Calatrava no nos la clava: Santiago Calatrava won't be participating in the Municipal Art Society's "provocation" on Penn Station.

Earlier this month, the Municipal Art Society announced a "provocation" for Penn Station, challenging four architecture firms—Diller Scofidio + Renfro, SHoP Architects, SOM and Santiago Calatrava—to rethink the city's most hated transit hub. The selection of Mr. Calatrava's firm as a participant, shall we say, provoked some controversy, with blogger Ben Kabak at Second Avenue Sagas telling The Observer, "Even involving Calatrava underscores the utter contempt for transit improvements that some of the city’s leading institutions have." At over $3.7 billion, the PATH terminal that Mr. Calatrava designed for the World Trade Center site will be far and away the most expensive subway station in world history.

So Mr. Kabak should be pleased to learn that Mr. Calatrava's firm is not, in fact, participating in the effort. Santiago Calatrava's firm sent the following statement to The Observer via email this afternoon:

As architects and engineers dedicated to enriching the quality of life in New York City, we have volunteered our time and talent to assist the city whenever asked. And while we wholeheartedly support the mission of the Municipal Art Society, we are compelled to correct the public record concerning their announcement of our participation in the Penn Station Challenge. This notice was regretfully released prior to informing us and without our consent. Unfortunately, given the office's current work load and the time frame of the project, we cannot assist the Municipal Art Society in this endeavor.

According to the New York Times, H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture will be taking Santiago Calatrava's place as the fourth firm involved in Municipal Art Society's "provocation."

Coincidentally, earlier today SHoP principal Vishaan Chakrabarti spoke about the high cost of the World Trade Center PATH station at a panel on the new Penn Station at the Regional Plan Association's 2013 assembly.

"There are people," Mr. Chakrabarti said, "rightfully, who are very concerned—look at what happened at the [World] Trade Center Site, and they understand that a lot of money went for something that maybe is not quite the right amount of money for the people that are going to move through that new station there, and that this is somehow going to be a white elephant."

"I think a shared vision" of Penn Station, he concluded, "has to convince people, politically, that that will not be the case here."

Ms. Quinn did not present a plan to expand New York City's subway system.

New York City mayoral front-runner and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn unveiled her mass transit agenda this morning. While she emphasized increased control for the city's next mayor, Ms. Quinn had no new ideas.

Her headline proposal is to take control of the MTA back from the state. But taking over the MTA is a tall order, and to do it, she'll need to prove that she has better ideas about how to run it than the state.

So does she?

Ms. Quinn presented three concrete transit proposals—bringing Metro-North service to Penn Station with new stations in the Bronx, ten new Select Bus Service lines in the outer boroughs and increased ferry service.

The first proposal, to bring Metro-North service to Co-Op City, Parkchester, Morris Park and Hunts Point, with additional stops on Manhattan's West Side, is something that has been planned for the MTA's next capital plan anyway—nothing new here.

As far as we can tell from her plan, she would leave the MTA's regional railroads—Metro-North and the Long Island Railroad—as the the same bloated and inefficient services that they are today. With the same sky-high labor costs—commuter railroads in the Northeast have clung to as many as half-a-dozen employees per train, whereas other countries and cities on the west coast have pared staff down to rapid transit levels—new Metro-North service under Ms. Quinn's plan is likely to be just as infrequent and expensive as it is now, reducing its usefulness for New Yorkers who already have cheaper, albeit slower, options. (Absent as well from her platform was any mention of labor reform on New York City's subways, despite issues like one-person train operation being at the heart of the MTA's negotiations with its union.)

Ramped up Select Bus Service service—otherwise known as "bus rapid transit," which speeds boarding with a fine-enforced honor system and gives buses their own dedicated lanes—is the meatiest part of her proposal, but this idea is hardly original—she merely puts a number (ten new lines) to the Progressive Caucus's plan for "a city-wide network of bus rapid transit lines that connect the boroughs." Her four-year timeline is a welcome improvement from the MTA's current snail's pace roll-out, but given Ms. Quinn's emphasis on public review as council speaker, it's unclear if she could roll this out as quickly as she'd like to.

Ferry rides are scenic, but there's a reason that New York started replacing them with subways in the 19th century.

