WTC Subway Tunnel To Be "Elevated"
From: NY1
http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=1&aid=82202
Lower Manhattan will soon be getting an elevated subway line -- only it's not a new line and riders won’t know they’re above ground. NY1’s Bobby Cuza filed the following report.
Though you wouldn't know from looking at it, the 1 train runs right through the center of the World Trade Center site, in this black concrete tunnel box. Only it's becoming less and less accurate to call it a subway.
That's because the Port Authority has transferred the weight of the tunnel onto steel supports and is now digging out the ground underneath. Soon, the tunnel will be suspended in midair.
"If you come back in a couple of months, it will be looking like it's on stilts. It'll look like some of the old railway trestles you see in the Rocky Mountains in the late 1870s," said Port Authority Chief Geotechnical Engineer Raymond Sandiford.
The work is necessary because the space beneath the tunnel will eventually become part of the Trade Center basement.
For now there are small underpasses beneath the tunnel, only about enough room for workers and small machinery to maneuver below as they excavate. Eventually the subway tunnel will stand about 50 feet in the air, on what are known as mini-piles that have been drilled deep into bedrock.
"We're basically building this thing on stilts- about 450 stilts. There are 450 mini-piles that we had to put in there," said Port Authority Program Director Mark Pagliettini.
Before 9/11, there was actually a station there. The Cortlandt Street stop on what was then the 1 and 9 lines. But the collapse of the World Trade Center destroyed not only the station, but also a portion of the tunnel itself.
The MTA rebuilt that segment of tunnel and eventually plans to reopen the Cortlandt Street station, though by then the tunnel will be back underground.
"You'll actually see, on top of the subway will be a street. Greenwich Street will be reinstated as a street. So it'll look just like Church Street," said Sandiford. "You'll have curbs. You'll have fire hydrants and lights. Underneath it will be the subway. And underneath that will actually be the basement to the expanded Trade Center."
Unlike the PATH train, which is exposed to light as it passes through the Trade Center, there is no view of the site for riders on the 1 train.
In fact, though some daylight is visible out the window, most riders probably have no idea of the monumental engineering project going on right beneath them.
- Bobby Cuza
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