Queens Residents Brace Themselves For Years Of Eric Gioia Press Conferences

7 train disruptions to reach L-like proportions:

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority plans to knock out weekend service on the no. 7 line this weekend for the third straight time, as well as the next four weekends, three more in November, and seven more in early 2008. The reason: to complete switch and signal upgrades on one of the oldest lines in the system.

After these track improvements are completed, the MTA is planning to bring computer-operated trains to the no. 7 line, which will require the agency to cut service again for at least 50 weekends over the next five years, according to transit sources. The award date for that project has been set for January 2008.

The computerized signal system, currently used to control only the L line, allows trains to run faster and closer together, thereby increasing service, the MTA says. Some transportation planners are raising eyebrows about bringing the expensive system to the no. 7 line when it is still in a test phase on the L line. The final estimated cost for the L line system is $278 million, which is $68 million over budget.

About 250,000 straphangers are estimated to ride the no. 7 line on an average weekend. Many are complaining that even with shuttle buses replacing subway service, travel times have quadrupled.

How Long Will It Take For Sad Sack Sentimentalists To Mourn Not Having To Lean Over The Platform To Search For Headlights On Faraway Tracks, Noting The Telltale Scurrying Of Rats Or Straining To Hear The Plaintive Click Of A 100-Year-Old Switch?

Amazingly — considering the time, effort and heartache for L riders — the electronic thingamabobs that tell you how long it will take for a train to arrive actually work:

Subways future and subways past seemed to collide on a recent morning at the Jefferson Street station on the L line in Bushwick, Brooklyn. New electronic signs on the platforms showed how many minutes a person would have to wait until the next train: at this moment it was eight minutes for a Canarsie-bound train and four minutes for a Manhattan-bound train.

But the recorded female voice on the public address system that was supposed to work in tandem with the signs was showing signs of a breakdown: “Ladies and gentlemen, the next L, the next L —,” it said over and over, like a scratchy recording.

The signs and the recording are part of a new system being tested on the L line that will, for the first time, give riders accurate information about the arrival time of trains, coupled with clear announcements — both things that seem as foreign to the subway as a man offering a woman a seat on a crowded train.

On this day, however, the signs worked like a charm. A stopwatch revealed that the trains came and went as predicted. It was almost unnerving.

What I Didn’t Design At Ground Zero

Guy Nordensen’s piece in the Times today may be to Ground Zero what Joe Wilson’s Niger op-ed was to Iraq.

First, the idea of the symbolic number wagging the dog:

Some four years ago I began working with David Childs, the principal architect, on the first version of the Freedom Tower. This was a 2,000-foot-tall structure of torquing glass and steel; the bottom half contained the office building while the top half was a broadcast tower composed of an open framework of cables and trusses. . . . The structure would have given the tower the widest TV broadcast capacity possible, at the maximum height allowed by the Federal Aviation Administration. The office floors ended at about 70 stories, matching the tallest downtown office building, with as much overall floor area as the current design and with every floor having direct access to the ground level by elevator. The open, cable-stayed upper 1,000 feet of the structure would have had wind turbines that would have met more than 20 percent of the building’s energy needs, a fitting symbol for a city whose seal includes a windmill.

While the basic design won over almost everyone involved with the project, including many of the governor’s advisers, Mr. Pataki asked the architect to amend it in late 2003. Specifically, he wanted Mr. Childs to reduce the upper structure from 2,000 to 1,500 feet, and to add a slender 276-foot antenna to make it a symbolic 1,776 feet tall. The alterations, unfortunately, made the design impossible to build, and eventually the entire concept was abandoned.

So Mr. Childs presented the revised Freedom Tower, which meets Mr. Pataki’s interests but bears no resemblance to his initial design. It is in every way inferior, and those flaws — in terms of aesthetics, economics, security and ethics — are all rooted in the way in which it was conceived.

Then there’s the notion that the building will never be economically viable, no matter how you build it — sort of like a Frank Gehry-designed ledger book:

. . . [T]he finances of the new building are a disaster. The Freedom Tower will most likely cost around $3 billion to build, for 2.6 million square feet of office space. The cost of $1,150 a square foot is nearly twice what it cost to build the new Museum of Modern Art, for which I was also the engineer. Of the cost, about $1 billion will be paid with insurance money collected by the ground zero leaseholder, Larry Silverstein.

