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No Tour Bus Parking in WTC Memorial Plans When the World Trade Center Memorial opens in September 2009, millions of tourists are expected to visit in the months that follow, and many of them will arrive by bus. But it will take at least two more years before there are any parking spaces for all those buses, say Port Authority of New York and New Jersey officials. A total of 80 bus parking spaces are planned for the site, but the Port Authority said the first portion of the underground parking, enough to accommodate 23 buses, will not be completed until 2011. And it will not be until the next year when 57 more spaces become available. Appearing before Community Board 1’s World Trade Center Redevelopment Committee on Oct. 18, the Authority’s Quentin Brathwaite announced the parking shortage, which will come at a time when interest in the memorial will likely be at a peak. Asked where the buses will go, he replied, “That’s something we'll be coordinating with the Memorial Foundation." But neither the Foundation nor the Port Authority could offer what those possibilities may be. The WTC Memorial Foundation said it will work with the city and other agencies to figure out how the increased bus traffic will be handled. “The Foundation is working with its government partners, namely the Port Authority and the Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center, to ensure an interim plan,” Michelle Breslauer, spokeswoman for the Foundation, told the Trib. “The community board is not aware of any alternatives,” said Catherine McVay Hughes, the committee’s chairwoman. “It’s obviously a serious issue that has to be addressed before the memorial opens in 2009.” The rebuilding plans for the World Trade Center site call for a vehicle security center, a single entrance through which all buses and delivery trucks will enter the site. That entrance, on Liberty Street east of West Street, will lead delivery trucks and tourist buses to a security checkpoint before they are allowed to continue on to underground parking areas and delivery facilities for the buildings on the site. The first phase of the center will be constructed along Liberty Street, beneath the current site of the damaged Deutsche Bank building and a future park. The Port Authority said it expects the deconstruction of the Deutsche Bank building to be finished in September 2007 and work on the vehicle security center to begin the next month. But the deconstruction has been hampered by delays. Any delay in taking down the Deutsche Bank building will mean a longer delay for the bus parking, according to the Port Authority. Hughes said having a large number of additional buses idling downtown, especially before the laws requiring the use of low sulfur diesel fuel go into effect, is a serious concern. “It’s a two-pronged issue. It’s about congestion and it’s about air quality,” she said. Steve Coleman, a Port Authority spokesman, told the Trib that the Authority is confident that a solution will be found before opening day at the memorial. “We have three years. I think there’s plenty of time to come up with an acceptable plan,” he said.
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