Construction of a new Midtown Manhattan Bus Terminal, the nation’s busiest and largest bus terminal, is slated to begin around the end of this year.
Jay Shuffield, Manager of Regional Transportation Policy for The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, provided an overview of the project during a brief presentation at the NJTPA Board of Trustees meeting on Monday.
“We’re really working hard to deliver world-class space for passengers inside the terminal, at the entrances, around the terminal, and in the parts of the community that have been divided by transportation infrastructure for decades,” Shuffield said.
The project currently is coming to the end of the environmental review process with a draft Environmental Impact Statement published in February and public comment period that closed in March. He said they’re hoping for construction to begin around the end of the year. The $10 billion facility will include a new 2.1-million-square-foot main terminal, a separate storage and staging building and new ramps leading directly into and out of the Lincoln Tunnel.
Phase 1 would include a new ramp system that will be built while the terminal is still in operation. A new staging and storage facility will also be built which, in the second phase, will initially be used as an interim bus terminal while the existing facility is demolished and the new terminal constructed.
The project is necessary because some of the existing structure has reached the end of its life and cannot accommodate expected future growth in bus travel. “This has been a collaborative effort with the community and elected officials to develop a solution that improves the efficiency of bus operations and designs the facilities to make all this regional transportation fit into the neighborhood in a much better way," he said.
Existing bus terminal
The original building was erected in 1950, expanded vertically in the 1960s, and to the adjoining block across the street in 1980. The existing terminal takes up more than a city block in Midtown with an extensive ramp system and several at-grade bus parking lots. The current configuration requires some buses to maneuver city streets adding to congestion. A staging and storage facility will replace the surface parking lots, improving the ability to get buses to the gates and out of the buildings without delays, Shuffield said. The project will create new public spaces including on decks over much of the current Lincoln tunnel portal.
The streetscape around the building will also be improved. The uninviting blank wall along 40th Street will be opened up with new retail space and a widened sidewalk to improve the streetscape experience.
The
project website can be found here.