Category: PANYNJ

Hell froze over this week when The New York Post’s editorial board agreed with AOC. The topic, of course, was the suddenly-controversial LaGuardia AirTrain. The latest chapters in this saga began when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes penned a letter to the FAA earlier this week asking to understand why some common-sense transit options, including dedicate bus infrastructure, a subway from Astoria and an AirTrain from Jackson Heights. The Post’s editorial board followed suit, calling the Port Authority’s plan a “worthless white elephant” while The Daily News also spoke out against the plan. Whether it’s too late in the process as too many powerful state interests have lined up behind the Willets Point plan remains to be seen, but these are welcome voices in the fight for a better, more useful transit connection to LaGuardia Airport.

Rich posted a very comprehensive Twitter thread from the first meeting on Tuesday night, and I asked him to turn his experiences into a guest post. You’ll find some similarities between Rich’s experience and my post on the Port Authority Alternatives Analysis report, but one key difference involves the host. The FAA has yet to release its own Alternatives Analysis report, and the agency told me this week that they “intend to release the alternatives report documenting the alternatives evaluation process shortly after the public information sessions.” Mintz gives us a glimpse at the process, and it’s just as flawed as the Port Authority’s. I’ll let him take over from here.

The Federal Aviation Administration, stewards of the LGA Access Improvement Project on behalf of the Port Authority, is steering the outcome toward Governor Andrew Cuomo’s desired conclusion: the $2 billion dollar AirTrain to Willets Point with a $7.75 fare and a trip in the wrong direction away from Manhattan. While those trying to reach the eastern of the 7 train or LIRR’s infrequent Port Washington Branch are in luck, this route does next to nothing for people bound elsewhere. This week, in two public information sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings at a hotel next to the Grand Central Parkway, the FAA tried to defend this plan. I attended to see how the case was being made.

I think the Willets Point AirTrain is the wrong solution, and I’m not the only one. But it seemingly doesn’t matter what I or anyone else thinks as the FAA made clear no other solution was taken seriously in their “study,” which was designed to ensure every other plan was to fall out of consideration during the two stages of evaluation.

Ben Kabak’s review of the Port Authority’s own alternatives analysis, published last week, makes this point; and it was validated by the materials the FAA (or more precisely its contractor, Ricondo) presented this week.

Getting to the public information session was harder than it sounds, given that you can see LaGuardia’s Terminal C out the window of the hotel. M60-SBS and Q70-SBS buses are in plain view, but they don’t stop here. I had to take the Q33 from 74 St/Roosevelt Avenue, which dropped me half a mile from the venue; other buses run closer, but they also run less frequently or approach from the wrong direction. To get to the meeting from Manhattan’s East 30s took me almost 90 minutes. Ideally, a meeting about building transit to an airport would be held in a transit-accessible venue, but the FAA and the Port Authority are looking to influence people who care more about validated parking (which was freely offered) than transit. It’s possible I was the only person in the room who arrived by transit from more than a mile away.

Inside, the FAA used a series of posters to present their study, describing the 47 other ideas they considered and rejected in favor of the Willets Point AirTrain. You can read more about the approaches and the selection criteria in the scoping materials at the FAA’s project website. Generally, the FAA argued as follows:

• Given the goal of improving access to the airport, the consultants examined alternatives in nine categories, ranging from buzzwordy nonsense like “reducing air traffic at LGA” (not happening) and “use autonomous vehicles” (nothing to do with the problem at hand) to bus, subway, rail, and fixed-guideway (or AirTrain) infrastructure.
• As a first test, the FAA (borrowing from the Port Authority) determined that any solution would have to create “time-certain” trips to the airport, create a new mode of access to the airport, reduce vehicle trips into the airport without creating congestion, and create 175,000 square feet of employee parking (an entirely separate issue).
• Any solution that made it through the first test would then have to clear a second test by establishing that it would be “reasonable” to construct and operate. This second test, of course, depends on how “reasonable” is defined, and as it happens, it was defined to exclude virtually anything that might have impact on any existing infrastructure or services.

