Yesterday's PATH Train Observation
After visiting my sister in New Jersey yesterday I was meeting some people downtown for dinner. Instead of taking NJ Transit into Penn Station, I decided to take the PATH train from Newark to the World Trade Center. It was the first time I had taken PATH to WTC since they had opened the temporary station at the Trade Center cite.
When I got on the train, I wondered briefly what the reopened station would be like, but wasn't thinking about it as we passed through tubes under the Hudson. Suddenly, as the train slowed around a curve, sunlight began streaming in the formerly darkened train windows.
I looked out the window and saw we were in the open pit of the WTC site. There were neat piles of construction materials on the floor of the excavation all around us, and a large vehicle ramp crossing over the tracks down into the pit. The walls of the excavation were punctuated by a regular pattern of structural ties. Prior to this, I had never had any interest in seeing the WTC site, and now I was right in in the middle of it.
The train slowly pulled around its loop and pulled up to the platform. When I got off the train, the platform area was covered by a corrugated metal roof supported by I beam columns, but generally open to the outside in the bottom of the pit. The only barriers between us and a view of the site were mesh fabric screens. I walked up the stairs, and came up to the station level, which was also open with mesh screens.
While I was on the station level, I began to realize that I was in the exact same station as the old WTC PATH station. The layout of the floor was virtually the same, except instead of basement walls, the station was in an open-air pit. The first stairway out of the station level was the same wide, short bank of stairs, and then the bank of long escalators appeared, just like before.
When I came up the escalators, I knew exactly where I was on the old WTC concourse level. There was a new concrete floor, and you could only go toward the subways, but it was very much the old concourse level, where I had spent so much time when I worked at the Trade Center. I could almost see the flows of people and which store was where. The subway entrances were exactly where they had been, though nothing else was there.
I got on an uptown R train, a little bit knocked off base from being in a bit of the World Trade Center that was.
When I got on the train, I wondered briefly what the reopened station would be like, but wasn't thinking about it as we passed through tubes under the Hudson. Suddenly, as the train slowed around a curve, sunlight began streaming in the formerly darkened train windows.
I looked out the window and saw we were in the open pit of the WTC site. There were neat piles of construction materials on the floor of the excavation all around us, and a large vehicle ramp crossing over the tracks down into the pit. The walls of the excavation were punctuated by a regular pattern of structural ties. Prior to this, I had never had any interest in seeing the WTC site, and now I was right in in the middle of it.
The train slowly pulled around its loop and pulled up to the platform. When I got off the train, the platform area was covered by a corrugated metal roof supported by I beam columns, but generally open to the outside in the bottom of the pit. The only barriers between us and a view of the site were mesh fabric screens. I walked up the stairs, and came up to the station level, which was also open with mesh screens.
While I was on the station level, I began to realize that I was in the exact same station as the old WTC PATH station. The layout of the floor was virtually the same, except instead of basement walls, the station was in an open-air pit. The first stairway out of the station level was the same wide, short bank of stairs, and then the bank of long escalators appeared, just like before.
When I came up the escalators, I knew exactly where I was on the old WTC concourse level. There was a new concrete floor, and you could only go toward the subways, but it was very much the old concourse level, where I had spent so much time when I worked at the Trade Center. I could almost see the flows of people and which store was where. The subway entrances were exactly where they had been, though nothing else was there.
I got on an uptown R train, a little bit knocked off base from being in a bit of the World Trade Center that was.