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MTA to Install Raised Subway Vents, Bike Racks in Tribeca
Hoping to avoid a repeat of the catastrophic flooding that shut down several of the city’s subway lines last year, the NYC Transit recently revealed plans to install raised ventilation grates along four blocks of West Broadway and one block of Varick Street. And above each grate? A bicycle rack capable of holding up to eight bikes with stainless steel benches jutting from either end. The 16 raised grates, ranging from 16 to 26 feet long, will be placed on West Broadway between Chambers and Leonard, and Varick Street between Leonard and Franklin. In order to prevent rainwater from spilling into the subway, the new grates, designed by Grimshaw Architects, will rise six inches above the sidewalk. Since most of the proposed grates are within the Tribeca Historic District, the design came before Community Board 1’s Landmarks Committee this summer. Although the committee was asked to weigh in only on the appropriateness of the design to the historic district—the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) and Public Design Commission had already approved the design—the committee took aim at the entire proposal. In its advisory resolution, it rejected the grates as “totally inappropriate for the Historic District” and said they would further clog the area’s already crowded streets. (Pedestrians stand to lose more than 1,500 square feet of sidewalk on West Broadway.) “I think it’s absurd for the MTA, while it’s struggling with a deficit, to mitigate for a ‘hundred-year storm,’” said committee co-chairman Bruce Ehrmann. At 95 West Broadway, north of the corner of West Broadway and Chambers Street, Cosmopolitan Cafe owner Craig Bero said he was shocked to learn of the MTA’s plan to install the raised grates, one of which will sit right outside his cafe’s front door. “They’re hideous to look at,” Bero said. “There’s other ways the city could design this.” As someone whose business will face a new grate and bike rack, Bero said he would have expected to have been included in discussions about the design before it was approved. Instead, he said, an MTA representative showed him the proposed designs just hours before they were scheduled to meet with the LPC. “They never opened it up for discussion,” he said. “They didn’t even let me keep a copy of the proposal. They just came in and said, ‘This is what’s going in,’ and then left, about two hours before the hearing.”
“It outrages the landscape,” Bero said. “When we do so much to adhere to all the restrictions the city has for historic buildings, for them to do something like this is unbelievable. Would they dare do something like this to the Plaza [Hotel]?” The stretch of track between the Franklin Street and Chambers Street stations, NYC Transit design manager Stephen Petrillo told the committee, was one of the worst-affected sections of the subway system during the freak thunderstorms on Aug. 8, 2007. “It was unprecedented within our system,” Petrillo said. “After that event a commitment was made to the Governor...to mitigate these problems so they don’t happen again.” New grates are planned for other trouble spots identified after the storm, including sections of upper Broadway and Queens. “The grates are more than capable of dealing with falling rainwater,” Petrillo said. The problems start when water collects on sidewalks and streets, and then pours down the ventilation shafts. This month, a prototype of the new grate will be installed on the east side of West Broadway between Thomas and Worth. Petrillo said the entire project should be completed in March.
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