Based on the posters presented (and summarized in a November presentation [pdf]), here are how these tests played out in practice:

1. All alternatives not involving new infrastructure were rejected, mostly based on the first test: they wouldn’t solve the problem.
2. Addressing the problem via bus priority was rejected out of hand because buses wouldn’t produce “time-certain” travel to the airport. Why is that? Well, because the FAA claims they can’t control what happens after a bus reaches the entrance to the airport. The Port Authority can, of course; after all, they own all the roads near the terminals and have the power to control how lanes are used. But the consultants assumed they won’t bother, and in this circular manner, buses were rejected without even being considered. Additionally, the FAA further claimed buses would “cause congestion” in the airport, and according to the criteria, any solution that impacts the experience of people who use private cars to get to the airport is rejected out of hand, never mind that a fundamental aim of this initiative is to dissuade people from driving to the airport.
3. All the conventional rail options were rejected, based on the second test. Rail to Sunnyside Yard doesn’t solve the connectivity problem, and a new East River rail tunnel would cost three or four times as much as an AirTrain (despite, one could argue, far more utility).
4. Subway extension options were rejected based on the second test: Construction would require temporary closing of traffic lanes in Astoria, relocating underground utilities, interrupting LIRR or Amtrak service, or making physical improvements to the Hell Gate Bridge. Apparently any plan that requires any disruption to any existing service is disqualified, and God forbid we temporarily put construction equipment in a traffic lane in order to build a major item of public infrastructure.
5. That leaves more than a dozen fixed-guideway options, including various routes connecting to subway and rail in Jamaica, Willets Point, Woodside, Jackson Heights, and Astoria. All were rejected for similar reasons: water and sewer lines can’t be affected; the BQE, GCP, and Van Wyck can’t be affected, existing LIRR and Amtrak services can’t be affected; the Hell Gate Bridge can’t be affected.

It is, of course, nonsense to claim that we can build infrastructure with no disruptions to anything or anyone and equally nonsense to claim that a Willets Point AirTrain wouldn’t also do that. Given its route adjacent to Flushing Bay, it’s also objectively more environmentally impactful than many of the other choices. But when you game the process, you get the outcome you want, and in the end, of 49 alternatives, only two survived both the first and the second test: Cuomo’s Willets Point AirTrain, and the “do nothing” option, which is required by law to be considered.

All in all, the experience of attending this meeting was bleak. I’m not a stranger to the public engagement process; As a Community Board member, I’ve been to dozens of public meetings. But it was hard not to come away from the FAA’s defense of the Willets Point AirTrain without feeling like I was being railroaded. If we’re going to spend $2 billion dollars on airport mobility, there are many more useful ways to do it than a big piece of infrastructure that connects to an overcrowded subway line and a second-string LIRR platform for a fare of $7.75.
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Rich Mintz is a safe streets and transportation activist and member of Manhattan Community Board 6. He’s the author of Hey! We’re Walking Here, a resource website for people concerned about pedestrian safety and street design in the five boroughs.

Over the years, I’ve come to believe we spend far too much time talking about airports and far too much money building them. Yes, airports are an important piece of the New York economy, and those 67 million tourists we may attract this year have to get to the city somehow. But spending billions on airports — and more importantly, on building redundant means of accessing airports — doesn’t deliver much bang for the buck. The overwhelming number of New Yorkers simply aren’t interacting with airports on a day-to-day basis.

Still, the airports dominate the conversation. Thanks to ongoing construction and a refusal by the city and state to adequately manage traffic, getting to and from Laguardia can take hours these days, and the $2 billion Backwards AirTrain is years away. The Port Authority is also rebuilding Newark and renovating JFK. Unlike other transit projects, though, these dollars aren’t really fungible; revenue generated by airports must be spent on airports. The Port Authority cannot, in other words, shift airport money to other, more worthwhile projects.

Thus, airport projects move forward when other transit needs await funding, and the conversation inevitably turns to airports. At the end of June, the Port Authority, in various budget documents, dropped some airport-related bombshells in the form of a new fare structure for the AirTrains and new taxi and for-hire vehicle drop-off fees. I’ve been mulling over these new dollars and have some thoughts. But first the proposal.

The AirTrain has cost a flat $5 at JFK since 2003 and a similar rate at Newark since 2005. Meanwhile, in 2018, the JFK system saw over 20 million rides, a record, even as service on the driverless trains has been cut, and ridership has increased by six percent per year at Newark as well. Now the Port Authority plans to raise fares to $7.75 a ride starting on November 1. Bulk discounts should still be available, but this 55 percent increase is a steep one. Fares will be tabbed to inflation going forward.

