In a "public information session" last week, top officials from NY State DOT’s Albany and NYC offices and the agency’s consultants for Rt. 9A presented the public—and politicians, in a private briefing—with just two options for rebuilding West Street near the World Trade Center site. But one of the options is the "no build" option, as required under federal environmental law. DOT has never, to our knowledge, selected a "no build" option as a preferred alternative at the end of an environmental review process.

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-Manhattan) objected to the short tunnel as a waste of money when NYC needs money for more beneficial transportation projects. Assemblymember Deborah Glick and City Councilmember Alan Gerson have also expressed skepticism, and private reports indicate that Mayor Bloomberg and his staff were cool to the tunnel option. Still, Gov. Pataki and DOT seem resolute about building it.

Why? Although drawings for the tunnel option included objectives like "creates a park-like setting for the memorial," and "more space for pedestrians adjacent to the memorial," in fact, the designs next to the WTC site are nearly identical. The tunnel option provides a 12 ft. sidewalk next to the memorial area while the surface street option provides 10 feet. The tunnel option devotes another 64 feet of space to green space adjacent to the sidewalk. In the surface street option, 54 ft. of green space is adjacent to the sidewalk. However, even this minor difference (12 feet total) could be evened up; DOT handicapped the surface street option by putting in two turn lanes at Liberty and Vesey Streets. These extra lanes used up more land that could have been green space.

The surface street promenade would cost just $175 million and take 2 years to build; the tunnel will cost $860 million and cause five years of construction and traffic staging downtown. "What are we getting for $860 million?" asked Bill Love of the Coalition to Save West Street and a Battery Park City (BPC) resident. On the west side of West Street, Brookfield enjoys a full 78 ft. of green space in front of the World Financial Center and the Winter Garden.

"DOT’s preference for the tunnel is a fraud on the public," said Janine Bauer of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. "DOT is claiming that the principal difference between the two options is that one (the tunnel) will better respect the memorial, but it doesn’t."

Citizen and environmental groups that oppose the tunnel were stunned at the boldness of DOT’s maneuver, which DOT claimed was done to comply with the federal National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requirement for a baseline, or no-build option, but which demonstrated the agency’s preference for one and only one preferred option—the "short" tunnel bypass at the WTC site.

NYPIRG, Tri-State, Clean Air Campaign, and Coalition to Save West Street pointed out that the tunnel and approach ramps will divide BPC from the rest of Lower Manhattan (and conversely, Lower Manhattan from Hudson River and the park). They point to the ramps on Park Ave near 33^rd St as an example of how tunnels blight the neighborhood—pedestrian traffic is prohibited across Park Avenue there because of the dangerousness of the ramps.

Citizens also noted that there would still be four lanes of (faster-moving) traffic on the surface, once 75% of the traffic for that stretch is diverted to the tunnel. DOT had no information as to how it arrived at the 75% figure. Prior to 9/11, West Street was used by 10,000 pedestrians during peak hour but just 5,000 vehicles. DOT now projects West Street will be used by 60,000 vehicles per day (no peak hour info was revealed at the "info session").

The "no build" option continues West Street as a mostly 8-lane highway at the surface street level; DOT did not include other versions of this promenade option which citizens and other groups favor. They previously requested additional designs of both LMDC and DOT, including a 6-lane at-grade West Street with broader landscaped medians, and a West Street designed for maximum green space between the street and the WTC memorial site, at the expense of Brookfield. West Street only carries 6 lanes of traffic now, post 9/11.

"The process DOT created here is like a Soviet election," said Janine Bauer, director of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, at the info session. According to DOT’s plans now, there will be no public scooping session for the project. A year form now, the supplemental environmental impact statement will be released with the preferred alternative.

The DOT process stands in marked contrast to the LMDC process kicked off this week. LMDC is holding a full public scoping session for the WTC site. LMDC also identified two different baseline alternatives—the pre-9/11 conditions at the site, and the current conditions there. DOT claimed it couldn’t use the current West Street conditions or the pre-9/11 conditions on West Street as the no-build baseline under NEPA, so they chose the surface street option. But LMDC’s planners seem to have found a way to do just that. 

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