellaverson offers up a tale of a station that needs to be rebuild nearly from scratch. “It’s a complete gut job,” MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz said. “Every component of the station needs to be replaced.”

The NBC producer has more:

As communities rebuild and residents return to their homes, dozens of workers at the South Ferry station are taking the very first steps toward getting the station back online, starting with scrubbing mold from virtually every surface. Before the storm, 30,000 people passed through South Ferry each day, shuttling between Staten Island and Manhattan and around the labyrinthine streets of New York’s financial district.

Now, the stillness of the station is unsettling. The 90-foot platform sits empty, with strings of construction bulbs lighting two tracks and tunnel walls still covered with debris and dirt from the storm. Drywall and tiles have been ripped up by construction workers to expose the film of mold that quickly built up in the dark, humid space after the storm hit six months ago. The air is thick and pungent.

But the greatest damage inflicted from Sandy is not visible. The salty ocean water that flooded the station eighty feet below street level corroded nearly every piece of equipment in the space, adding considerably to the cost of recovery. Over 700 relay components – devices critical to the signaling systems of trains – were destroyed. A separate room of signaling equipment at the end of the platform flooded to the ceiling and is now a “complete loss,” said Joseph Leader, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s chief maintenance officer, who is overseeing the rehabilitation and reconstruction of the station.

The MTA has attached a $600 million price tag to the reconstruction efforts, but details on the timing and process are still being hashed out. When push comes to shove, the agency is likely to strip the station down to a bare cavern and start the construction process all over again. Engineers will have to figure out how to harden the station to protect against future storms and future storm surges, and straphangers will have to face the reality of the loop station for a few years at least.

For now, the top priority is mold abatement. When I was there in January, the smell of the water-logged station was pervasive. Soggy ceiling tiles marred crew rooms and fried computer equipment sat where the storm waters had deposited it. The recovery and rebuild will be substantial, and when it’s all over, the second round of $600 million spent at South Ferry should last longer than the first. Otherwise, we’ll just keep paying for this station with tax-payer dollars storm after storm after storm.

As the new South Ferry remains shuttered in the aftermath of Sandy, the MTA will reopen the decommissioned loop station. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

To provide better train service to Staten Island Ferry-bound customers, the MTA will recommission the 1 train’s old South Ferry loop station, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced today. The station — the first ever to be shuttered and then reopened — will require around $2 million worth of work and will see revenue service begin again during the first week in April.

According to Cuomo’s office — which has now begun to take credit for every bit of good news coming out of the MTA — reactivating the old loop will help ease commutes for more than 10,000 riders while allaying some of the crowding that has plagued the 4 and 5 trains in Sandy’s aftermath. Despite this move, the MTA will not drop its $600 million to reconstruct and harden the new South Ferry terminal.

“The MTA has a long, tough job ahead as it tackles the immense job of virtually rebuilding the new South Ferry terminal station that was flooded 80 feet deep during Superstorm Sandy,” Cuomo said in a statement. “For the extended period of time it will take for this work to be completed, we are returning the old station in the complex to service, making travel easier and more convenient for Staten Islanders and others who work and visit this area.”

According to Cuomo, it will take the MTA approximately two years to restore the new South Ferry station, and Staten Island politicians and MTA Board reps called upon the agency to do something sooner. Over the past few weeks, crews have been working around the clock in the old station, and a recent video clearly showed a station nearing recommissioning.

“As MTA New York City Transit assessed the extent of damage to the new South Ferry station, it became clear that the time necessary to repair it would be too long a period to deny our customers a direct link to lower Manhattan,” MTA Interim Executive Director Thomas F. Prendergast said. “We are working to ensure that all elements and systems are fully operational, safe and reliable before restoring service to the old station, but our primary goal remains restoring the new South Ferry station as soon as possible.”

To reopen the old station, the MTA built a new connection between the new mezzanine and the old loop station, thus maintaining the transfer between the 1 and the R at Whilehall St. Crews also had to refurbish the platform edge extenders and reinstall electrical feeds, closed-circuit television systems to monitor the platform, customer assistance intercoms, security cameras and radio communications in the dispatcher’s office. Remaining work includes rehabbing the fare control area and restoring and repainting lighting in the station and adjacent tunnels.

Furthermore, the problems with the old loop station have not been resolved. Doors in only the first five cars will open at South Ferry, and gap fillers will be used to bridge the space between the car doors and the platform. Additionally, the station is rather narrow and was not, in 2009 when it closed, ADA accessible. It’s better though than a two-year wait.

Considering the MTA’s turnaround time on this project, it’s something to see what the MTA and its contractors can accomplish in short order with the right amount of political pressure. Six months after Sandy and less than four months after officials starting making noises about it, the South Ferry station will be reopened after a prolonged period of time without train service. Now if only they could do something about that price tag for work at the new station.

