Asides

As JFK Airport looks to expand to meet its ever-increasing demand, history has a way of getting in the way. Jet Blue constructed its new Terminal 5 behind Eero Saarinen’s TWA Flight Center, and plans to use the landmarked building have been in limbo for the past few years. Now that Jet Blue is expanded again, it has its sights set on I.M. Pei’s understated Terminal 6 building next door.

Today, at City Room, David Dunlap reports that the Port Authority will be tearing down Terminal 6 as Jet Blue builds out Terminal 5. The “crisp island of aesthetic tranquility” will be no more. In the piece, Dunlap speaks with Henry Cobb, an architect who worked with Pei on the original design, and Cobb is sad to see the terminal go. “This is not pure greed,” he said. “This is the myopic view of engineers. They just can’t figure out how to reuse it and they don’t put enough value on it to figure out how to reuse it.”

It is the last line of Dunlap’s piece that truly resonates. “Serenity, generosity, clarity, spaciousness, simplicity and dignity” — all used to describe the terminal — “aren’t words that describe jet travel today.” Monstrosity replaces subtlety, and history is bulldozed away. We’ve seen it as the Archer Ave. stations replaced an elevated train, and we’ll see it again and again and again. That’s how New York City grows.

Over the next few weeks, Gov. Andrew Cuomo will have an opportunity to make a long and lasting impact on the New York City region’s transportation future for a week after Jay Walder is leaving the MTA, Chris Ward will resign as the Port Authority’s Executive Director, according to a report in The Times. Ward’s departure comes after months of speculation and seems to stem, as Walder’s did, in part, from a similarly icy relationship with the New York state governor. Neither Ward nor Cuomo offered a comment to The Times.

For the Governor, then, the challenge facing him is a tough one. As Michael Grynbaum writes, Ward earned accolades from the transit community. “Under his tenure,” he says, “the Port Authority froze its operating budget for three consecutive years, lowered its number of employees and reduced its budget for major capital improvement and maintenance projects.” Yet, similarly to Walder, Ward has also presided over some steep fare and toll increases and progress at the World Trade Center site, while moving forward, is very slow.

Despite this legacy though, Ward had, as Kate Slevin from the Tri-State Transportation Campaign noted, a “very strong and convincing case for more investment in our infrastructure,” and Cuomo will now have to find not one but two people who are both qualified and willing enough to enter the New York City area transportation morass. It will not be an easy task.

When the Port Authority raised its river crossing tolls and PATH fares a few weeks ago, I viewed it as a trial run for a congestion pricing scheme. With such a substantial toll increase, the city would finally see first-hand what impact a significant charge for entering Manhattan would have on both traffic and the public transit infrastructure. According to anecdotal evidence from the first week of travel, the changes have been substantial.

As The Post reports today, “thanks to the hikes, buses are now packed to the gills, NJ Transit and PATH trains are standing-room-only, and dust is gathering in Manhattan parking garages that used to be filled with commuters’ cars.” In its infinite wisdom, The Post makes it seem as though fewer cars entering Manhattan is a negative, and it even has the requisite whine over higher fees. “My wife usually drives over the George Washington Bridge,” one New Jersey resident said. “She carpools now. It’s too expensive to drive by herself.” Can you believe that? She has to carpool.

But the reality is that less traffic and fewer cars is a net positive for the city. I feel for the garage owners who lose business, but I also feel that the city has devoted too much dead space to those garages in the first place. Now, with tolls up, riders are flocking to PATH and finding more efficient and environmentally friendly ways of reaching the city. It’s too early to draw definite conclusions from the fare hikes, but everyone has their price when it comes to ditching a solo car ride into Manhattan.