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The current port authority bus terminal, despised by commuters and ridiculed by comedians, has a date of demolition to be replaced with a gleaming ultramodern structure.
Port authority officials on Thursday unveiled a final scoping plan for a ground replacement that would include a five-story bus terminal, a nearly million-square-foot bus warehouse and an assembly building between 9th and 10th Avenues, and a larger set of ramps directly to and from the Lincoln Tunnel, to be opened between 2030 and 2031.
The new terminal design also includes infrastructure for the future construction of four high-rise towers on parts of the new bus terminal that could help finance it, through the sale of air rights and payments in lieu of shared taxes. by the city with authority. Federal funding could also be sought. No price was given during the presentation.
“This is by far the best plan the Port Authority has ever received,” said Rick Cotton, Executive Director, after describing the plan and its history. “We think he will receive the support of the bus drivers, the neighbors. It has achieved all public policy objectives and manages it with sophistication.
The replacement terminal, storage building, and ramp structure would be built entirely on Port Authority land, which would address concerns from surrounding neighbors that their property would be condemned for the bus terminal. The plan also helps remove intercity buses from city streets and address rush-hour traffic and pollution issues caused by commuter buses, Cotton said.
The 2 million square foot main terminal will have five floors of more than 160 bus doors and better interior traffic to avoid overcrowding, said Steve Plate, director of major capital projects at the Port Authority. The bus storage and storage building will be a step forward, with charging infrastructure for electric buses, he said.
“This is truly a world class facility,” Plate said. “We will make this facility the best it can be … it will be a model for others around the world.”
The plan replaces the “build on site” plan which would have added two floors to the existing terminal which has been studied and refined since it was first put into service in 2017.
Instead, the plan adds the construction of a four-story bus warehouse and assembly building, which will be used as a temporary bus terminal while the current 8th Avenue terminal is demolished and replaced, a said Platt. Buses will be parked there after the morning rush hour, instead of returning to New Jersey until the evening rush hour, which should reduce delays.
Commuters who use the bus terminal may also breathe a sigh of relief as they say it ends two competing plans to move the bus terminal to the Javits Center, criticized for being just blocks from 12 subway lines to which they can access the existing bus terminal.
“The comments couldn’t have been clearer. The 11th Avenue locations have received objections from bus drivers and the community, ”Cotton said. “It was not near the subways and the community feared that thousands of commuters would be forced to walk in the neighborhood.”
The neighborhood will also gain two parks converted into bus parking lots, totaling 3.5 acres.
Pre-COVID-19 studies predict that 30,000 more bus commuters will use the terminal by 2025-2026. Since the pandemic, NJ Transit bus ridership has only represented 35% of pre-coronavirus levels, and interstate commuter bus ridership has been slower to rebound than local bus use.
While a new ridership study is likely to be done as part of a federal environmental review process, the replacement will still meet the 2040 forecast of a 30% increase in capacity from the 260,000 daily passengers that l ‘were using before the pandemic, Cotton said.
With the release of the final scoping document, administration officials asked the Federal Transit Administration to begin the final environmental assessment. During this time, the authority will carry out “intense preliminary design and engineering work,” Plate said. “We want to find a way to build faster with as little disruption as possible.”
The effort to replace the aging bus terminal, which is ridiculed as an unworthy gateway to New York City, began in 2014. State Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg, D-Bergen, has Took the chairman of the port authority, John Degnan, on a bus ride to the terminal. that year to show him the conditions commuters face on a daily basis.
Degnan commissioned a $ 90 million repair project to address the bus terminal’s most pressing problems while the Authority studied the building’s possible replacement.
“I am delighted to see the Port Authority move forward with construction of an expanded bus terminal at the current site, where New Jersey commuters will continue to have easy access to the many subway and bus lines that descend on Eighth Avenue, ”Weinberg said. “New Jersey spoke with a united, bipartisan voice, and we had to fight hard to make the Port Authority’s new bus terminal part of the current 10-year capital plan.”
The debate included a design competition organized by the authority in 2016 for a new bus terminal. None of the five finalists were declared a “winner” of the competition by the authorities, although one of them resulted in the option of moving the bus station to the basement of the Javits Center.
The replacement of the bus station has been implicated in bi-state politics, with the Authority commissioners appointed by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo calling the New Jersey project beneficial. Last week, Cuomo included a replacement bus terminal in its state’s state address.
Ultimately, Weinberg and Congressman Jerold Nadler from New York have co-chaired the Port Authority Bus Terminal Working Group in both states for the past four years.
“This has long been our preferred option because it allows New Jersey commuters to take a seat while still maintaining convenient access to local subway and bus lines,” said State Senator Tom Kean Jr., R- Union, which was also part of the working group. .
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Larry Higgs can be reached at [email protected].
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