By Tonya Garcia
The leader of Community Board 1’s Battery Park City committee said she thinks the state’s plan to tear down two pedestrian bridges over West St. will make it unsafe to cross the roadway.
“There’s got to be a way to get people across the street safely,” Linda Belfer said in a telephone interview Jan. 4, the day after the state Dept. of Transportation made a presentation to the C.B. 1 committee. Belfer said safety has always been an issue at the intersection of West and Vesey Sts., and the new Goldman Sachs building under construction will mean an additional 9,000 workers in the neighborhood. “They did indicate that there would be a pedestrian passageway leading to the Winter Garden from the Fulton Transit Center,” she said, but insists that there must be an alternative since it wouldn’t be used by everyone.
An underground pedestrian walkway connecting the W.T.C. PATH and subway station to the Winter Garden will be built making it easier to get from one side of the street to the other. The PATH station will also have an underground connection to the Fulton Transit Center under construction.
The state plans to demolish the Vesey and Rector St. bridges, temporary structures which were built after 9/11 to make it easier to cross the street, also called Route 9A.
Construction work on the section of West St. opposite the World Trade Center site is scheduled to begin early in 2007. The final phase, scheduled to be completed in mid-2009, includes knocking down the bridges and D.O.T. has not determined when the bridges will be closed.
With traffic volume along this section of road reaching their pre-9/11 numbers, a large part of the project will include shifts in Route 9A alignment. Finished plans also include crosswalks on the following streets: Albany, Liberty, Vesey, Murray, West Thames and Fulton Sts. which will be extended through the W.T.C. site to West St.
By adding crosswalks, plantings and other safety measures, the state hopes to make it easier to cross the street. The state had considered a vehicular tunnel, but the plan was opposed by Goldman Sachs, Community Board 1 and many Battery Park City residents for cost and safety reasons and it was not implemented.
The pedestrian bridges will remain at Chambers and Liberty Sts. There is also a study being conducted about the potential for a bridge on Morris St. to replace the one on Rector.
Officials from the project make assurances that the needs of the community will continue to be met, even throughout the different stages of work. Heather Sporn, deputy director of the Route 9A Project, called the current plans “very preliminary,” and predicts closures based on construction needs. For example, modifications of the Liberty St. bridge will require closure periods. “We plan to maintain the existing entrances into and out of Battery Park City,” Sporn said.
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