Port in a Storm

Grid, Spring 1999

At 11:28 on a recent Saturday morning a Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH) train departs 33rd Street in Manhattan, a traveler on board bound for Newark International Airport. After another train and a grimy bus, the traveler arrives at Newark’s Terminal C. Time elapsed for the 15-mile trip: 62 minutes. The next morning, the traveler descends an escalator through a soaring glass and stainless-steel arrival hall in London’s Heathrow Airport. A waiting train whooshes the traveler at speeds of over 100 mph to Paddington Station in central London. Time elapsed: 15 minutes.

It is such contrasts that have come to haunt the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates not only Newark Airport, but also the Newark-bound train and bus. It’s a commonplace that the quasi-public Port Authority shapes the region and the economy as no other New York metro entity can. More than 14 million tons of freight pass through its container ports and other waterborne freight facilities each year. Its three major airports handle 84 million passengers annually; it collects tolls from 118 million people annually for its Hudson River tunnels and bridges; it operates its own transit system (PATH) and the nation’s busiest bus terminal, at 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan. Its real-estate holdings are scattered throughout the five boroughs and along the New Jersey side of the Hudson.

And yet its airports fall far behind major national-gateway competitors in customer comfort, satisfaction, and delay-free arrivals and departures. While most big-city airports now offer fast airport-to-city rail connections, New York users fume as their taxis or buses get clogged in Port Authority tunnels, and their trains rattle over bridges built at the turn of the century.

Winds of change are buffeting the Port Authority, however, because critics and even the Authority itself increasingly recognize that its lumbering, sometimes sclerotic conurbation of enterprises are less and less competitive in today’s volatile global economy. After a period of drift, then retrenchment, it is focusing–and, more importantly, rebuilding–the gigantic but obsolete transportation infrastructure it controls.

Consider John F. Kennedy International Airport. The $450 million Terminal 1 just opened. A new $1.5-billion International Arrivals building (Terminal 4) is under construction. American Airlines has announced that it will build a new, $1 billion terminal after already sinking $220 million to hold together its worn-out terminals 8 and 9. British Airways is in the midst of a phased, $200-million reconstruction of Terminal 7. A long-awaited, still-controversial $1.2-billion light-rail connection from the airport to the subway and Long Island Rail Road is underway. And that’s after billions have been spent on roadways, utilities, landscaping, and garages.

But investment elsewhere hardly lags JFK. Over 10 years, $824 million has been spent overhauling LaGuardia. The PA spent $225 million on a monorail at Newark Airport, plus hundreds of millions on other improvements. Additional hundreds of millions are committed or being spent on tunnels, bridges, the PATH system, and a new set of Hudson River ferry terminals. In January, the Authority announced a 40-year, $6-billion initiative to dredge harbor channels and upgrade landside facilities for a new generation of giant container ships.

Hey, Big Spender

Focusing on transportation infrastructure is a big enough job, most observers say. That’s because building, operating, and financing such facilities is becoming increasingly complex, especially at the jammed airports. New roads, gates, and taxiways must be inserted with surgical precision into space that was originally designed to support a fraction of today’s traffic load–while keeping the whole juggernaut in 24-hour business.

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, for example, has placed the bulk of the new International Arrivals Terminal inboard and outboard of the vastly overburdened original, snaking just a little of it through the existing building so that at least 10 gates remain operational throughout the project. It’s an eight-phase construction ballet of rerouted corridors, ticketing areas, and baggage-claim carousels along with the mind-boggling spaghetti of utilities. No matter how brilliant the design, says Tony Vacchione, associate partner at Skidmore Owings & Merrill, “you can’t built it if you don’t accommodate these logistical necessities.”

It is such complexities that push costs to astronomical levels. The 16-gate, $1-billion International Arrivals Terminal cost one-fourth the entire 26-square-mile Denver airport, completed only in 1995. And the billion-dollar terminal is no longer confined to New York: San Francisco’s overhauled terminal complex is coming in at $2.5 billion; Boston is spending $1 billion on a new replacement terminal. And new airports in Hong Kong and Osaka cost a dizzying $20 billion and $14 billion respectively.

The new work at Terminals 1, 4, 7 and 8 at JFK will probably trigger near-term replacement of Terminals 2 and 3 (leased by Delta) and terminals 5 and 6 (TWA). New billions may be needed, according to Wood Lockhart, a pilot for a major airline who also has a Ph.D. in architectural history. And the money’s not just to handle the continued growth in travel. As in other older cities, New York metro airports “are not configured for the new generation of much larger airplanes” due early next century. These planes may seat 600 or more passengers, says Lockhart, who sits on an International Civil Aviation Association committee studying their effect on airports, and may require wider taxiways, greater spacing between runways, and reconfigured gates. Ticketing, departure lounges, and baggage-claim systems may need major reconstruction.