Debris from Sandy remained draped over the South Ferry sign last month. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

It’s been three and a half months since Sandy stormed through the city, and the MTA is still hedging its bets on South Ferry. A month ago, I toured the destruction, and today, MTA interim Executive Director Tom Prendergast took questions from the City Council on the agency’s plans. The MTA wants to restore some service in the South Ferry vicinity within the next two or three months but feels a full station rebuild will take two or three years. And there’s still no set plan for what’s next.

The news coming out of the City Council hearing is vague, but that’s because Prendergast’s comments were vague. Downtown Express trumpets a grand reopening by the end of 2014 while both the Express and The Wall Street Journal talk about a staged opening. Here’s how, according to The Journal’s Ted Mann, it all went down today:

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority could begin a “staged reopening” of the South Ferry subway station in lower Manhattan as soon as two to three months from now, the agency’s transit chief said Tuesday. Full restoration of the station – the terminal of the No. 1 train, which was destroyed by flooding from superstorm Sandy – is still expected to take as long as three years, said Thomas Prendergast, the MTA’s acting executive director…But with commuters, particularly those coming off the Staten Island Ferry, still struggling with the loss of a major transit link, the agency cannot wait that long, Prendergast said.

One option the MTA is now considering: reopening the old loop-shaped South Ferry station to passengers…The agency is considering whether it could reopen that old platform to customers in order to provide limited service to South Ferry, Prendergast said. “In the next two to three months we want to get it up and running,” Prendergast said, saying it would be “unacceptable” to make commuters wait until the full station rebuilding is finished.

After his remarks, which came during an appearance at the City Council’s Transportation Committee, Prendergast backed off that timetable, saying he would offer no estimate of when service could be restored. But a firm plan was expected to be completed in the next several months, he said.

The MTA later stressed that the two-to-three month timetable was not really on the table, and even the reactivation of the old South Ferry loop station — if everything were to go according to plan — would take longer than that. Rather, they hope to have a plan for reactivation within the next two or three months. (For what it’s worth, there is another report on SubChat about some work quietly taking place at the old South Ferry loop, including some tiling and freshening up.)

So basically we know what we already know, and we don’t know much new. The MTA still doesn’t have a concrete idea of how to restore service to South Ferry any time soon; they could look at reactivating the loop despite some challenges there; and they want to harden the new station as they rebuild it. It might be mid-May before the public even sees a rebuilding plan or it may be just months until some service starts up again. Either way, Sandy hit in late October, the South Ferry has been without train service since then.

No matter what, all of the equipment in the South Ferry control room will have to be replaced. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

Despite our dalliances with the question, the MTA has spent the better part of the last few months vowing to rebuild the new South Ferry terminal despite the damage is sustained during Sandy. With aid money flowing and Staten Island officials griping, the MTA has vowed to speed up the job, but how?

Tonight, an interesting service alert popped up on the MTA’s website. There is no 1 train service south of Chambers St. tonight. Why? A post on SubChat may have an answer:

For what it’s worth, we have an emergency G/O out of nowhere taking place Tuesday night and Wednesday, shutting down the (1) line below Chambers Street for a “survey of old South Ferry Station”.

A friend of mine who works on the (1) line also reports that crews have been stripping tiles and cleaning up on the platform, as well as doing some sort of work on the gap fillers.

Due diligence or something more? I’ll let you decide. Keep in mind, though, that anything that happens at the old South Ferry would be but a temporary measure that’s far from seeing the light of day. The station, as I noted a few days ago, has been taken over by NYC DOT and is being used for both crew quarters and storage. Gap filters need to be replaced, and the station complex itself has to be cleaned up. It also suffered water damage.

Even if something happens at the old South Ferry loop, though, that will not preclude the MTA from restoring the new terminal. First, the agency will still have to address the signal equipment and control tower destroyed by Sandy, and rebuilding that infrastructure is very costly. Second, the MTA has received the promise of funds to rebuild the station, and as with any earmarked federal expenditure, it can’t shift those dollars elsewhere. For what it’s worth, though, it sounds as though the MTA is leaning toward gutting the new South Ferry and essentially rebuilding it due to the infiltration of corrosive salt water.

I’ll try to find out more tomorrow, but here’s what I think is happening: The MTA is doing what it must to assess the station and determine if it’s possible to restore some temporary service to the loop station. That doesn’t mean service will return there; it just means that it could if everything aligns properly. Maybe it would be rush hour-only service; maybe it will be nothing. But any rigorous assessment of the area should include a South Ferry survey, and one seems to be happening tonight.

The South Ferry terminal may reopen to passengers sooner than anticipated, but it may still be a while. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

With Staten Island representatives breathing down their necks, Transit officials yesterday pledged to reopen the 1 train’s South Ferry terminal station as soon as possible. Although formal plans have yet to be drawn up, New York City Transit President and current MTA Executive Director Thomas Prendergast said that he hopes to restore passenger service to the station before cosmetic and other infrastructure needs are fully addressed.

