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Durg and Wu review excavation progress
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More than 5,000 cubic yards has been dug out so far, and that's not the half of it. Crews excavating the road base under Dey Street still have to remove plenty more earth -- as well as old bricks, pipes, cables, and conduits -- before they can start building the new block-long, 29-foot-wide pedestrian concourse.
But by 2009, excavation for the Dey Street Pedestrian Concourse will be a distant memory in the minds of hundreds of thousands of commuters walking underground between the Fulton Street Transit Center and the World Trade Center Transportation Hub.
Since the beginning, the concourse has been an essential part of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA)'s Transit Center plans. Its creation will allow around 275,000 daily subway riders to transfer between the Fulton Street/Broadway-Nassau station's nine lines to the R/W at Cortlandt Street and the World Trade Center (WTC) PATH station. The MTA also recently announced revised plans that extend the underground connector to the E platform at the WTC -- stretching the project's $844 million budget for the benefit of downtown commuters.
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| The secant-pile auger will soon move to Broadway |
But for the next two years, those commuters will bear witness to the construction of this major transit center element. Already pedestrians have seen the large-scale effort that crews from MTA and its contractor, Slattery Skanska, have exerted since the award of contract on July 29, 2005.
After all, the MTA has worked closely with the New York City Department of Transportation and the Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center (LMCCC) to keep Dey Street's sidewalks open to huge numbers of pedestrians. That maintenance and protection of traffic also includes keeping two lanes of vehicular traffic flowing near the site both on Church Street and Broadway.
"People are very cooperative," says Uday Durg, P.E., the MTA's program manager for the transit center. "They know what's going on, and they want to see it done, so they're very helpful."
As a 21-year MTA engineering veteran, Durg brings tremendous experience to the project and recognizes the challenges of building the station in the midst of more than $20 billion worth of construction now in play south of Canal Street.
On a November tour of the worksite, Durg descended down a ladder at "Area 1" on the west end of Dey Street (at the Cortlandt Street R/W station). There, about 10 feet below grade, he stood with MTA Construction Manager Hsin Wu to review the crew's careful hand removal of backfill that surrounds the water, gas, and sewer mains; electric lines; and fiber-optic ducts.
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| The secant wall begins to take shape on Broadway |
Workers focus on limited sections of the excavation at a time. They begin the process by removing just a few 5-by-10-foot decking panels to open the road bed below. From there, they fill bins and oversized canvas bags with the backfill, which a crane extracts and dumps into a truck for carting. Once enough backfill has been removed, crews can "hang" the utilities -- that is, tie them at the same underground position so service is not disrupted.
In coming months, Area 1's utilities will be safely hung and Durg's team will excavate beneath them to 50 feet below grade. That level will be the floor of the pedestrian concourse tube, or "box." Concrete pour for the permanent work at the R/W underpass will begin here in early 2007.
The same process continues eastward to Broadway, where the concourse will link to the main entrance area of the transit center. Construction of that main entrance, where the Transit Center will rise at the corner of Broadway and Fulton, is planned to start in mid-2007.
Today, MTA crews there are working to shore up the underground structures -- including that of the historic Corbin Building at the corner of John Street -- and prepare for the 80-foot-tall secant-pile auger to be moved there from Dey Street in mid-December. The rig is so heavy that a special steel platform has been installed to hold it, and from that platform the high-precision rig will simultaneously excavate dirt and drill piles to form the work site's secant wall.
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| Utility excavation continues under Dey Street |
With the secant wall in place, Durg's team will link the transit center with the 400-foot-long east-west Dey Street Concourse by 2008, ultimately tying in to revamped subway platforms and new station entrances in the base of the Corbin Building and at the southern corner of Dey and Broadway (replacing the two-story 189 Broadway building).
Durg says construction of the Fulton Street Transit Center is on target, and crews operate like clockwork, maintaining momentum and a near-spotless safety record. And though much work remains before the center is complete in summer 2009, engineers and field managers are working side by side to streamline plans and overcome challenges. "You have good days and bad, but at the end of the day you always find a solution," says Durg.
View video animations of the Fulton Street Transit Center's interior and exterior, as well as its Lexington Avenue Line Platform, Transfer Concourse Level, and Dey Street Passageway.
Click hereto see the latest information on the construction of the Fulton Street Transit Center.
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