Reply With Quote^ Are the storm sewers plugged up or are they just in the wrong place?
Anyone else think Zip might be civil engineer?
Once the new IRT tunnel was cut through, the street project was completed.
So all this land was reclaimed with the elimination of the parking lot and one traffic lane. It'll probably take another decade to start up the park perimeter-bikeway project.
If it rained heavy the night before, all those people in the background would be standing ankle deep in a puddle.
^ Are the storm sewers plugged up or are they just in the wrong place?
Anyone else think Zip might be civil engineer?
The sidewalk is new curb, existing concrete and asphalt fill. It looks like something intended to last a few months that remains for years.Originally Posted by ablarc
Nope. Just a lifetime of wanting to know how things work.Anyone else think Zip might be civil engineer?
Nine years old. Pop's new car had seatbelts. They were an option back then, and were self contained boxes that were bolted in. I opened the housing with a screwdriver, and a large, tightly wound flat spring popped out like a jack-in-the-box. I did my best to jam it back in, not realizing the implications. Hey, I was nine.
Nice graphic. While it is great that the park has expanded, there is no real need for all that extra sidewalk space. Is there any chance the Batter Park Conservancy will extend the green space out over where the sidewalk used to be, now that there is all that new (reclaimed) sidewalk?
That entire northern edge of Battery Park will be re-worked when the new bike path and park re-construction takes place (going slow but recently funded, on the boards and set for completion in 2011):
From the Downtown Express
Battery Park bike loop
Cyclists should finally have an easy way to navigate Lower Manhattan’s southern tip when Battery Park gets a new bike path in 2011 thanks to a $2.5 million federal transportation grant.
The grant, announced last week, provides the last piece of funding the Battery Conservancy needs for the $16 million project, which also includes landscaping and relocating monuments.
“We’re thrilled,” said Warrie Price, president of the conservancy. “We will finally be able to link west to east.”
The bike path will connect to the one that runs along the Hudson River through Battery Park City and will then cut through the northern edge of Battery Park, running on the outside of Peter Minuit Plaza and feeding into the path that goes along the East River. Today, cyclists making that trip frequently come into conflict with vehicles traveling out of the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel or reaching the end of the F.D.R. Dr. The new path will provide a protected route with gardens on either side.
The conservancy first started planning for the bike path many years ago, but the Metropolitan Transportation Authority put that project on hold so they could build the tunnel to the new South Ferry station beneath the park. The conservancy lost some of their funding because of the delay, but the new federal funds, combined with money from the state Dept. of Transportation, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. and others will now get the project moving forward.
“The bikeway is very much on the fast track,” Price said.
The bike path design is complete and Price expects to bid the project this year and start construction at the beginning of 2010. It will take a year to complete.
http://www.thebattery.org/rebuilding/masterplan.php
Click on the lower graphic to enlarge. A bikeway project is supposed to begin early next year. I heard that the $16 million is already allocated.
Thanks. A bikeway would be a huge improvement. I would also like to see (during my lifetime) Pier A renovated ad reopened, the Park Service security trailers banished, and the dowdy eastern side of the Park, replete with parking lots and dilapidated administrative buildings, torn down and redone from scratch. Battery Park has the potential to become one of the world's great parks, even with the fake watch vendors and carnie performers, if only the City, the NPS and the Conservancy could get their acts together. Only the last of the three has shown any ability to get things done, albeit very slowly.
Hey BPC, I usually enjoy your comments; I wish there were more.
Mind boggling to think what this area would have been like if Robert Moses bullied his way with a bridge to Brooklyn instead of the tunnel. Good thing FDR held a long-running personal grudge against the Master Builder and had the Army Engineers deep-six the idea in the early 40's on grounds it would impede potential wartime traffic to the Brooklyn Navy Yard (as if the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges didn't exist.)
First time Moses didn't get his way after ham-fisting his way into co-opting the Brooklyn-Battery Authority with his Triborough Bridge Authority.
Nevertheless...we're all better off in the end that the bridge never took root.
It would have been interesting to see, completely change the skyline. It would have been really bad for teh city on the ground in Manhattan though.
In retaliation for not getting his way, he obliterated the beloved Aquarium that stood in Castle Clinton, a complete grudge job....better reading in Robert Caro's The Power Broker, but here from wiki:
In the late 1930s a municipal controversy raged over whether an additional vehicular link between Brooklyn and lower Manhattan would be a bridge or a tunnel. Bridges can be wider and cheaper but tall ones use more ramp space at landfall than tunnels. A "Brooklyn Battery Bridge" would have destroyed Battery Park and physically encroached on the financial district. The bridge was opposed by the Regional Plan Association, historical preservationists, Wall Street financial interests and property owners, various high society people, construction unions (since a tunnel would give them more work), the Manhattan borough president, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, and governor Herbert H. Lehman.
However, Moses favored a bridge. It could carry more automobile traffic than a tunnel and would also serve as a visible monument. More traffic meant more tolls, and more tolls meant more money and therefore more power for public improvements. LaGuardia and Lehman, as usual, had no money to spend and the federal government, by this point, felt it had given New York enough. Moses, because of his control of Triborough, had money to spend, and he decided his money could only be spent on a bridge. He also clashed with chief engineer of the project, Ole Singstad, who also preferred a tunnel in place of a bridge.
Only a lack of a key Federal approval thwarted the bridge scheme. President Roosevelt ordered the War Department to assert that a bridge in that location, if bombed, would block the East River access to the Brooklyn Navy Yard upstream. A dubious claim for a river already crossed by bridges, it nevertheless stopped Moses. In retaliation for being prevented from building his bridge, Moses dismantled the New York Aquarium that had been in Castle Clinton and moved it to Coney Island in Brooklyn where it grew, prospered and added to the attractiveness of this amusement area. He also attempted to raze Castle Clinton itself, on a variety of pretenses, and the historic fort's survival was assured only after ownership was transferred to the federal government.
Ending up, Moses was forced to settle for a tunnel connecting Brooklyn to Lower Manhattan, now called the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. A 1941 publication from the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority claimed that the government had forced them to build a tunnel at "twice the cost, twice the operating fees, twice the difficulty to engineer, and half the traffic," though actual engineering studies did not support this conclusion, and a tunnel actually may have held many of the advantages Moses publicly tried to attach to the bridge option.
Ultimately, this was not the first time that Moses tried to carry out the bridge option when a tunnel was already in progress. The same issue also occurred when the Queens-Midtown Tunnel was being planned, in which he also clashed with Ole Singstad and tried to upstage the Tunnel Authority. For the same reasons, Moses also preferred a crossing, but with no luck since the bridge was not supported by many officials.
Like everything else this spring, the West St roses are a little early.
West Street's redesign is great. I hope that Water Street is landscaped too.
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