One day after Staten Island’s MTA Board representative Allen Cappelli called upon the authority to reopen the decommissioned (and also damaged) South Ferry loop, Prendergast placated the borough’s concerns. “There are ways to restore service before the work is completed,” he said.

Ken Paulsen of the Staten Island Advance had more:

The MTA’s interim head said the agency is not considering re-opening the “old” South Ferry station so it can focus on getting trains rolling in the new station ahead of the three-year timetable set for its reconstruction. Interim Executive Director Tom Prendergast told the Advance Wednesday that the MTA — with funding now in place — is working to restore basic subway service to the station, even if behind-the-scenes work needs to continue long afterwards…

No one is talking about an imminent return to service at the new South Ferry station, but he sees a similar dynamic at play [as the one that quickly repaired the Staten Island Rail Road]: Get the riders back on the trains as quickly as possible, before the cosmetic or behind-the-scenes work is completed.

Predergast said it would require a huge effort to re-open the decommissioned old station — and that would no doubt affect efforts to get trains back into the new station before 2016. The old station was shut down in 2009 when the new one opened, and there was never any consideration that it would be placed back in service, he said. Means of access have been altered or shut down. Significant rebuilding and construction work would be required to make it accessible once again to passengers. The bottom line: “It would divert resources away from how fast we could get the new South Ferry up and restored,” he said.

According to the Advance, Transit’s next steps is to “formalize its assessment and plan to rebuild South Ferry,” and with federal funds on hand, it can begin to move forward with that planning. There is, however, no real timetable for a return to service, and as far as I can tell, even a best-case scenario would involve numerous weekend diversions once service returns and significant work on the terminal even before that.

To recommission the old South Ferry loop, gap-fillers would have to be reinstalled. (Photo by flickr user Marcin Wichary)

With around 15,000 Staten Islanders a day faced with a longer walk and inconvenient journeys, Staten Island officials and MTA Board representatives have called upon the agency to reopen the old five-car loop station at least on a temporary basis. The station has not been open for four years, though, and the MTA has resisted calls to reopen it.

“Old South Ferry is completely decommissioned and no longer an entrance,” Deirdre Parker, an agency spokesperson, said to the Staten Island Advance. “We don’t want to divert funds from rebuilding the new station in trying to recommission the old one.”

The story, from Ken Paulsen, goes a bit like this:

Staten Island’s representative to the MTA board, Allen P. Cappelli, says the agency needs to take a closer look, especially in light of the long-term timeline for rebuilding the “new” station. “I think it’s an idea that needs to be considered in the short run, and I will certainly raise it” with MTA officials, including Interim President Thomas Prendergast…

But for now, his agency is not even considering re-opening the old station to commuters. Thanks to the installation of a temporary signal system, the old station is now being used as the train turn around point — just as it did for more than a century. But when the 1 train now rumbles through the old station on its way back to Rector Street — the current terminus — there are no commuters waiting to board. The MTA says the old entrance to the South Ferry is now property of the city Department of Transportation, which runs the adjacent Staten Island Ferry. Additionally, the only stairway to the station “was halved to allow for an employee facility,” and the station is not compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act.

“None of these things is insurmountable,” Cappelli countered. He added that House and Senate approval of the Hurricane Sandy relief package means that the MTA knows it will get the cash to make repairs that are needed to its system — allowing it to seriously explore the feasibility of re-opening the old South Ferry station. “This is not a ‘Where are we going to get the money’ issue,” he said.

The issue for Cappelli, and Staten Island politicians who issued a similar call last month, is about timing at money. It’s going to take around three years to get the new South Ferry in working order, and Cappelli says that’s not fair or acceptable to Staten Island residents. “Three years is an unrealistic period of time to wait and I am going to be pressing agency officials to come up with a plan to get this done in shorter period of time,” he said.

Finding a way to cut the work time is a better solution, but what this article misses about the old South Ferry station is extensive. The gap fillers are gone; the station would need to secure an ADA waiver; and it too suffered extensive damage during Sandy. That, I believe, is key. Despite a temporary signal system for turning trains, the main South Ferry loop signals were controlled by the equipment in the damaged station, and a good chunk of the cost of repairs will go toward repairing that signal system whether old South Ferry is reactivated or not.

Additionally, there are questions of money and manpower. Although the feds are footing the bill for the South Ferry repairs, this isn’t an endless piggy bank, and the MTA would have to request even more for a reactivation of the old station. Furthermore, getting it ready for use would involve a shuffling work schedules and using man-hours that could be better spent on the current South Ferry station.

Of course, as Cappelli noted, none of these issues are insurmountable. If the MTA wants to reopen South Ferry, it could find a way to pay for the project while working on South Ferry. Whether they should, well, I’ll leave that up to you to debate.