(The following story by Daniel Sforza appeared on The Record website on January 15.)
HACKENSACK, N.J. — PATH trains to the World Trade Center station are getting more and more crowded and have surpassed ridership goals set for the end of the year.
Trains to the newly rebuilt and reopened station averaged more than 24,000 riders daily in December. That number rose in the first week of January, with the line handling an average of more than 28,000 a day.
Officials from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the rail system, had hoped to reach those levels by year’s end.
“I think it underscores just how vital an element the PATH is in the region’s transportation system,” said Port Authority Chairman Anthony Coscia. “In many ways we are not surprised. We think PATH is actually a component of what ought to be expanded in the region — fast, reliable interstate transportation.”
Initially, Port Authority officials had predicted that about 15,000 people would use the station each weekday after it reopened Nov. 23. It has already handled in excess of 1 million riders.
Coscia said riders returned because of two factors.
“Although it may have taken several weeks for people to find their favorite form of transit again, they’ve found it,” he said. “That’s coupled with a growing sense that the region is coming back economically.” Most of those riders probably were siphoned from the ferryboats that ply the Hudson River.
Since PATH has returned, NY Waterway, which operates the service, has seen a drop in ridership from about 60,000 to 40,000 daily. That is still up from the 33,000 riders the ferries brought across the Hudson on Sept. 10, 2001.
“It’s growth at a time where there was a recession and fewer people going to work,” said NY Waterway spokesman Pat Smith. “It’s growth at a time when X jobs disappeared after Sept. 11.” Following the destruction of the World Trade Center station on Sept. 11 and the subsequent cleanup, the Port Authority began to rebuild the link between New Jersey and lower Manhattan.
The agency accomplished that goal, and the rebuilding of the Jersey City station at Exchange Place, in 16 months at a cost of $566 million. To put that in context, the Secaucus Junction, operated by NJ Transit, cost about the same and took 14 years to design and build.
Now, Port Authority officials are planning to replace the temporary World Trade Center station with a permanent transportation hub that will be integrated with the planned “Reflecting Absence” memorial and Freedom Tower.
The design will be unveiled next Thursday in lower Manhattan, and is expected to have a grand entrance made of steel and glass. The design, by the Spanish-born architect Santiago Calatrava is also expected to bring natural light to the subterranean level of the station, allowing people to see the sky.
Initial designs included mechanical walkways to whisk commuters from PATH to New York City subways and to ferries and buses, longer platforms to allow for longer trains, and dozens of shops and restaurants.
A pedestrian concourse would link the World Financial Center on the Hudson River to the site, providing access to ferries. And people-movers, like those found in airports, would connect to the 1, 9, E, N, and R subway lines.
Pedestrian links would also connect to the 2, 3, 4, 5, A, C, J, M, and Z lines at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s proposed Fulton Street Transit Center.
The pedestrian connections are expected to handle 250,000 people daily by 2020.
“What we are now looking to do is to try and create an integrated transportation network in the region,” Coscia said, “and in some ways bring the Port Authority back to its roots as being the primary entity for bridging the gap between the two states.”