Breaking the Bottleneck

South Ferry Terminal Expansion Ends Troublesome Subway Travel

Opened in 1905, the terminal was designed for an era of fewer commuters and shorter subway trains. With only a single, sharply curved track serving a relatively short platform, the station could accommodate only the front half of the modern 10-car trains. That required many passengers on the 1 Broadway-7th Avenue line to perform a “subway shuffle” at preceding stations to be properly positioned for the South Ferry Terminal’s cramped quarters.

Complicating matters was the need for mechanical “gap filler” extensions to bridge the excessive space between the terminal’s platform and trains. 

“The extensions often malfunction, which only worsens delays,” and the bottleneck’s ripple effects were felt throughout the system, says Mysore Nagaraja, president of MTA Capital Construction Company. “It holds up the 1 and 9 lines, as well as trains on the connecting 2 and 3 lines uptown.”

Tapping the $4.55 billion federal authorization for the post-Sept. 11 revitalization of Lower Manhattan, MTA is expanding the South Ferry Terminal inside a new 1,700-ft-long, 65-ft-wide, reinforced concrete structural box located beneath Peter Minuit Plaza and Battery Park, near the Whitehall Ferry Terminal.

The $500 million project will accommodate two full-length tracks and a 26-ft-wide island platform, plus improvements to the 700-ft-long approach tunnels beginning at Greenwich Street. 

Along with the capacity to accommodate up to 24 subway trains per hour, the station’s straighter track will eliminate much of the screeching brake noise familiar to subway riders. Trains will also be able to enter and leave the station at higher speeds. 

Other features include improved access for disabled passengers, additional station entrances and connection to the R and W subway lines at nearby Whitehall Street Station.

Squeezing an approximately 2.8-acre construction zone into Lower Manhattan’s crowded surface and subterranean environments presented plenty of obstacles for the joint venture design-build team of Schiavone Construction and Granite Halmar Construction, which began work in early 2005. 

“Time was big issue, as was coordinating the project with all the agencies and utility owners that had their own standards to meet,” says Paul Scagnelli, Schiavone executive vice president and chief. “But while everybody had different interests and concerns, they were all cooperative. They recognized the scope of what had to be built and the need to do their part.”

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Excavating the 70 to 80 ft beneath the streets of Manhattan required eight months of blasting to remove 65,000 cu yds of rock, all of which had to be carefully synchronized with the subway operations. Because the new access tunnel extends under three existing subway lines, the project team installed approximately 200 temporary minipiles just below the tunnel bases while excavation proceeded. Once the new tunnel was completed, its roof took on the load of the existing structures.

“That work really kept us on our toes because much of the area is 70- to 100-year-old fill,” Nagaraja says. He adds that extensive vibration monitoring procedures were implemented to safeguard the subway structures and nearby buildings, including a historic church on nearby State Street. 

“Luckily, we had no major incidents,” Nagaraja says.

Excavating for a 21st Century subway station also opened up more of Lower Manhattan’s archeological past. Nagaraja says more than 2,000 artifacts from the 1700s were documented and furnished to area museums for study and display.  An important early find was a 45-ft portion of the area’s namesake battery wall, part of a fort and seawall structure, which experts believe may be the oldest pre-Revolutionary structure of its kind left in Manhattan.

“Unfortunately, discovery of the wall forced a four-month delay of construction so that it could be properly examined and removed,” Nagaraja says. A 30-ft-long section of the 8-ft-thick wall will be incorporated into the artwork planned for the new station’s mezzanine level, he says.

Other archeology-related interruptions pushed the project’s original mid-2007 completion date back even further, as did the discovery of leaks after completion of the structural box.  “Remediating the leaks with chemical grouting took about three to four months,”
Nagaraja adds.

The new South Street Terminal is now aiming for a November opening. Under a separate contract to MTA, Judlau Contracting Inc. of WHERE?, is installing more than 1,600 ft of new track to the station, as well as all station lighting, communications, plumbing, air conditioning, escalators, elevators, fare collection equipment and finishes.

Nagaraja says he is particularly proud that Battery Park will bear no scars from the project. No new station entrances are located in the park, and land along the park’s eastern edge that was temporarily disrupted by the cut-and-cover construction work is being restored in collaboration with the Battery Conservancy. 

The MTA’s overall design and construction plan also emphasized energy efficiency, enhanced indoor environmental quality, careful waste management and materials recycling. “We were focused on making this as green a project as possible,” Nagaraja says. 

And perhaps most important, thousands of MTA subway riders will gain a few more of those precious “New York minutes” each day.

“We expect that riders will save about five minutes traveling from Times Square to Lower Manhattan,” Nagaraja says. “In this city, that means a lot.”

Key Players:

Owner, Architect, Construction Manager: New York City Transit
Design/Build Contractor (Structural Box):  Schiavone Construction Co. Inc., Seacaucus, N.J. and Granite Halmar Construction Company Inc., Tarrytown, N.Y.; joint venture
General Contractor (Track, Terminal Systems, and Finishes):  Judlau Contracting Inc., College Point, N.Y.
Geotechnical and Foundation Engineer:  Mueser Rutledge Consulting Engineers, New York, N.Y.
Structural/Civil Engineer, Surveying:  Vollmer Associates LLP (now part of Stantec), New York, N.Y.
Mechanical/Electrical Engineer:  GG Engineering, New York, N.Y.
Electrical Contractor:  Kleinberg Electric, New York, N.Y.