Jim O'Grady

Fewer tour buses than expected have been dropping off visitors to the September 11 memorial at the World Trade Center. Most ticket holders are arriving to the site using mass transit.

Crowds have been gathering at the corner of Greenwich and Albany Streets since the September 11 Memorial opened to the public on Monday. Until this week, the corner was a relatively obscure spot that saw but a fraction of the people who regularly crowd nearby Broadway and Church streets.

Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign said he's conflicted: Port Jervis's ridership is low, but he agrees Metro North is the only way for many commuters to get to Manhattan. "It's the only means of transport for these people," he said.

Anders she said the engineering firm will come up with a price tag for repairing the track by the end of the month.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is getting ready to invest millions of dollars to repair the Port Jervis train line on the western side of the Hudson River. The authority is paying an engineering firm $500,000 to figure out how to repair damage from Tropical Storm Irene.

(New York, NY - WNYC) A bond ratings agency says there's a problem with the NY Metropolitan Transportation Authority's plan to pay for new construction over the next three years.

Fitch Ratings says the authority won't be getting the extra revenue it needs to pay off the $4.7 billion it wants to borrow to help plug a $10 billion gap in its capital construction program. Result: Fitch, the smallest of the three ratings agencies, is downgrading the authority's debt from "A+" to "A."

Charles Brecher, Director of Research for the Citizens Budget Commission, used a familiar analogy to explain the MTA's difficulty: "You can take on a big mortgage if you've got a big income. The problem here is they're saying we're taking out a bigger mortgage but there's no sign that our income is going up."

Specifically, the MTA's capital plan doesn't show it making enough money from cost-cutting, fare increases and dedicated taxes to back the new debt it says it needs to pay to complete large projects like the Second Avenue subway and keep buses, bridges, trains and subways in a state of good repair.

Fitch's vote of "no confidence" in the capital plan could raise the cost of borrowing for the authority, right when it is poised to seek more loans.

Brecher says more costly borrowing is now a danger for the NY MTA, but it's not automatic. The authority agrees. It said in a statement that it has weathered economic downturns and budget difficulties before, and that it doesn't expect the downgrade to substantially raise its debt payments. "While a downgrade is never welcome news," the statement said, the NY MTA's credit remains "fundamentally secure."

If you're planning on driving to Lower Manhattan this weekend for the tenth anniversary of 9/11, don't. Or to use the language of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority: "Motorists are strongly cautioned to avoid driving in the area." Drivers will encounter tunnel closures, frozen zones and blocked streets throughout the weekend.

Life changed for most Americans after 9/11, but comedians faced a very specific dilemma: when and how to make people laugh again. Comedic television programs like "Saturday Night Live" and "The Daily Show" struggled with this question as they began their fall seasons in late September of 2001, and comedians like Gilbert Gottfried faced decisions on whether it was appropriate to joke about 9/11 when performing live.

NY MTA Chairman Jay Walder (center) cuts the ribbon on newly restored Cortlandt Street subway station. (Photo by NY MTA.) Also pictured (L to R) Assemb. Daniel Squadron, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Walder, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, City Councilwoman Margaret Chin

(New York, NY - WNYC) When the Twin Towers hit the ground on 9/11, large parts of the nearby Cortlandt Street subway station collapsed onto itself. Steel beams, concrete, conduit wires and assorted debris crashed down on the tracks, clogging and closing a key part of Downtown Manhattan's transportation system.

Ten years later, minus five days, the station has at last been fully renovated.

The NY Metropolitan Transportation Authority joined various New York elected officials to cut the ribbon on the R line's new downtown platform, which has been closed since 2005.

"We made a commitment to fully reopen the Cortlandt Street station in time for the tenth anniversary of 9/11 and we are here today to fulfill that commitment," said NY MTA chairman Jay Walder.

City Councilwoman Margaret Chin said ten years of near-constant construction at the site has served as an uneasy reminder of 9/11's long reach.

"It told us that the subway is not complete, we're still missing something," she said. "But now ten years later, we're finally going to open this station. And then when we take the R train, we're going to feel the sense of rebirth, that finally it's done."

