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South Ferry Station May Take THREE YEARS To Restore After Sandy Damage
By
Jen Chung
Published Jan 18, 2013
Modified Jan 18, 2013
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By
Jen Chung
Published Jan 18, 2013
Modified Jan 18, 2013
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Flooding to the South Ferry 1 station was intense during Hurricane Sandy. And although it's been dry for a while, it's still extremely damaged—and it may take several years and $600 million to restore the lower Manhattan subway station.
The Wall Street Journal checked out the station and reports:
The water has been pumped out of South Ferry, but on Thursday afternoon evidence of the flooding was everywhere, as Wynton Habersham, the MTA's chief electrical officer, walked the station's muck-drenched platform. He ducked into a signal-relay room at the end of the platform, which had held about 600 electromechanical relays, switch boards and circuit breakers. Almost all of them were ruined by the corrosive, brackish water that poured in from the harbor.
"A simple cleanup wouldn't suffice" to restore the station, which served 14,000 No. 1 train riders per day, including many coming from the Staten Island Ferry, Mr. Habersham said. The MTA will have to replace hundreds of relays and thousands of feet of wiring in the South Ferry complex alone, he said.
The MTA will have to decide whether to move the electrical equipment upstairs or, as Habersham said, "we [could] decide to just harden that room and make it like a submarine, which is not likely to be the case."
There might be some intermittent subway service at the station, but given that the station had 14.5 million gallons of water flood it ("a depth of 80 feet from the track bed to the station's mezzanine"), the construction will take a while. Here's what the station looked like right after the storm:
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hurricane sandy
MTA
south ferry
south ferry station
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Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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