Furthermore, the reasoning behind improved bus service hints at the elephant in New York City's transit room: astronomical subway construction costs.

"Subways cost roughly $1 billion per mile to construct," she said in her speech. "Bus rapid transit—just $1 million a mile."

For one, Ms. Quinn should check her facts. The Upper East Side segment of the Second Avenue subway clocks in at $2.7 billion a mile, and the 7 train extension is over $2 billion a mile—and that's without the much-needed stop at 41st Street and 10th Avenue, which would cost another half-billion, at least.

But more importantly, using the high cost of subway construction in New York City—much higher than in peer cities like Tokyo, Paris or even London—as an excuse not to build any more lines ("I'm a little bit on the fence about finishing the Second Avenue subway," Ms. Quinn joked, saying that her father has vowed not to die before it's finished) is an admission of defeat.

Select Bus Service on Utica Avenue in Brooklyn, for example, is a good start (and something the MTA is already planning), but these high-ridership corridors are crying out for full-blown subway service—first planned over 80 years ago. Better bus service in the outer boroughs would be nice, but Ms. Quinn said nothing about the higher-capacity Triboro RX rail line that many transit advocates have been pushing.

As for ferries, they are essentially a 19th century mode of transit, with no hope of making a dent in the city's transit needs outside of a few places like Staten Island and the Rockaways. "In just 18 months," Ms. Quinn said of East River ferry service, "it’s already served over 1.6 million riders." As a comparison, the Lexington Avenue subway line carries 1.3 million riders each day.

New York is fundamentally a rail-oriented city, and Christine Quinn apparently has no plan to add to this infrastructure, or even make more efficient use of existing lines, aside from the Metro-North plan the MTA is already working on. Buses and ferries are all well and good, but Ms. Quinn is going to need to do better if she wants to give the city back its subways.

At $3.7 billion, Santiago Calatrava's World Trade Center PATH terminal will be the world's most expensive subway station when completed.

Santiago Calatrava does not have the best reputation when it comes to designing practical public works. The Valencian architect has achieved great success in winning design commissions across the globe—especially for public works projects like bridges, train stations and cultural centers—but has also attracted criticism for his budget-busting designs.

Mr. Calatrava is practically a persona non grata in Valencia (he is now based in Zurich), where the leftist Esquerra Unida political party has started a website called Calatrava te la clava—loosely translated as "Calatrava bleeds you dry"—on which it accuses the architect of making 100 million euros off the Valencian City of Arts and Sciences, a cultural complex that is widely seen as a symbol of excess, built during Spain's boom years but now a drain on the government's finances as it undergoes a period of fiscal austerity.

He has also come under scrutiny in Italy, where a prosecutor put Mr. Calatrava under investigation for design defects and cost overruns on his Ponte della Costituzione, a pedestrian bridge in Venice.

Mr. Calatrava's most expensive project is found not in Europe, but in lower Manhattan. He was chosen during the heady post-9/11 days to design the World Trade Center PATH terminal—a project whose costs have since ballooned to $3.7 billion, making it by far the most expensive subway station in the world, even after its elaborate, movable roof was scaled back and made stationary.

"There's no question that the World Trade Center"—half of whose costs are in the PATH terminal—"has been a drain on the Port Authority's technological as well as financial resources," said Denise Richardson, managing director of the General Contractors Association of New York, to the Wall Street Journal.

So it came as a surprise that the Municipal Art Society, perhaps the city's foremost independent planning group, chose Santiago Calatrava as one of four architects—alongside Diller Scofidio + Renfro, SHoP Architects and modernist giants SOM—to present proposals for a new Penn Station, to be unveiled on May 29.

The Observer spoke with Vin Cipolla, president of MAS, about the choice yesterday. He defended the inclusion of Mr. Calatrava in what he called a "provocation" on Penn Station, saying, "I'm a huge fan of Calatrava's work."

Benjamin Kabak, who runs the New York City transit blog Second Avenue Sagas, was not such a huge fan. "Even involving Calatrava" in the Penn Station challenge, he told The Observer, "underscores the utter contempt for transit improvements that some of the city's leading institutions have." He suggested that money should be spent on increasing transit capacity, especially beneath the Hudson River, not aesthetics—and especially not on an extravagant Santiago Calatrava design.