The station was shuttered for a year after the attacks on September 11th. It operated under makeshift conditions from 2002 to 2005 before undergoing a series of partial closings that allowed for a thorough renovation and the addition of a new underground passageway.

This latest and final bout of work cost $20 million and was paid for by the New York and New Jersey Port Authority and the NY MTA's capital construction budget.

The renovation restored twelve large ceramic murals installed in 1997 and collectively titled, "Trade, Treasure and Travel." The murals, which contain real and mythical creatures mingled with dollar signs and other signifiers of the nearby Financial District, were not damaged in the attacks. But they sat in storage until the station was ready to show them off again.

Cortlandt station mural (photo by Jim O'Grady/WNYC)

President Obama, flanked by DOT head Ray LaHood and US Chamber of Commerce COO David Chavern. (Photo by Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)

(New York, NY - WNYC) President Obama says nearly a million American workers, many of them in construction, will be unemployed within a year if Congress delays passage of the federal transportation bill. The president spoke at a press conference in the Rose Garden at The White House, where he was joined by some of those workers.

"If we don't extend this bill by the end of September, all of them will be out of a job because of politics in Washington, and that's just not acceptable," Obama said.

The House is proposing to renew the transportation bill at $230 billion over six years. The Senate wants to spend $109 billion over two years. The sides must be reconciled by September 30th to avoid interruption to building projects around the country.

"This bill provides funding for highway construction, bridge repair, mass transit systems and other essential systems that keep our people and our commerce moving quickly and safely,"Obama said.

The Senate bill would keep U.S. transportation spending at current levels. The House bill would constitute a 35% annual cut. Both bills are less than what the president has proposed: $500 billion, with another $53 billion for competitive high speed rail grants.

Petra Todorovich of the Regional Plan Association--a planning group covering New York, New Jersey and Connecticut--called the house bill "a brutal cut that will certainly be felt around the region in jobs and in the condition of our roads, bridges and transit systems."

The president said if the transportation bill is allowed to expire, 4,000 workers will immediately be furloughed. He added that if Congress remains at an impasse ten days after that, $1 billion in highway funds will be lost for good.

President Obama also called on Congress to extend authorization of the Federal Aviation Administration. When the House and Senate deadlocked on the issue in July, the FAA endured a partial shut down for 13 days. The move threw 4,000 agency employees out of work and interrupted hundreds of airport construction projects. Thousands of construction workers around the U.S. lost two weeks on the job and the the federal government was not able to collect more than $350 million in taxes on airline tickets.

The president also proposed an initiative aiming at cutting waste in transportation spending and giving states greater control in choosing projects.

"No more bridges to nowhere," he said. "No more projects that are simply funded because of somebody pulling strings."

He said that at the urging of his Jobs Council, he'd be directing federal agencies to identify high priority infrastructure projects that are already funded and then "expedite permitting decisions and reviews necessary to get construction underway more quickly while still protecting, safety, public health and the environment."

US DOT secretary Ray LaHood, who joined the president at the podium, continued the theme of linking transportation to jobs on his blog: " It's time to have a serious conversation in Congress about making smart investments while interest rates are at historical lows and unemployment is high." The president wants to publicly have that conversation on Tuesday, September 7th, when he's requested a joint session of Congress to lay out his job creation plan.

Today, Obama said such spending was urgent not only to create jobs but to stop from falling behind countries that are spending at a healthy clip on roads, railways, mass transit and airports. He said that ten years ago, U.S. infrastructure ranked sixth globally -- but now ranks 23rd.

"We invest half of much in our infrastructure as we did fifty years ago with more than one-and-a-half the number of people," he said. "Everybody can see the consequences. That's unacceptable for a country that has always dreamed big and built big, from the transcontinental railroads to the interstate highway system."

UPDATE: 4:07PM: Congressman John Mica, the Florida republican who chairs the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, released a statement about the president's speech. “In the interest of getting Americans back to work and moving vital transportation legislation, Republicans are committed to working with the President and Congressional Democrats," he said, before blaming Democrats for the funding stalemate. "During their control, they neglected aviation legislation for more than four years and left major transportation legislation in the ditch for more than a year."

