The return of PATH riders to the World Trade Center station yesterday was marked by protests by members of 9/11 victims’ families against retention of the World Trade Center name and concern that the PATH operation is having too great an impact on the former twin towers’ building footprints. According to the U.S. Register of Historic Places, the Coalition of 9/11 Families has requested that the U.S. Secretary of the Interior make an emergency declaration that the World Trade Center site is an historic landmark.

Such an emergency declaration is not a formal power held by the Secretary, but the move could be an attempt to intervene in the final design of PATH operations and the permanent station at the site.

The Port Authority has returned PATH service to the site 16 months after the September, 2001 attacks, and earning praise from many quarters in yesterday’s ceremony and news coverage. 

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