Construction has started on the first phase of the MTA's Fulton Street Transit Station in Lower Manhattan.

REPORTER: Workers are digging the Dey Street concourse that will eventually link subway lines east of Broadway with the N/R/W lines on Church Street and the new World Trade Center PATH station. Governor Pataki says the renovations will revitalize downtown.

PATAKI: Maybe one of these days you're going to be working in Lower Manhattan and you'll take the subway to Fulton Street and you won't have the same reaction I had back 30 years ago saying "my God what a dingy, dark, crowded, confusing station."

REPORTER: The Dey Street concourse is expected to be finished in 2 and a half years at a cost of more than $750 million. Work is expected to start next week on the glass-domed Fulton Street Transit Hub designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. The projects are federally funded.

Correction: WNYC confused two transit projects in Lower Manhattan, thereby misstating the designers of those structures. The design of the glass-domed Fulton Street Transit Center was led by the architectural firm of Nicholas Grimshaw and Partners. Santiago Calatrava is the designer for the World Trade Center Transportation Hub, which is topped with a glass-and-steel "winged" structure. Work on the WTC project is expected to begin next week.