Mr. Cipolla took issue with that characterization. "I don't believe there's a tradeoff," he said. "I think a compelling design is an essential part of what is successful infrastructure."

Bus Time: coming to a bus near you!

Philadelphia bus riders got real-time tracking in 2011. Chicago's had it since at least 2009, as has Washington, D.C.

Staten Island riders and those in the Bronx have had Bus Time, as the MTA calls its real-time bus tracking tools (and that's trademarked, so back off, other cities!), since 2012, as have a small handful of routes in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.

But now, the MTA is announcing, we have dates for the rest of the network. "Bus Time is so helpful to our customers that we have scheduled an extremely aggressive timetable to introduce it to three other boroughs," wrote Fernando Ferrer, the MTA's acting (and reluctant) chairman in a press release issued today. Manhattan buses will be getting the technology by the end of the year, according to the release, followed by Brooklyn, and then finally Queens, where it will be completed by April 2014.

As it is now, most New York City bus riders can only rely on published schedules, which are often next to useless, due to the vagaries of traffic, lights, passenger boarding times and bus bunching. (From our perch on Ocean and Church Avenues, The Observer has noticed that the B35, for example, come not at all or all at once.)

While Bus Time won't fix any of this—we aren't aware of any plans the MTA has to extend Select Bus Service-like features, such as off-board payment or traffic signal priority, to the agency's formidable fleet of local, express and limited service buses—it will make it easier for New Yorkers to deal with the uncertainty.

And in an email to The Observer, Second Avenue Sagas blogger Ben Kabak pointed out another aspect of the plan: "It should both increase bus ridership, but also remind riders just how slow and unreliable local bus service is."

"Without a commitment to real innovation from [the Department of Transportation] and the MTA"—that is, faster fare payment systems, signal prioritization and physically separated lanes—"we'll take what we can get."

The L is about to get some new, non-formstone-faced neighbors.

In the midst of yesterday's frenzy of Domino Sugar Refinery-themed press coverage, squished L train riders could be forgiven for asking: how much more development can Williamsburg handle? With only two tracks in a largely quad-tracked system, the L is not as well-endowed as some lines—so how much more Williamsburg can the L really take?

As it turns out, quite a bit.

The L recently underwent an upgrade to its signaling system, with the MTA installing something known as communications-based train control, or CBTC. The installation was riddled with issues, as any nighttime L rider can attest to, but now that it's done, the line's maximum rush hour capacity is up to 26 trains per hour. Not the highest-capacity tracks in the system—the express tracks on the Lexington Avenue line are capable of 27—but significantly more than the 19 trains per hour that currently run during the morning peak, or about one every three minutes. (And this is nowhere near the theoretical maximum capacity of a two-track system—some lines in the Moscow Metro do a whopping 40 trains per hour during rush hour.)

The maximum capacity of 26 trains per hour on the L, a 38 percent increase over current peak service, would require some upgrades, but nothing on the scale of the CBTC installation and debugging that drove L riders crazy for years.

For one, the MTA would need more rolling stock—that is, more trains. The MTA already has an order in for 300 brand new R179s, as the next model will be called, and the 2015-19 capital plan will include an order for an even newer model, the R211. (And while American subways have been reluctant to embrace them, there's always the possibility of buying new articulated train sets, which can hold more people without having to lengthen platforms.)

"And when we get up to a point where we run 22 trains per hour," MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz told The Observer, "then there's the issue of traction power that we need to address." He couldn't cite a concrete cost, but said that it would be a "minor fix."

And that's just for peak periods, which have the highest ridership and tightest capacity constraints. But outside of rush hour, the subway has a virtually unlimited supply of excess track and train capacity. Aside from periods when the tracks need to be worked on, the MTA should have no problem keeping up with the L's much-touted night and weekend ridership.

Mr. Ortiz also emphasized that these capacity issues are much further down the line than Two Trees' Domino project. The L's excess capacity is measured in the tens of thousands of riders per day, while Jed Walentas is only looking to add 2,284 new apartments to the waterfront—apartments that will be as close to the Marcy Avenue stop on the J/M/Z as they are to the Bedford Avenue L.

