By Julie Shapiro
The pulsing intersection of Church and Vesey Sts. in Lower Manhattan is a sea of buses, trucks, taxis, construction vehicles — and, most of all, pedestrians.
More people traverse this block at rush hour than any other curb in New York City, the country, and perhaps the world.
“There is no street that has a higher density, including Times Square,” said Sam Schwartz, a traffic consultant whose engineering company helps manage the intersection.
During a peak weekday hour, 14,800 people cross Church St. at Vesey St. Schwartz predicts the number will soon climb above 15,000, as Goldman Sachs opens its new headquarters a couple blocks away in Battery Park City.
For the floods of commuters, residents and tourists who pass through this intersection at the northeast corner of the World Trade Center site, it often feels like barely organized chaos as pedestrian managers hold yellow chains to stop people from crossing against the light. Briefcases and elbows fly as people rush to their offices in the morning and the PATH trains in the afternoon.
But whether they realize it or not, the thousands of pedestrians are actually part of a carefully choreographed dance, where each step is timed down to the second using computer models. The goal of the chains and whistles is to keep traffic flowing and to keep the pedestrians safe.
Not everyone appreciates the effort. Of several dozen people who spoke to Downtown Express during recent rush hours, about half said the chains were inconvenient or even insulting.
“I don’t like it at all,” said Gillian Shapiro, 36, who was on her way from the PATH trains to Wall St. Tuesday morning. “It makes me feel like cattle. Sometimes I go around the block the long way just to avoid it.”
Others called the heavily manned intersection — seven agents plus a supervisor — a waste of money. The Port pays $225,000 a month for pedestrian managers there and one block south at Church and Liberty Sts., which has four agents. The Port pays another $70,000 per month for separate workers who direct vehicle traffic.
“I don’t see no reason for it,” said Gabriel Moran, 29, who was selling roasted nuts at the corner on a recent afternoon. Moran said people should know how to cross the street on their own.
But many commuters said they understood the need for extra supervision.
“Sometimes people have other things on their mind and they just bolt,” said Jennifer Carty, 43, who works in 7 W.T.C. “The chains keep us safe.”
“I haven’t seen anyone get run over yet,” added Brian Goodrich, 25, who commutes from Midtown to Jersey City, “so that’s probably a good sign.”
If success is measured by the lack of pedestrian injuries, then the program is working. Since the pedestrian management program started early last year, no one has been injured at Church and Vesey Sts., the Port Authority said. One agent called that fact “a miracle.”
Church St. has been jammed with pedestrians since before 9/11, but the congestion became more concentrated and noticeable when the Port Authority moved the PATH entrance to Vesey and Greenwich Sts. in the spring of 2008 and closed off the west side of Church St. for construction. Those changes funneled most PATH commuters along a narrow block of Vesey St., where they squeeze shoulder to shoulder between the Trade Center construction fence and the post office building.
“This block here is the worst thing ever,” said Donna Ross, 33, an accountant who reverse-commutes from Brooklyn to Hoboken, struggling against the crowd. “There are too many people. If God forbid something happened, it would be a nightmare.”
Ross and others had a plethora of suggestions: Relocate the PATH entrance, build a pedestrian bridge over Church St. or separate eastbound and westbound pedestrians. Schwartz, a Port Authority consultant who also writes Downtown Express’s Transit Sam column, and Quentin Brathwaite, director of the Port’s Office of Program Logistics, said they looked at all those ideas and more, and they arrived at the current plan through a process of trial and error.
“We welcome suggestions,” Schwartz said, “because frankly, the science of pedestrian control is being written at the corner of Vesey and Church.”
Many of the ideas came from the pedestrian managers who spend all day every day directing the flow. Schwartz handpicked agents with law enforcement backgrounds and at least 15 years of experience dealing with crowds, because keeping harried commuters in line is not an easy job.