Meanwhile, at some point in 2020, the Port Authority is going to implement taxi and for-hire vehicle pick-up and drop-off charges. Common at “peer” airports in LA, Chicago, San Francisco and DC, these fees allow the PA to generate more revenue for airport improvements. For-hire vehicles — the Ubers and Lyfts of the world — will be subject to a $4 pick-up and $4 drop-off surcharge at each airport, and yellow cabs will be subject to the pick-up surcharge only. Combined with PATH and toll increases, the new fees will generate $235 million in incremental revenue, and the Port Authority says these hikes are necessary due to “record infrastructure investment.” More on that shortly.

Thought #1: It’s going to be expensive to ride the AirTrain

It’s hard to understate how steep this fare hike is, and the AirTrain is going to be expensive — sticker-shock levels of expensive even. For someone connecting to the AirTrain via the subway, the ride will cost over $10, and any lower-cost benefits of the AirTrain are going to start to dissipate. A group of travelers or a family of four eying a transit trip to the airport but facing a price tag of $42 for the trip may just spring for a cab instead. It’s also hard to find any comparable system connecting an airport to a nearby transit hub that charges this month. Paris’ Orlyval, deep into the Parisian suburbs at Orly Airport, features a steep fare to the RER B stop at Antony but a low-cost integrated ticket all the way to Paris’ Zone 1. Nearly all other airtrain systems are free or much lower cost.

More importantly, though, these costs are going up for workers. We talk a lot about tourists when we discuss airport transit, but the workers — the employees who have to go every day — will have to pay steeper fares too. While discount, bulk tickets will still be available, the Port Authority is going to sunset 10-trip bulk purchases in 30 days rather than a year, and it’s not yet clear what that price point will be. Still, employees have pay full freight on airtrain, and these hikes can put this ride out of reach economically for many airport employees. The airtrain is much faster than the bus to JFK, and fare structures should be designed to encourage more efficient trips, especially for workers.

Thought #2: The Port Authority is spending a lot on expensive airport projects.

Along with the fare/fee proposal, the Port Authority released updated budget numbers, and everything just costs so much. The new Newark Airtrain is going to cost over $2 billion; the JFK Redevelopment will cost the Port Authority nearly $3 billion (up from $1 billion); and the Newark Terminal One project has seen its price tag jump by $350 million. While these are projected to be covered by revenue generated by the projects or private sources, the dollars just keep soaring ever upward, and cost containment is barely a part of the conversation.

Thought #3: The taxi/FHV drop-off and pick-up charges incentivize the wrong kind of behavior

In an ideal world, where we fight to keep cars off the road, transit routes to the airport would be fast, cheap and easy to navigate. The second-best option involves high-capacity vehicles that reduce or eliminate the need to use private cars for many trips. This new surcharge, when combined with low long-term parking rates, can be seen to push people toward their own cars instead of taxis. At the least, all cars entering the airports should be charged a drop-off/pick-up fee, and high-speed tolling technology could make this a seamless transaction.

Thought #4: The Laguardia AirTrain should be stopped

You’ll note that I didn’t mention the Backwards AirTrain in Thought #2 because this project deserves its own place on the list (and in the scrap heap of history). Based on new budget projections which add a net $390 million to the project, the Laguardia AirTrain is now projected to cost $2.05 billion. “The revised project cost,” the PA noted, “is informed by the planning efforts and preliminary engineering analysis underway as a result of previously authorized spending by the Board. The increase to the Capital Plan is $390 million, net of $160 million of reduced spending on other Aviation projects. This increase is projected to be covered by multiple sources, including: farebox revenue; airline cost recoveries; and future period [Passenger Facility Charges].”

Why is this project still going forward? It’s a $2 billion boondoggle that’s not expected to generate significant ridership and may be a worse choice than a no-build. It takes riders away from Manhattan to a 7 train that’s already overburdened or an LIRR line that runs once per hour and doesn’t connect through Jamaica. Even with a connection to car rental facilities, it’s a waste of a project and at $2 billion, a huge waste of money. It should be redesigned to serve a higher and better use, either through a connection to Jackson Heights or via Astoria. It’s now just flat-out silly.

By most accounts, the JFK AirTrain has been a success story. After a fatal incident cast a pall on the project a few months before the planned opening, the AirTrain saw 2.5 million riders in its first year of operations and 6.5 million riders in 2014, its tenth year of operations. Even as Gov. Andrew Cuomo pushes to build a misguided LaGuardia AirTrain via Flushing, the AirTrain has been an improvement for access to JFK airport.