As for Mr. Walentas's planned office space, it will be essentially "free" from a transit capacity point of view. Workers coming in via Manhattan will have roomy reverse-peak trains all to themselves, and workers arriving from farther out on the L will disembark at Bedford Avenue, before the most congested segment between there and Union Square.

Two Trees also plans to incorporate a new ferry landing at the southern end of their site. But the ferries, though pleasant, are little more than a rounding error compared to New York City's subways. Luckily for Williamsburg (and its developers), there's plenty of train capacity left before people have to take to the water.

At least, that's what it looks like in a video posted late Sunday night to Subchat, an online forum popular with MTA employees and aficionados.

The video, shot out of the window of a moving subway car as it turns around at the old South Ferry loop, shows a clean-looking station with the old IRT station tiling, plus five MTA employees at work.

Photo of ongoing work at the old South Ferry station. (Photo via Subchat.)

And that's not the only evidence that the MTA is working to reopen the station. Last Tuesday someone posted a photo to Subchat of what appears to be a new entrance to the old station under construction, and claimed that the MTA has widened the old, narrow entrance.

If true, it would be very welcome news for ferry riders coming from Staten Island, who currently have to trudge half a mile to the 1 station at Rector Street in order to travel up Manhattan's west side. The new South Ferry station will cost up to $600 million to rebuild—a shocking figure, given that it cost only $530 million when it opened in 2009, including excavation work—and could remain shuttered for three years, according to the MTA. (As a comparison, the rebuilding of the 1 train after it was damaged on September 11 took just a year.)

The MTA could not comment on the video—the latest from them is that they are "still assessing" the situation, according to Second Avenue Sagas scribe Ben Kabak—but this looks like pretty definitive proof that the effort to reopen the old South Ferry has advanced beyond the "assessment" stage.

"It was controlled by a bunch of rich developers," David Gunn once said of Moynihan Station.

David Gunn was never a fan of Moynihan Station. When he was president of Amtrak during the early George W. Bush years, he pulled the railroad out of the project, which seeks to recreate the glory of the old Pennsylvania Station in the James Farley Post Office across Eighth Avenue. At the time, costs were the stated reason: Amtrak was expected to contribute to its new home, and Mr. Gunn said that the railroad had more pressing needs.

Current Amtrak President Joseph Boardman picked the project back up in 2009, and though it's largely unfunded, Amtrak still intends to go through with the move. This, Mr. Gunn told The Observer this afternoon from his home in Nova Scotia, would be a mistake.

"From a transportation point of view," Mr. Gunn said, "it makes no sense." For passengers coming from the 1/2/3 trains, "what the Farley Building does, is make you walk from Seventh Avenue all the way across Eighth Avenue. You'll have to go under the Eighth Avenue subway, then climb up to the [new] head house, which is to the west of Eighth Avenue, over towards Ninth Avenue. And then, you walk back to where the train is! The trains are still going to be between Seventh and Eighth avenues." For passengers arriving at Moynihan Station via the IRT Seventh Avenue Line, Mr. Gunn said, "they've gotta walk almost a mile." (By our estimates, a mile might be a bit of an exaggeration, but the schlep across Manhattan's long avenues won't be negligible.)

"Now the swells"—Mr. Gunn's term for the real estate interests backing Moynihan Station, including the Related Companies and Vornado Realty Trust—"they told me, 'But people come by cab!' No they don't—Amtrak passengers, a lot of them, come by subway. They're normal people."

Mr. Gunn, who has managed transit agencies in Washington, Philadelphia, New York, Boston and Toronto, noted that New Jersey Transit built a concourse in 2002 that empties out on Seventh Avenue, reflecting its closer proximity to Manhattan's center of gravity and most of its north-south subway lines.

One way to accomodate the head house at the old Farley Post Office, Mr. Gunn said, without forcing travelers from Seventh Avenue to double back across Eighth Avenue, would be to simply continue to allow passengers to board at the current station. "But they didn't want us to let people on at the old Penn Station, because I think the real estate developers had shops they wanted people to patronize at the Farley head house." (Since then, Related and Vornado have themselves wavered on the retail plan, citing a lack of demand.)

"You ask the swells why it makes sense," continued Mr. Gunn, "and they'll immediately talk about the experience of walking through the [Moynihan] head house. Real travelers—they know the back alleys. Some of the really experienced travelers, they never even go up the mezzanine. They just want to get on the train."