Streamlining the Colossus

Where is the money to come from? The Port Authority points to improving revenues, but most of its activities earn only modest profits or lose money, which is among the reasons it has pledged to narrow its agenda, focusing primarily on building, operating, and maintaining transportation infrastructure. In targeting transportation the Port has steadily ramped up capital spending, from $669 million in 1995 to a record $1.1 billion in 1998, according to Authority spokesman David Cahill. The current spending level will likely continue for at least several years. “It’s the right direction,” says Hugh O’Neill, who was the Authority’s assistant director for planning and business development from 1985 to 1991.

But it also represents a massive shift and an arguably diminished role for a once-proud empire. From its roots in 1921 as the operator of the Hudson River tunnels, the Port Authority has grown into a colossus with $2.2 billion in 1997 gross operating revenues. Over the years, says H. Claude Shostal, president of the Regional Plan Association, “They took a lot on, and became large, and lost their focus somewhat.” Non-core assets include the World Trade Center; industrial parks in Elizabeth, N.J.; Bathgate, in the Bronx; and Yonkers. It is involved in the Newark Legal Center, the Essex County Resource Recovery facility, the Staten Island Teleport, and is a partner in the Queens West development and in a mixed-use waterfront development in Hoboken.

“I think there is a role for the Port Authority to invest where a quasi-public entity can stimulate private interests,” explains O’Neill, who now heads Appleseed, a consulting firm that does a mix of economic and community development. “You build your success, and then get out.” While this has been the rationale behind the Port’s past economic-development activities, critics see the Port as insufficiently agile to play the real-estate game.

The PA’s huge, vertically integrated management infrastructure was created in part to execute projects on the order of the World Trade Center, but such iconic megaprojects are no longer the economic-development order of the day. The Authority is negotiating a contract of sale on the Yonkers Industrial Park. An agent will soon be hired to net lease the Newark Legal Center.

This divestment of activities unrelated to transportation continues to move slowly. The World Trade Center has seen $377 million worth of upgrading in preparation for turning it over to a private real estate enterprise through a long-term operating and managing lease.

The WTC earned only $5 million for the Authority in 1997, but the picture has gotten much rosier. A blockbuster, 600,000-square-foot lease by Empire Blue Cross last year brought the complex to well above 90% occupancy, and a number of smaller leases filled it to near capacity. Early this year, Sun Microsystems leased more than 40,000 square feet; WTC real estate executives hope to use that deal to bring in other high-tech firms to create their own Silicon Alley within the complex.

An intended sale of the World Trade Center was announced at the nadir of the real-estate business cycle. but the bid-out of a long-term lease for day-to-day operations and capital investments has still not gotten beyond the prequalification process now that many observers see the cycle nearing a peak. (The Authority will still own the land and buildings.) It planned to sign an agreement by the third quarter of 1999, but an Authority source says this will not likely occur until early next year.

The Port does have one closely watched economic-development project in the pipeline, says Cherrie Nanninga, the Authority’s director of real estate, and that is the offering of 1 million square feet of air rights for a new skyscraper over the Port Authority Bus Terminal. (The Authority will obtain some combination of up-front payment and rent proceeds.)

The deal is made attractive by the sunnier development climate of Times Square, The 42nd Development Project brought in architect Robert A.M. Stern’s office to help shape proposal guidelines prepared with the Port Authority by architects Beyer Blinder Belle. Five strong teams submitted responses: Silverstein Properties with Kohn Pederson Fox Architects; Park Tower Realty with architects Wood and Zapata; Forest City Ratner with Hardy Holzmann Pfeiffer, Norman Rosenblum, and Perkins Eastman architects; Laurence Rubin with Starrett Corp. and Vornado (Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, architect); and LCOR with HOK. The Port Authority’s selection committee is in its final phase of evaluation, says Nanninga, “We’ve got five exciting proposals.” Beyer Blinder Belle is helping in the evaluations as is E & Y Kenneth Leventhal (EYKL) for market and financial issues. A short list is in preparation. “The next steps will be discussed with the Port Authority’s Board of Commissioners,” adds Nanninga.

