Fulton Street Station Passages Retained; MTA Board Members To Lose Headline-Grabbing Objections

The MTA decides to build a fully functional Fulton Street station and the public loses one of the more arcane debates over transportation infrastructure to come in some time:

It appears that subway riders can now look forward to both an architecturally ambitious station and an underground connection to the E train when the center opens in October 2009.

It also appears that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is ready to spend some of its own money to make up the difference between the $847 million in federal funds that have been committed to the project and its current estimated cost of $888 million.

The transit center was originally proposed as part of the revival of Lower Manhattan after 9/11. It was to straighten out as much as possible the spaghetti plate of subway lines — A, C, E, J, M, Z, R, W, 2, 3, 4 and 5 — converging around Fulton Street. Many of these stations are currently connected, but the passageways between them are constricted and confusing.

At the heart of the center, at is was unveiled in 2004, was a new glass-clad entrance building, or headhouse, at Broadway and Fulton Street, topped by a glass dome not unlike a seashell in shape with a skylight that would scoop daylight down to the station below.

In the months and years since, the plan’s scope was repeatedly cut back because of budget constraints. Some changes, like the elimination of a subbasement, went unquestioned.

But in November, a minor revolt on the authority’s board greeted the proposed elimination of a passageway planned between the R and W lines and the E train terminus at the World Trade Center. Several members cast it as an either-or issue, pitting the form of the headhouse against the function of the passageway.

“We are not building cathedrals here,” said one board member, Nancy Shevell Blakeman.

Back at their drawing boards in recent weeks, the authority’s planners found that they could build a relatively inexpensive connector by using a corner of what is now the temporary PATH terminal rather than a route under Church Street.

Despite threats by board members to scuttle the dome, the plans were apparently never seriously in danger of being scaled back much further than they had already been.

See also: Between Simpler Transfer Or Fancy Roof, I Want The Roof!