With the LIRR diverting some trains to Grand Central, Penn Station could see Metro-North trains if the MTA goes through with West Side Access.

East Side Access, which will give Long Island Rail Road commuters the choice of arriving at Grand Central Terminal in addition to the current terminus at Pennsylvania Station, may get all the buzz and billions in capital funding, but it's the Bronx and the West Side that may be getting new regional rail stations.

West Side Access, as the plan is being called, would involve building a number of new stations within New York City, on the West Side and the Bronx, which would see direct service to Penn Station operated by Metro-North Railroad. The plan has been under consideration for decades, but will finally be added to the MTA's next five-year capital construction program due out in 2014, according to Newsday. Compared to the $8.24 billion East Side Access project, West Side Access would be downright cheap: in the "hundreds of millions of dollars," according to MTA spokesman Aaron Donovan.

The first phase would see four new stations built in the Bronx—at Co-op City, Morris Park, Parkchester and Hunts Point—which would be served along Amtrak's existing Hell Gate Line, entering Manhattan via the Triborough Bridge and Queens on the Long Island Rail Road's tracks into Penn Station. Commuters using six stations in Westchester County—New Rochelle, Larchmont, Mamaroneck, Harrison, Rye and Port Chester—would be able to choose trains going directly to Penn Station, in addition to Metro-North's current Grand Central service. They would use time slots freed up by the diversion of some LIRR trains to Grand Central once East Side Access opens.

The second phase would reactivate the West Side Line, now used by Amtrak, for commuter rail. This line is currently only used for Northeast Corridor service north of the city, and runs beneath Riverside Park and the Henry Hudson Parkway. The tracks, once part of the same line that continued south along what is now the High Line, would see Metro-North trains from the Hudson Line enter Penn Station from the west. West Side commuters would also likely get two new stations: one at 125th Street by Columbia, and one somewhere around 57th or 59th Street.

The one at 125th Street is a sure thing, the MTA's press office told The Observer, whereas the station on the boundary between Hell's Kitchen and the Upper West Side is under consideration.

Co-op City, the nation's largest housing complex with a population in the tens of thousands, would be the biggest winner in West Side Access. According to the MTA, the ride from the new Co-op City station to Penn Station would take just 27 minutes—about half the time it currently takes by express bus or a shuttle to the 6 train.

The two new stations on the West Side would be less useful, though, due to American commuter railroads' antiquated operating practices, which make Metro-North much less attractive than alternative modes with cheaper and more frequent service—the 1 train at 125th Street, and crosstown bus service on 57th Street.

George Haikalis, a transit activist and all-around gadfly (the mere mention of his name has been known to elicit sighs and eye-rolls at the MTA), suggested two more stations for the reactivated regional rail line: one at 42nd Street, and another at 168th Street. The 42nd Street station could sit near the axed 7 train station in Hell's Kitchen at 41st Street and 10th Avenue, Mr. Haikalis told The Observer by telephone, and the 168th Street station could sit below the Columbia University Medical Center, two miles north of the planned 125th Street station.

Metro-North downplayed the possibility of stops at those locations, however, citing their proximity to Penn Station and 125th Street. "I'm not sure if it was ever looked at, but it's not being looked at now," said Metro-North spokesperson Marjorie Anders.

To maximize the utility of the new stations and service, Mr. Haikalis also recommended that the MTA look to Europe and Asia to reform its regional rail practices, running them more like the subway system, with fewer on-board staff, more frequent service and cheaper fares.

"Now that the MTA chair position is vacant," Mr. Haikalis said, "the governor ought to pick someone who's knowledgeable about the rest of the world with regards to regional rail. He's sitting on assets that would be far more valuable for riders, and even for developers"—but not if the new stations are only seeing a couple of trains per hour.

Some call it a bird, some call it a stegosaurus. Ms. McKissack Daniel calls it late for dinner.

At $3.4 billion (or is it $3.8 billion?), the new Port Authority Trans-Hudson terminal at the World Trade Center will very likely be the single most expensive subway station on earth. Riders traveling between the Financial District and New Jersey have been using the $323 million temporary station since it opened a decade ago. And if you believe Cheryl McKissack Daniel, a subcontractor who did a short Q&A with The New York Times, the project will be delayed another 18 months due to damage incurred during Hurricane Sandy.