In fact, Shawn Francis, who spent 20 years as a Corrections officer before taking up the chain at Vesey St., said inmates are easier to corral than the thousands of bankers and consultants he deals with every day.
“[The inmates] had to listen to what we said, basically,” Francis said. “Pedestrians, in the beginning they didn’t want to listen to us.”
John Thomas Apel Jr., a retired Port Authority police officer, said the difficulty of managing pedestrians changes from day to day, hour to hour.
“A lot of it depends on the weather and the mood of the people,” Apel said. “Some days, everyone is nice and wonderful. Some days, everyone’s in a bad mood.”
One of the most unpredictable groups is the tourists, who, under normal circumstances, would probably be more inclined to obey traffic signals than most New Yorkers. If the streets were filled with tourists alone, Apel said he would have no problems. But once the tourists mix with New Yorkers who ignore the lights, the tourists also walk out into traffic, but without the savvy and experience of the locals.
During every light cycle, a handful of pedestrians buck the system, ducking under the chains or around them and darting in front of the express buses that barrel down Church St. Sometimes they get caught on the wrong side of the chain and are inadvertently swept into traffic rather than away from it.
That’s what happened to Mike Nieves, 41, last week after the Yankees parade. Wearing an Alex Rodriguez jersey, Nieves dodged the chain on the east side of Church St. but didn’t have enough time to cross before traffic started pouring through the intersection.
“What are you doing, A-Rod?” the nearby pedestrian manager called out, as Nieves scurried between vehicles. “You’re going to get hit by a car.”
Once he made it safely to the other side, about 10 seconds faster than if he’d waited for the light, Nieves said he didn’t think the chains were a bad idea, but there should be a better way of managing traffic without inconveniencing people.
While the pedestrian managers are doing serious work that requires constant attention, they maintain a necessary sense of humor, often pausing to greet regulars or help tourists with directions. Apel said some of the most difficult commuters, the ones who “fight us tooth and nail,” often come into line after having a close call.
“We change a lot of attitudes,” Apel said.
“We save a lot of lives, too,” added Francis, “because you’ve got people texting and on cell phones, not paying attention and walking straight out. It’s amazing.”
The idea of using a chain to block pedestrian traffic first came from construction contractors at the W.T.C. site, who were using much shorter chains to keep people safe when large vehicles moved in and out of the site.
“You can use your hands and flags and all that, but the most effective is really a chain,” said Carl Passeri, a Port program manager. “It’s a physical impediment you see very easily.”
Brathwaite said the Port initially considered installing automated arms like the ones at parking garage exits, but that could be dangerous if a vehicle lost control and hit it.
The agents also use whistles to tell people when to stop and go.
“People get used to the sound of the whistle,” Apel said. “It’s like Pavlovian dogs. You blow the whistle and they get like it’s the starting gate, just running out.”
The current configuration of Church and Vesey Sts., with the chains, pedestrian managers and attendant monthly costs, could be in place for years. At some point, the block of Vesey St. along the W.T.C. site will have to close for construction at the Tower 2 site, diverting pedestrians around the post office and dispersing them a bit more. For now, though, Tower 2 is on hold while developer Silverstein Properties waits for the outcome of an arbitration process with the Port Authority.
The real solution will not come until the final Santiago Calatrava-designed PATH hub opens, which is at least five years away. With far more exits and belowground connections, the station is designed to spread pedestrians more evenly around the site and to their destinations beyond.
But Schwartz said the throngs of pedestrians are not new on the W.T.C. site and they will never be dispersed entirely. When Schwartz was traffic commissioner in the 1980s, Church St. near the World Trade Center “was one of my worst locations,” he said. “We couldn’t put any traffic through that location during morning rush hour.”
Even once all the transportation infrastructure planned for the W.T.C. opens, the battle between cars and people won’t be completely resolved, Schwartz said.
“This will still be a location where walking is dominant,” he said.
Julie@DowntownExpress.com