Early last year, when making a push for support for his LaGuardia plan, Cuomo touted the benefits of the JFK AirTrain. “AirTrain JFK has proven to be not only one of the most convenient and affordable ways of getting to and from the airport, but also one of the most popular,” he said, noting an eight percent increase in paid ridership between 2013 and 2014 alone. Over 10 million riders use the AirTrain to ride between terminals and nearby garages for free.

But a funny thing happened on the way to 6.5 million riders: The Port Authority has quietly reduced the frequency of service on the AirTrain. A few days ago, a Twitter user reported that the Port Authority was promoting 14-minute headways between AirTrains shortly before noon on a weekday. For a zero-person automated system with ample rolling stock to run trains at five-minute headways, this seemed exceptionally egregious, and a few folks went digging.

Eventually, Chris O’Leary dug up some historical data. As recently as 2009, the Port Authority operated the JFK AirTrain on five-minute peak-hour headways and 10-minute off-peak headways. A recent brochure tells a much different story as peak headways are now 7-12 minutes with service operating every 10-15 minutes between 7:30 a.m. – 3 p.m. and every 15-20 minutes from 8 p.m. until 4 a.m. This is, effectively, a 50 percent service cut. Take a look:

It’s not quite clear when these new timetables went into effect or why. The Port Authority hasn’t responded to requests for comment yet. But posts on an aviation-related message board indicate reduced AirTrain frequency as long ago as 2011. This isn’t a new problem, but it seems to be one the Port Authority has slipped past the public without much notice.

Despite silence from the Port Authority on this issue, it’s my understanding that this reduced service is a result of the age of the system and the need for repairs. With cars in the shop and the system’s constantly undergoing maintenance, the Port Authority cannot maintain the headways it used to run seven years ago. For a 12-year-old system, this seems problematic and worse still is the lack of transparency regarding operations. There’s no real need for the Port Authority to keep these issues under wraps, and if the state is about to sink a few hundred million dollars of public funds into another airport rail system, we should know that operations can keep pace with ridership.

Right now, the JFK AirTrain remains popular even as service is cut. But trains are more crowded, and travelers have to leave extra time to account for long AirTrain waits. That the PA doesn’t appear to view this reduced service as a problem is cause for concern. But that’s just another day in the fun world of the Port Authority.

Although the MTA often spends money like a drunk sailor ambling from bar to bar, New York’s own agency can’t hold a candle to the Port Authority when it comes to dysfunction and burning dollars. As Gov. Chris Christie continues to check out on the state of New Jersey and Gov. Andrew Cuomo continues to….do whatever it is he does, the Port Authority is reaching new highs, or perhaps lows, in its unconstrained approach to throwing money at every problem.

Last week, while I was out of town, the agency approved spending for a new bus terminal in Manhattan that may cost as much as $12 billion, and the price tag for the Laguardia overhaul went up by another $1 billion. Meanwhile dysfunction ruled the roost at the PA’s Board meeting as its current Executive Director Patrick Foye has been held hostage by the bi-state agency’s inability to find someone else willing to take over the top spot. How to save the Port Authority is a very wide open question.

It’s hard to know where to begin or who to blame for this mess. I would urge you to read Nicole Gelinas’ take on the dysfunction engrained in the culture of the Port Authority. It starts with a bunch of adults arguing over the scope of their powers and ability to approve projects and ends with an indictment of the two governors who don’t care that the return on their investment of over $20 billion in taxpayer money may not amount to much.

Or perhaps you wish to read about internal tensions at the Port Authority that have more or less directly led to the Laguardia renovations increasing in cost from $3.6 billion to $4 billion to $5.3 billion the span of 18 months. This time around, the PA can’t make Santiago Calatrava out to the be whipping boy (and the plan looks no better today than it did when I explored the ins and outs in July). The vote on all of these items — including approval for a new Port Authority bus terminal — last week ultimately passed, and here’s Dana Rubinstein’s take on the great big mess:

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is taking a big vote on the redevelopment of LaGuardia airport on Thursday, and thanks to mounting tensions between the New York and New Jersey sides of the famously fractious bistate agency, no one’s quite sure how it will go.