Mica has been vocal about wanting a six-year authorization bill, and floated one last month. But it sounds like he's willing to make concessions. "I will agree to one additional highway program extension," his statement read, "this being the eighth of the overdue transportation reauthorization."

WNYC transportation reporter Jim O'Grady discusses the effect the storm has had on this morning's commute. How are you getting to work this morning?

"I by the tide / Of Humber would complain."

--To his Coy Mistrees by Andrew Marvell

From the admittedly jaundiced vantage of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Hurricane Irene was the girl who threw the party of the year, showed up briefly and didn’t dance.

Worst-case projection of storm surge flooding in Lower Manhattan.

(New York, NY - WNYC) Of all New York City's infrastructure, its underground transit system is especially vulnerable to storm surges produced by hurricanes like the one that is expected to soon work its way up the east coast. Planners agree on this, but not on how best to prepare for what could be more and worse hurricanes in the coming decades as the climate warms and sea levels rise. Here's a reprise of a story about all that, with link to a New York City flood evacuation map.

Malcolm Bowman, an oceanography professor from Stony Brook University in Long Island, recently stood at edge of the Williamsburg waterfront and pointed toward the Midtown skyline. "Looking at the city, with the setting sun behind the Williamsburg Bridge, it's a sea of tranquility," he said. "It's hard to imagine the dangers lying ahead."

He said that as climate change brings higher temperatures and more violent storms, flooding in parts of the city could become as routine as the heavy snows of this winter. We could even have "flood days," the way we now have snow days, he said. Bowman and other experts say the only way to avoid that fate and keep the city dry is to follow the lead of cities like Amsterdam and Saint Petersburg, Russia, and build movable modern dykes. Either that or retreat from the shoreline.

Higher sea levels will give severe storms much more water to funnel toward the city. Bowman pointed first north, then south, to depict surges of water coming from two directions: through Long Island Sound and down the East River and up through the Verrazano Narrows toward Lower Manhattan. The effect could be worse than anything seen before.

Here is that flood map.

And here is the rest of the story.

Officials are considering shutting down the city's transportation system this weekend if conditions from Hurricane Irene become too harsh. 

Pity riders of the C train, named by the Straphangers Campaign as New York's worst subway line for the third year in a row. But the C train was not alone — it tied with the No. 2 train for last place.

Airplanes wait to take off fro JFK Airport (photo by ATIS547 via Flickr)

(New York, NY - WNYC) The U.S. Department of Transportation's latest set of "flier protection" rules go into effect today.

The department can now impose large fines on international flights that wait on the tarmac more than four hours. Airlines will also have to clearly display fees charged on everything from checking a bag to reserving a seat to buying food. And a passenger can expect higher compensation from an airline that loses his luggage or involuntarily bumps her from a flight.

New York's airports, in particular, played a dubious role as a catalyst to the crack-down on long delays before take-off. In 2007, 154 flights were stuck on a runway at JFK Airport for more than three hours. Two-thirds of all long waits in the country happened at one of the metropolitan area's three major airports.

Then, in 2010, the U.S. DOT began fining domestic airlines for those delays and the numbers plummeted. Now the department will do the same for international flights.

Kevin Mitchell, chairman of the Business Travel Coalition, applauded the change. He also agreed with airlines being forced to clearly display all their charges to online ticket buyers. His is one of several consumer groups that say buying a ticket online means digging deep into an airline's website to understand what fees it charges.

"They've had their fees buried on screen four, five and six, or just before you get ready to take your credit card out," Mitchell said.

Steve Lott, a spokesman for the Air Transport Association (an airline trade association), said airlines strive to communicate clearly with passengers. "Airlines already have made many service improvements and many of the regulations going into affect formalize procedures already in place," Lott said.

In January, airlines will face even more rules, including notifying passengers at the boarding gate if their flight is delayed or cancelled.

To listen to this story, go to Marketplace.

The U.S. Department of Transportation's latest set of "flier protection" rules go into effect Tuesday. The department can now impose large fines on international flights that wait on the tarmac for more than four hours.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie told reporters Thursday that he and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo were working on a coordinated alternative to the Port Authority's proposed toll and fare hike, but did not know if their alternative would be announced in time for the Port Authority board meeting on Friday.