WTC Report To Call for Closing No. 1 Train for Months Downtown

The Port Authority is slated to recommend a closure of the No. 1 train south of Chambers Street for a series of months, likely during the summer, according to multiple people familiar with the agency's plans.

The recommendation is expected to be part of the Port Authority's report on dates and budgets, which will likely announce the rebuilding effort is facing around $1.7 billion in cost overruns.

The closure would not be unprecedented, as the M.T.A. has closed the train for many weekends south of Chambers Street to help construction efforts, running shuttle buses between South Ferry and Chambers. But the length of the closure would be certain to frustrate commuters from Staten Island and could cause complications with the service on the 1/2/3 lines.

Perhaps no element of the World Trade Center site typifies the complexity of its construction more than the No. 1 train. Well above the active PATH lines the Port Authority has undertaken an extraordinarily costly effort to create a trestle system to support the active No. 1 line as the agency digs out the soil and ground underneath it. All must happen while the box holding the No. 1 train cannot move more than two inches at a time, according to the Port Authority. And over the next few years, the various planned components that surround it--the memorial, the PATH hub, the museum, the Silverstein towers, Greenwich Street--must be built with the box still in place. (The Times had a story in May on the physical task of shoring up the box, with a graphic.)

Aside from the troubles with busing thousands of people between Chambers Street and Lower Manhattan's tip, a terminus of the 1 line at Chambers apparently causes greater complications throughout the rest of the No. 1 line, and also on the Nos. 2 and 3 lines, according to people with knowledge of the situation.