Port Authority Redesign
New York's anti-design urban bureaucracy needs to start over
Earlier this year, the Port Authority released a revised design along with Foster + Partners to “fix” the beleaguered existing bus hub that feeds into the Lincoln Tunnel from 42nd and 8th Ave. Of course the renderings were shiny, but it didn’t really change the design problem: mass transit between NYC and NJ.
Add in the recent Governor Hochul announcement of the IBX or Interboro Express. Which is a $5.5 billion MTA project to reuse an existing freight rail line for passengers. Seemed like a good idea in theory, until you realize the rail is already there an they are still spending $5.5 billion … for what? A bunch of stations? The entire appeal would be EXPRESS transit from South Brooklyn to East Queens to the Bronx without going through Manhattan. Oh wait, no Bronx?
Especially telling is the map shared by Secretary Pete Buttigieg which deletes the existence of the G train to make the IBX seem more necessary than it really is. Somehow despite a $1 Trillion infrastructure bill, these projects will probably never happen.
Amidst all the poor planning, state and federal bureaucracy and design ignorance are the elephants in the room. Much of the traffic in Manhattan comes from the backed up GW bridge and its feeding roads the FDR and West Side Highway. This is where the ‘congestion” is coming from.
Meanwhile the entire North Hudson region of New Jersey is semi-dense, and completely inaccessible by mass transit. If you look at a map, you see a huge region from midtown NYC going North along Edgewater to Fort Lee. All that is needed is a transit bridge link going across the 53rd where DeWitt Clinton Park is, to link up to the existing NJ Transit Rail.
So, instead of trying to squeeze another $10 billion transit up into the complex Times Square Grid, you just build a small lightrail connector that moves up to 53rd on the West Side, over the river to New Jersey and connects to a larger Port Authority Bus Terminal there. You can get so much more for less money and headache.
Remember the entire Tappan Zee Cuomo Bridge rebuild was about $4 billion. Though it already has some problems, the bridge is enormous and at a wide and deep point of the Hudson River. Don’t tell me you can’t do a simple lightrail bridge (with biking and pedestrian) across the Hudson, like the new Renzo Piano Genoa Bridge rebuild in Italy, for around $2 billion. Then you can build a great NJ Bus Terminal for $2 billion and two stations in NYC for cheap. Then get rid of all of the nasty, complex ramps, existing station.
Will this happen? Probably not. New York and DC bureaucrats continue to sink money into a failed plan instead of stepping back and getting better design options.