The authority’s chairman has his doubts about the project. “I’m not arguing that we shouldn’t do LaGuardia, because I think it’s critically important, but I’m not going to support it in the current configuration,” said John Degnan, an appointee of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. It’s not clear precisely what configuration would be acceptable to Degnan, but the rebuild is a centerpiece of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s infrastructure agenda — he has made it the focus of several press conferences, some with Vice President Joe Biden, who famously compared the airport to a Third World facility…

According to the agenda the Port released — and that Degnan, as board chairman, controls — if the plan goes through, the Port will have spent “$5.3 billion in cumulative total investment since 2004” on rethinking, designing and ultimately rebuilding the airport, including things like overhead and consultant fees. “The number looks higher because in the past, the Port Authority has been neither transparent nor candid in what the total cost of this project is,” he said. The issue of LaGuardia’s costs has since become a serious source of friction.

Rubinstein follows the ever-winding tale of Foye’s retention, the inability of New York and New Jersey to agree on Port Authority reform, and the failure of the Port Authority to find anyone foolish enough to take the CEO job that is supposed to unify two halves of a bad marriage. It’s a mess of provincialism dominated by artificial state borders that ends up leaving citizens on both sides of the Hudson out of control.

Is there an escape from this mess? The common refrain on Twitter — disband the Port Authority — doesn’t really get us there because we would then have to replace the Port Authority with something better. Is anything better? Is there a way to run a bi-state agency that doesn’t involve political horse-trading across state and political borders? And how is the Port Authority’s ten-year, $26-billion capital plan getting funded anyway? No one has any ideas, and for that, we suffer. Ultimately, it all makes the MTA look downright competent.

I have a series of posts on a few topics that I have in the works, including an important one on the smoke and mirrors behind Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s phony pledge to support the MTA’s capital budget, another on the potential for a looming New Jersey Transit strike, a third on the faulty logic behind the latest effort to revive the F express in Brooklyn, and a fourth on the MTA’s victory in a First Amendment case over transit advertising. But — and you knew there was a “but” coming — I’ve been busy with work and fighting a cold all week. Instead, I’ll leave this list up as a reminder to myself to tackle them soon and a tease for you to come back next week.

So tonight, let me offer a few thoughts on the new World Trade Center PATH Transportation Hub/Oculus/Calatravesty/whatever you want to call it. After the part of the building opened on Thursday at 3 p.m., I swung by on the way home from work today. As it stands now, it’s quite a structure. It’s blindingly white, even at night, with long hallways, high ceilings, and a profound sense of emptiness. The columnless structure of the Oculus with its ribs reaching for the stars feels endlessly vast and cathedral-like. All of the people were who were milling about, either to take photos or get to their PATH train, were doing so in a hushed tone usually reserved for religious buildings.

As it stands now, half-finished and half-opened, it’s also noticeably vacant. The main hall, which isn’t so much a waiting room as it is a vast and expensive passageway, is ringed with what will eventually be storefronts, but the commercial space isn’t ready. It is nearly impossible to judge the building and its form and function until the mall opens because it is a mall first and a transit center second. Since the Downtown Hudson tubes, well over 100 years old, weren’t shifted eastward, the Oculus isn’t above the platforms but rather serves as the main attraction on an underground walk that will eventually span from Brookfield Plaza to the Fulton St. Transit Center. It’s not quite a train station; it’s not quite a subway stop; and it’s not quite a mall. But it’s more the third than the first two.

One element of the building stuck out at me, and it’s something I’m sure Santiago Calatrava must hate as well. As the silence fills the Oculus, the only sounds are the constantly repeating and far-too-loud instructions emanating from speakers in the numerous escalators that ring the structure. Stand forward; walk lively; don’t run; hold the handrail; keep children in your sight: don’t use the escalators for oversized luggage; and on and on and on and on through the night. I don’t know if these stem from fear of a negligence lawsuit or ADA requirements, but they could not be more disruptive or annoying to ethos of the building. If they’re not mandated message, turn them off. We all managed to use escalators just fine yesterday; we’ll do great without hand-holding announcements tomorrow.

Finally, there is still the matter of this structure as a train station, and so far, the early concerns about narrow staircases leading to platforms that cannot handle peak-hour crowds remain a glaringly obvious problem with something that was supposed to be a selling point. How did the Port Authority fail to construct enough staircases that also wide enough to handle people flow? Why did the train station elements of the building come last?