Assuming that the owners of the Freedom Tower, the Port Authority, are able to sign government or other tenants on at market rate rents of $50 to $60 per square foot, the income on the entire property, after expenses and taxes and including the rent on the TV antennas, will be at most $100 million dollars a year, which is less than 4 percent return on the investment. The Port Authority would do better buying back its bonds, which now offer a return of greater than 5 percent. What is more, the property is probably uninsurable, so the Port Authority will be spending billions for a below-market return and a substantial risk.

Talk about things that make you go “oy.” Will anyone take responsibility for the Freedom Tower?

I Guess That Counts As A Good Enough Excuse

The New York Times’ William Neuman explains in great detail why he was late to work yesterday:

The beating of a butterfly’s wings, it is said, can lead to a hurricane an ocean away. And a break in a Manhattan subway rail, though it may lack poetry, can really foul up the morning trip to work in Brooklyn and Queens.

That is what happened at 6:55 a.m. yesterday, when the operator of a Queens-bound N train leaving the Lexington Avenue station radioed a dispatcher to say that the train was being delayed by a red signal that should have been green.

For many riders on the N, R and W trains, that was the beginning of a morning journey that was more headache than head-to-work.

. . .

The radio call from the N train went to a dispatcher at the Rail Control Center, the subway system’s computerized nerve center in Midtown. The dispatcher told the train operator to go slowly past the signal.

A call then went out to a pair of track maintainers based at 57th Street and Seventh Avenue, two stops from the problem.

They jumped on a train and by 7:15 a.m. were at work at the Lexington Avenue station, according to John Johnson, the Rail Control Center’s assistant chief. They discovered a break in a rail about 1,200 feet from the east edge of the platform.

It was not unexpected. A red signal of the type that stopped the N train is often a result of cracked or broken rails, according to Antonio Cabrera, director of track engineering. That is because electrical power for the signal system flows through the rails, and a crack can break the circuit to the signal, sending it into its default red position.

“It was a clean break, like if you cut it with a knife,” said Mr. Cabrera after reading a report about the work. “It was up and down. It looked like a joint exactly.”

The cause of the break was not clear, Mr. Cabrera said, although the cold weather may have been a factor.

The metal contracts in the cold, he said, increasing stress on the rail, and small cracks can turn into large ones.

Once the break was discovered, Mr. Johnson said, dispatchers at the control center halted Queens-bound trains heading toward the Lexington Avenue station.

Now workers had two separate problems. The break had to be repaired, and trains had to be diverted.

A repair crew was called in and by 8:20 a.m. had set to work. Power to the third rail was cut on that section of track.

Using a large drilling machine, a crew of three workers and a supervisor drilled holes in the rail on either side of the break, Mr. Cabrera said. Then they fitted metal bars to both sides of the rail and bolted them in place. At 10:15 a.m. an empty subway train made a test run over the mended rail. And at 10:20 service resumed under the East River to Queens, just over three hours from the time the broken rail was discovered.

But If King Kong Attacked The Washington National Cathedral, Things Might Have Turned Out Differently

Even though it took years and years to fill up all that office space, the Empire State Building is the most popular architectural landmark in the country:

The Empire State Building, the famed marvel of steel and stone at Fifth Ave. and 34th St., was named America’s favorite work of architecture in a public poll released yesterday by Harris Interactive and the American Institute of Architects.

“It’s one of those places you have to go see,” Ian Molyneux, 26, of Manchester, England, said yesterday as he took in the sweeping view atop the 1,454-foot-tall skyscraper.

“When you go back home, everyone’s going to ask if you went to the Empire State Building.”

The fallen World Trade Center and 31 other city landmarks were also listed among the nation’s 150 favorite structures, making the city the top architectural destination in the U.S.

. . .

The Empire State Building, which was designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon Associates, beat out the White House and the Washington National Cathedral, which ranked No.2 and No.3 respectively, in the poll of 1,804 people.

Location Scout: Empire State Building.