Fulton Street

Don’t expect the final version of the Fulton St. project to look like this. (Source: MTA Capital Construction)

That pesky Fulton St. Transit Hub. Years behind schedule and beset with fiscal problems, this expansive project designed to unite all of the subway lines in Lower Manhattan may be reaching a breaking point. In fact, MTA officials are going to meet early this week to debate the project’s future, according to a report in Monday’s New York Sun.

Jared Irmas has more:

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority will meet today to reassess plans for construction of the Fulton Street Transit Center, after a request for construction bids this month attracted just one proposal, which was over budget. Originally envisioned as a downtown Grand Central Terminal, the Fulton Street center was to connect 12 subway lines and house a 23,000-square-foot shopping center under a glass dome. But since ground was broken in 2005, construction on the new facility, slated for completion last month, has been hampered by several delays and budget overruns. Projected costs have increased to $888 million from $750 million, the height of the dome has been reduced by 30 feet, and the planned end of construction has been pushed back to late 2009.

New plans could include scrapping some design elements and building a less elaborate “public plaza,” the executive director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA, William Henderson, said in a telephone interview.

This transit hub project has been the source of numerous problems for the MTA. Chief among them are cost overruns. While the federal government is picking up most of this project, the MTA is responsible for cost overruns. Every time this project is delayed — and it’s now a few years behind schedule — the costs increase.

The Sun reports that the MTA declined to comment for the article, and I don’t blame them. I’m not quite sure where the MTA could go from here. They have to finish the project some time soon, and the project Web site gives an estimated completion date of this year. But to what extent should they scale down their plans? We don’t want to settle for some ugly, boxy structure leaving its mark on Lower Manhattan, but we shouldn’t expect the MTA to over-stretch itself fiscally. Decisions, decisions, decisions.

Nothing screams bureaucracy quite like the Port Authority and the MTA trying to work together to build a ridiculously ornate transit hub in Lower Manhattan. And as we all could imagine, this project has not gone well. First, came the talk of fewer tunnel connectors than called for in the original plan.

Now comes the story we all expected: Cost overruns have led the Port Authority to order a re-engineering of the Santiago Calatrava-designed World Trade Center hub. The Times reports:

Faced with construction cost estimates up to $1.2 billion over budget, the Port Authority said yesterday that it would re-engineer, but not fundamentally alter, the birdlike World Trade Center transportation hub designed by Santiago Calatrava.

The budget was set four years ago at $2.2 billion. The contractor for the project, Phoenix Constructors, now estimates that it will cost from $2.7 billion to $3.4 billion to build the hub, a greatly enlarged version of the current PATH terminal.

For the mathematically challenged among us, that’s an increase in cost of nearly 50 percent.

Now, considering the design of this hub favors form over functionality, I would think that all the parties involved would do their best to sacrifice the gigantic porcupine with a retractable roof (for baseball games, perhaps) in favor of a fully functional transportation hub designed at cost and for the people using the subway instead of for the architectural design boards.

Not so fast.

Calatrava told The Times that he wants to keep the design elements in place while finding others ways to cut costs. Anthony E. Shorris, head of the Port Authority, said the agency would work to trim aspects of the project that are “less visible” than the overall design.

This strikes me as typical bureaucratic foolishness. This transit hub is about bringing people in to Lower Manhattan in an efficient way. At the same time, I understand that those behind the WTC Memorial want to incorporate some aspects of the Sept. 11 memorial into the transit hub. But should we really do that at a cost of nearly $1.2 billion? And should we give up “less visible” parts of this project that may affect commuters and riders more than altering the aesthetic design would? That seems most illogical.

Two days ago, word leaked out that the Fulton Street plans had changed due to cost concerns. Specifically, it seemed as though the free transfer from the R/W Cordlandt St. stop to the E at the World Trade Center would be cut.

Well, worry not, Wall Street workers. According to today’s reports, the free transfer ain’t going anywhere. The Gray Lady reports:

An underground walkway connecting the R and W subway lines to the E line in Lower Manhattan will be built along with a new downtown subway hub, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said yesterday. But it was not clear what would be cut from the station project to free up the $15 million needed for the connector.

The authority’s chairman, Peter S. Kalikow, revived the half-block connector between the E line and the two other lines two days after members of the agency’s board complained that it was being left out of plans for the Fulton Street Transit Center, which includes an architecturally ambitious glass building with a conical roof.

That’s good news for Fulton Street as it strives to become the biggest transfer point in the New York City subway system. As for the $15 million, I can’t help but think that maybe some of the $50 million surplus from 2005 that was doled out as that ridiculous holiday discount could have been put to better use.

As part of the plans for rebuilding and redeveloping Lower Manhattan, the MTA has invested nearly $900 million in their plans to build a transportation hub at Fulton Street. With plans for 12 subway lines to be connected through the hub, the new Fulton Street will become the largest connecting station in the system, beating out the 10 trains that run through Times Square and the Atlantic Ave.-Pacific Street stop.

But as with any capital improvement campaign, the Fulton Street construction efforts have not gone smoothly, The New York Times noted today. With real estate costs exceeding expectations by nearly $100 million, some of the more ostentatious aspects of the Fulton Street hub may be scaled back. In particular, the showy dome that is supposed to cover the grand entrance may not be as showy as the original plans called for it to be:

The dome, intended to maximize the natural light entering the complex, would sit atop a 50-foot-high glass-enclosed building designed by the British architectural firm Grimshaw. The dome, which is called an oculus, was initially designed to be 50 feet high, taking the total height to about 100 feet, Mr. Nagaraja said, but it has already been scaled back to about 20 feet.

While it would seem obvious to cut back the size of the dome, which serves no function beyond aesthetics, some at the MTA wanted to scrap the planned underground connection to the R and W at Cortlandt Street and the E at the World Trade Center. But the MTA board would have none of that:

Yesterday, the authority’s board members landed firmly on the side of function over form, saying they would gladly sacrifice architectural beauty if it meant that subway riders could transfer between trains more easily.

“I won’t support a project like this that is going to discombobulate tens of thousands of passengers a day because you want to have a fancy roof,” said Barry L. Feinstein, a board member.

So as the Fulton Street hub stumbles toward its late-2009 completion, it does seem as though form of some sort will win out over the style. The Daily News notes that some connector tunnels may not be built because cash is tight, but somehow, I think the New York pols will find a way to dig up some more money for this project. We already have to wait two years beyond the original target date for completion. What’s a few more million dollars as well?