Needless to say, my thoughts don’t touch upon the leaks that have plagued parts of the building still not open to the public, the constant need to clean and buff the slippery floors, or the cost. That’s the $4 billion white marble and steel elephant in the room. But even though the building hasn’t yet fully grown into itself, I’d urge you to check it out. It is certainly a sight to see. Plus, you can take some fun selfies.

Later today, at around 3 p.m., some of the World Trade Center PATH Hub’s Oculus building will open to the public. It’s a $4 billion project that has been delayed for years, and its opening is almost a sigh of relief rather than a celebratory moment. What’s clear is that the Port Authority is overstating the building’s importance and using ridership figures from the soon-to-be connecting Fulton St. subway station to bolster the projections of the number of people who may pass through the Hub’s free passageways. What’s also clear is that I’ve used the Hub as a whipping boy, fairly or not, for the region’s inability to prioritize and spend properly.

Over the past few years, I’ve been accused of being unable to see the forest for the trees. As some commenters have stated, they feel I wouldn’t be happy unless we build utilitarian boxes a la grungy Penn Station and spend the billions on capacity and capacity alone. To defend myself, I don’t believe that’s true. We should be able to build great public spaces while also expanding transit capacity at the same time, but I don’t have a magic formula in mind. Can we spend $1 billion — an absurd amount by itself — on architecture to every $3 billion we spend on expansion? That seems reasonable, but for $4 billion, we’re getting great architecture with no expansion. That’s where I draw the line.

Today is essentially the last day for us to really take stock of the PATH Hub. Once it opens and becomes a part of the fabric of New York City rather than a construction site, we forget about the problems, the delays, the costs. Still, as future generations of New Yorkers look to expand our transportation footprint and even as a few miles up north, Gov. Andrew Cuomo prepares for a $3 billion overhaul of Penn Station that may or may not accompany an increase in capacity, we can draw lessons from the Calatrava Hub. As soon-to-depart PA head Patrick Foye has noted, with transit dollars so scarce, it’s important not to waste them.

I’m not going to link to every review, good or bad, that comes out about the PATH Hub over the next few days, and eventually, I’ll make my way over there to be dazzled by the blinding brightness of a $4 billion building made out of steel fabricated in Italy. I do think that Paul Goldberger’s review in Vanity Fair is worth the read, but a few paragraphs in particular stood out to me. Architecturally, Goldberger compares its impact to the Saarinen TWA terminal and writes of the space:

The Oculus…is the exhilarating nave of a genuine people’s cathedral. It is a room that soars; under a great arc of glass, Calatrava has put together curving ribs of steel to make a space that is uplifting, full of light and movement, and capable of inspiring something that has been in particularly short supply at Ground Zero, which is hope.

I’m not saying that to suggest that the Hub is a monument to the noblest ambitions of humankind. It is, after all, a train station bred to a shopping mall, and unlike Grand Central Terminal, where most of the shopping and restaurants are tucked into secondary spaces, at the World Trade Center the stores ring the monumental space. This place cost billions of dollars of public money, and it’s still a shrine to the commercial marketplace. I wish it were otherwise. But that doesn’t destroy the impact of the architecture, or negate the fact that this is the first time in a half a century that New York City has built a truly sumptuous interior space for the benefit of the public…

Back when the 9/11 memorial opened a few years ago, I recall Michael Bloomberg saying something to the effect that people only complain about cost and delays when a project is underway; that once it is done, if it is any good, they forget all of that and pay attention to the thing itself. The Transportation Hub and its Oculus will put the Bloomberg Doctrine to a test, but I suspect it will pass, and that a couple of years from now, we will be hearing not about what this thing cost or about how long it took to build, but about how much people like walking through it. I certainly hope so, since nothing would be worse than to have it provoke a backlash against spending money on infrastructure. At a time when this country spends far less on public works than it should, the Hub is a rare exception to the trend. Its best legacy would be to encourage us to take more chances, and to recognize that investing in the public realm isn’t throwing away money. It is investing in the future, a gift from our generation to the ones that follow.

I appreciate Goldberger’s words, and as I chewed them over throughout the day on Wednesday, I worried that we might forget the transportation element of this project. We certainly do need to spend on public works and integrate them into our transportation infrastructure. After all, a nicer train station is one that draws people to the services it offers, but at the same time, we cannot invest all of the public money in form over function. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, that’s what happened at the World Trade Center site. Let’s build great public spaces without sacrificing all of the dollars to the need for beauty as without expansion we will go and grow nowhere.