The foundation for the Fulton St. Transit Center as seen from above. (Photo: Peter Kaufman/Ink Lake)
The MTA announced today a milestone at the site of the future Fulton St. Transit Center. Both the underpinning for the Corbin Building and the foundation for the Fulton Street Transit Center are complete, and progress remains on pace for a 2014 opening of the long-awaited complex.
“We have reached a significant milestone by completing the foundation of what will become a landmark transportation facility,” Michael Horodniceanu, president of MTA Capital Construction, said. “Anyone who has had to navigate the myriad of ramps, stairs, and confusing signs at Fulton Street understands the importance of providing our customers with a more seamless experience at this major downtown hub. The Transit Center will improve travel for hundreds of thousands of daily commuters and lower Manhattan residents and visitors while providing a modern and convenient retail location.”
When completed, the $1.4 billion transit center will vastly improve the Lower Manhattan transit experience for over 300,000 daily customers. Both street access and station navigation will be vastly improved, and the upgrades include better circulation and reduced overcrowding for the A/C platform as well as a new underground concourse that will connect the R at Cortlandt St. and the 4/5 at Broadway with the PATH Hub and the World Financial Center. The completed transit center will also feature 25,000 square feet of new retail.
With the foundation complete, the MTA will now began to build up the center itself, and in a few months, the structure will begin to peak above the blue construction fence. In the press release touting this milestone, the MTA praised Skanska, the contractor, for keeping the project on time. Of course, original plans called for the then-$750 million transit center to open in late 2009. “On time,” then, is all relative.
16 comments
2014 opening?
I wonder if the weekend skipping of this station will continue until then, or if not, until when?
In my fantasy transit world, this will one day also serve as the terminal for the long island RR in lower manhattan. Heck, Maybe even Jersey transit to facilitate regional mobility and interconnections. I predict 2210 for that.
Bah, terminals. Enough terminals in busy big city neighborhoods. Through traffic for big cities, and put the terminals where they belong: in the suburbs:
But it seems political interest in LIRR to downtown has entirely disappeared.
The Fulton Transit is the most completely solid 14K gold piece of rancid pork perpetrated upon transit riders here in NYC – ever. OMFG – 1.4 BILLION?!?! That’s a disgrace. And to accomplish what? To make a complicated transfer station slightly more user friendly. And they’ve been working on it for about seven years. Will they ever be done? And when it’s done not one additional train will be operating through the complex. And isn’t that the bottom line: more trains – better train service?
To improve subway service in NYC that money would have far been better spent reconfiguring Nostrand Jct or Flatbush terminal on the Brooklyn IRT.
On the plus side, at least it’s all federal money for Fulton St.
…federal money that could be better used elsewhere in NYC.
Yeah, that was pretty much the point. A big pot of money to spend, spend, spend. Props up the construction industry for a few more years while the housing bubble deflates around them.
MTA paid too muich for the real estate – that’s why the price went north of $750 million. Yes, the project is helping to prop up construction jobs – and that’s a very good thing. (The contractors have given MTA some very good bids) Beyond that, there will be a new free transfer, and the transit center will accommodate more commuters safely than the old complex did. That will improve business activity and property values far into the future.
My recollection is that the WTC site looked something like this in 2006.
The Fulton Street Transit Center is sorely needed. Having transfered at that station of a six-year span, I could tell you that it was a confusing station. I’m glad they eliminated most of the ramps that hovered over the A/C lines. One goal the MTA has in mind is to bring MORE commuters to Downtown as well as offering more options.
I fully support any improvements made in Lower Manhattan that most benefits the masses.
Most beneficial would have been spending the money on getting SAS rolling, or a host of other transit extensions.
It looks too small to funnel all the people who need to use that station. No wonder everyone gets off the 4 at Bowling green or Brooklyn bridge and walks the rest of the way.
It looks bigger than Chatelet-Les Halles, with about one fifth the traffic.
It’s not going to funnel all the people who use that station. It’s only going to serve the 4/5 and half of the J/Z, and even those platforms will have other exits.
People get off the 4 at Bowling Green and Brooklyn Bridge because they’re going to Bowling Green and to Brooklyn Bridge! Not everybody is going to Fulton.
If that money were used to extend PATH to Newark, you’d have a one seat ride from WTC to Newark Airport that would take, probably, about 35 minutes. That also would have added absolutely zero to downtown Manhattan disruptions for 13 years, unlike what this project has done.
Had the Port Authority extended the PATH system to Newark Liberty International Airport, it would have provided a better alternative than taking NJT. A PATH extenstion to Newark Ariport would have been better than building Airtrain Newark.
Speaking of PATH, why don’t they put back the seven-days-a-week service from 33rd St. to Journal Square and from 33rd St. to Hoboken as TWO SEPARATE LINES?
The current weekend service requires a time-consuming detour to Hoboken if you’re traveling from any station along Sixth Ave. to Journal Square.
That’s like having to go into Queens, and back to Manhattan again, as part of a ride from Manhattan to the Bronx.