South Ferry Progress
This past Friday, the MTA led a tour of what will become the new South Ferry Terminal. According to the MTA, they are in the home stretch in terms of completing the construction. NY1’s Bobby Cuza had a nice piece about it. So here is that article courtesy of NY1:
Next year, the MTA will open a brand-new subway station for the first time in almost 20 years. NY1’s Bobby Cuza filed the following report on the South Ferry terminal station.
It may not get as much publicity as the Second Avenue subway, but near the tip of Lower Manhattan another ambitious and expensive construction project is humming along. When complete, it will provide riders on the Number 1 train a brand-new, state-of-the-art facility.
“Unlike many of our stations that were built a hundred years ago, this will meet all of the 21st-century standards,” said MTA Capital Construction Company President Mysore Nagaraja.
Friday, MTA officials led a tour of what will become the new South Ferry Terminal, now moving into the home stretch of construction. When it’s finished, it will serve as a replacement for the existing South Ferry station – an antiquated structure with just one entrance, a tight curve that requires the use of mechanical gap-fillers, and a short platform that requires riders to move up to the first five cars in order to exit, slowing down trains all the way up the line.
“This has a domino effect on all of the 1, 2 and 3 trains that gets delayed because of this,” said Nagaraja. “So now having a two-track, full-length platform over here, we are going to eliminate that delay.”
The MTA hopes to open the new station about this time next year. At that point, these tracks will be used only for storage and to turn around trains. The platform itself will be closed off to passengers, along with the entrance upstairs inside the ferry terminal.
The new terminal will not only save riders an estimated two to five minutes on their trips, it will also be fully accessible, provide a connection to the R/W station at Whitehall Street, and pump cool air onto the platforms in the summer.
“It’s not 100 percent air-conditioned, but the temperature in the station will be at least about 10 to 15 degrees below the outside temperature,” said Najaraja.
The price tag for the project isn’t cheap – almost a half a billion dollars. But that’s being paid for out of federal September 11th rebuilding funds, which for straphangers is about as close as it gets to a free ride.
I can’t wait to see the new South Ferry terminal as this project was sorely needed. I’m sure once it is done, straphangers will be very thankful. Hopefully the pigs who ride the subway do not ruin it!
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