http://www.tribecatrib.com/news/news...wtctunnel.html
Pedestrian Tunnel Taking Shape at World Trade Center
By Carl Glassman
POSTED MARCH 2, 2009
Progress can be seen all around the World Trade Center site these days. But one of the most dramatic strands in that complex web of development is 60 feet below street level and hidden from view. It is the shopping mall and shortcut known as the “East-West Connector.”
When the Port Authority completes it, the retail-lined concourse will connect the new PATH station, designed by Santiago Calatrava, with the World Financial Center in Battery Park City. Forty-seven of the 55 pre-cast steel arches that will rise above the underground walkway have been assembled and put in place, their forms mimicking the iconic rib-like arches that will soar throughout the PATH station.
Lately, welders have been putting the finishing touches on the joined steel pieces. Eight hundred tons of steel will be in place when the job is finished.
Atop the tunnel, other workers are constructing a sheet metal roof that will be the base of an extended Fulton Street.
The 270-foot-long stretch of pedestrian passageway extends from the edge of the PATH platform to the slurry wall. Workers are preparing to bore through the wall—the first time that’s been attempted—and extend the tunnel below West Street to Battery Park City.
Another 270 feet of tunnel will extend through the PATH station, and meet up with an MTA-built tunnel that will run from the Fulton Street Transit Center to Church Street, connecting 13 subway lines with the PATH. The entire length of underground pedestrian passage will stretch a quarter of a mile.
The columns on the north side of the concourse will frame storefronts for some of the half-million square feet of retail space in the transportation hub and office building lobbies—about the same amount of retail the Trade Center housed.
The concourse, now half finished, is expected to open along with the PATH station in early 2014, if the Port Authority can stay on its latest schedule.
“[The connection] marks real progress on the site, but there’s a long way to go,” Chris Ward, the Port Authority’s executive director, said in an email to the Trib, “and we must continue working aggressively to get there.”