"The World Trade Center started out being about 48 months and quickly grew to about six years," Ms. McKissack Daniel told The Times. "And now, after Sandy, that added another year and a half to the whole project. Everything was flooded—everything was new and flooded. And all of that had to be replaced because it’s all electrical work." The station was reportedly under 25 feet of water after the hurricane.

Before Hurricane Sandy, the new station was scheduled to open in 2015. An 18-month delay would push that date back to 2016, at the earliest.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, however, denied that there is any delay, and insisted that the station is still anticipated to be completed by 2015. They have not yet, however, responded to inquiries by The Observer regarding possible cost escalations to be borne by the Port Authority in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

The project's main contractor, Tishman Construction, a division of AECOM, also denied that there was any delay, sending The Observer a statement saying, "Ms. McKissack Daniel incorrectly informed the New York Times about the completion date of the WTC Transportation Hub."

Ms. McKissack Daniel was unavailable to comment by press time.

The new Santiago Calatrava-designed terminal—a relatively small station, which currently serves only two lines with five tracks—has already been scaled back due to costs. The "wings" of the station, which resembles a giant rib cage, were once meant to open and close, but the design was neutered by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey under the leadership of Chris Ward, in favor of a stationary structure.

Especially since the global downturn, Mr. Calatrava has been criticized in his home country of Spain for his extravagant designs and ballooning costs. Last year, a left-wing Catalan political party started a website called Calatrava te la clava, which roughly translates to "Calatrava bleeds you dry."

Update: Blogger Ben Kabak at Second Avenue Sagas claims to have some inside info on how the construction is going—and he says Sandy isn't the only problem they're having:

I’ve heard from a few sources that Sandy isn’t the only factor behind this delay. These sources claim that Santiago Calatrava’s influence (and meddling) have led to some redesigns and cost increases. Additionally, others have questioned Downtown Design Partnership’s ability to manage public perception and the behind-the-scenes timeline.

Could development finally be coming to the long-stalled project?

The planned conversion of the Beaux-Arts Farley Post Office on Eighth Avenue into Amtrak's "Moynihan Station" has always been more about real estate and architecture than transportation, spurred by the city's desperate search for atonement after the destruction of the old Penn Station. Former Amtrak President David Gunn didn't mince words when he told Bloomberg News in 2011 that the project is "controlled by a bunch of rich developers."

And Related Companies doesn't seem to be doing anything to disabuse us of that notion. The New York Times reported that Stephen Ross has yet another trick up his sleeve to revive the stalled project: he wants the Borough of Manhattan Community College to move into Moynihan Station.

But Related isn't just looking for an anchor tenant for Moynihan—it also wants BMCC's land in Tribeca.

"Under the proposal by the developer," The Times writes, "the community college would move 3.8 miles north of its current location downtown to 1.1 million square feet of space in the post office building," where it would serve as the would-be complex's anchor tenant.

This would be an upgrade from BMCC's 780,000 square feet between Chambers Street and North Moore Street fronting on West Street, but this extra space would be dwarfed by Related's haul, should the plan pan out: BMCC's site sits on nearly a quarter of a million square feet of land, the majority of which has an unimpeded view of the Hudson River. With a 20 percent bonus for affordable housing or a public plaza, the current zoning would allow the site's owners to build 2.7 million square feet of space—slightly larger than 4 WTC, as a comparison.

Related may be able to count on the support of New York's civic elite, who are eager to see Moynihan Station come to life—Robert Yaro of the Regional Plan Association seemed to endorse the deal if it would get Moynihan back on track—but BMCC doesn't appear to have much interest in the project, especially since it would mean leaving their $325 million, newly-built Fiterman Hall. Plus, there's a slight legal barrier to overcome: "It was also unclear how the school could legally swap the land without going through an auction," The Times writes. Unnamed "government officials" told The Times that Related should stick to retail and office tenants, suggesting Google as a possibility.

But Mr. Ross remains undeterred, and Related is reportedly taking the issue directly to Governor Andrew Cuomo, perhaps seeking to appeal to his edifice complex.

ssmith@observer.com