The Port Authority

A little over a month after the Port Authority hiked tolls on its six bridges and tunnels, there has been a 2.9 percent drop in the number of vehicles commuting amid Manhattan, New Jersey and Staten Island-- more than the 2 percent dip the agency expected and more than the 2.3 percent dip that followed the previous toll increase in 2001, according to The Times' CityRoom blog.

More than 350,000 cars and trucks used the bridges and tunnels on an average weekday before the toll increase. Since March 2, usage has dropped by over 10,000 vehicles every day. In the past, it's taken between as long as nine months for traffic to drop following a toll increase.  read more »

The Port Authority is opening a new entrance at the World Trade Center PATH Station tonight in time for the Tuesday morning commute.  read more »

Last week it seemed like the prolonged standoff between the Bryant Park Corporation and the company that manages Fashion Week, IMG, might finally be resolved when the Port Authority announced that the biannual event was slated to move to the Manhattan bus terminal in 2010.

Now Fashion Week’s future is once again up in the air, and, contrary to what you might think, the problem is not the venue itself—anyone who has picked up a copy of Vogue is surely familiar with the industry’s penchant for photographing leggy, designer-clad models in gritty environments, and what’s grungier than the Port Authority?

Real Estate Weekly reports that Port Authority officials realized that the southern portion of the bus terminal does not have enough elevators and escalators to ferry the 2,000-plus peanut gallery to the rooftop parking lot where the shows would take place.  read more »

A new Regional Plan Association report (PDF) calls for the proposed rail link beneath the Hudson River from the Meadowlands Arena to near Penn Station to be extended to Manhattan's East Side, possibly near Grand Central Station. The extension would save the estimated 60,000 commuters who travel through Penn Station to the East Side and back at least 20 minutes each way per day.

The connection from the Meadowlands to a new station near Penn Station--through what's called Access to the Region's Core or ARC--is supposed to be completed by 2017 (construction by the Port Authority and New Jersey Transit starts next year). But the RPA argues in its new report that that the connection should merely be the first leg.  read more »