Forging a New Identity

In spite of its restructuring efforts, there are still many who see the Port Authority as a top-down, command-and-control dinosaur. “It has become a mechanism for poor management and transfer payments to New Jersey.” says Joseph B. Rose, Chairman of the New York City Planning Commission and director of the Dept. of City Planning. “It’s a disgrace to New York that it has allowed the situation to persist.”

Though the city has vocally focused on the subsidizing of New Jersey, the Port attracts plenty of other critics, though almost no insiders or informed observers will go on the record–especially if they seek work from or do work for the Authority. One public official found the Authority’s planning processes simply “bewildering.”

But the Port will only face greater challenges to its planning acumen and leadership. Almost every observer of regional economic health thinks that fast, efficient rail service to JFK is vital, for example. If the Port succumbs to pressure from airlines on financing for the Airtrain (in a suit, the carriers have objected to using an FAA-approved passenger tax), or poorly executes it, the billions sunk into facilities could prove wasted, failing to arrest JFK’s market-share slide.

Executive Director Robert E. Boyle also must deal with the famously pugnacious Giuliani Administration. Giuliani has made a persuasive case that airport profits go primarily to underwrite subsidies for PATH and the bus terminal, both of which benefit New Jersey commuters. And the mayor seeks to wrest control of the New York airports from the Authority. The lease on the city-owned airports comes due in 2015.

No friend of the city takeover, RPA’s Shostal nonetheless agrees that Port-determined differentials in PATH fares (they are one-third less than Transit Authority fares) and tolls (a $4 roundtrip compared to a $7 one for other bridges and tunnels) are indefensible. “We could build everything we need to build,” says Shostal, if these figures were equalized. He admits that such changes are “highly politically charged.”

Internally, the Port has made changes to get projects built faster and operate facilities more efficiently. It may already be the most privatized airport operator in the U.S. In terms of design and construction, it is among the most flexible. Depending on the project, it will design, bid and build in the conventional way or design-build it. At JFK’s Terminal 4 and the Airtrain, the Port has contracted with operating entities and airline consortia to design, build, operate, and manage. (DBOM is the Authority’s unfortunate acronym for this.)

The Authority still maintains a large, diversified staff of engineers and architects, whose job it is to design and manage construction. It has its own quality-assurance division, even its own materials-testing labs.

Robert Davidson, chief architect in the Engineering/Architecture Division, commands 70 architects who design everything from monorail stations to terminal improvements and toll booths. (The division consists of 700, the balance of whom are engineers.) It’s not unprecedented for airport operators to have a substantial in-house design staff, but it is unusual. Davidson says the complexity of the Port’s projects demands the “extensive knowledge base” of his “very experienced and very talented group.”

Depending on need, Davidson can staff a project entirely in-house, as a combination of in-house and on-call consultants (i.e., consultants who have long-term agreements with the Authority), or entirely with consultants. “The thrust is efficiency and flexibility,” he explains adding that the setup puts his group constantly in competition with outside consultants. “We’ll get to do the work as long as it’s the best quality.”

The latest facilities--the monorail and International Arrivals Halls, at Newark, and Terminal One, at JFK--are clearly superior to earlier work the Port has done. Planning for new facilities also appears to be more sophisticated. The Airtrain, for example, has been criticized because it will require passengers to change to and from the system at the Jamaica station of the Long Island Rail Road, exposing patrons to the vagaries of LIRR schedules. If the service proves fast, frequent and convenient (the Authority is studying baggage check-in at Jamaica--possibly even at Penn Station), it would be one of the first Port projects to exceed the generally low expectations its endless planning has created. That would be real evidence of a new and vital Port Authority.

Sidebar

New Facilities Up the Design Ante
An Assessment

As choices for business and leisure travel grow, cities are using airport facilities strategically, not only making sure they work well, but using terminal design to make that critical first impression and as a symbol for its host location. Increasingly airline associations and travel publications rate facilities not just for on-time arrivals and prompt luggage delivery, but for aesthetic appeal and wayfinding clarity. Unfortunately, Port Authority facilities have generally sent a less-than-positive message.

The situation is improving, however. Robert Davidson has raised the quality of the Port Authority’s design above the depths represented by the dingy, incomprehensibly laid-out Port Authority Bus Terminal. And outside architects who have worked with the Port universally laud Davidson’s defense of design quality within an organization in which inertia can still rule the day. Davidson’s graphics team, for example, fights a perpetually losing battle with facilities operators who seem to think nothing of slapping new signs next to, or over, old signs, no matter the amateurish image, visual chaos and wayfinding incomprehensibility that result.

Port Authority leadership has only intermittently seen design quality as central to its mission. But recent proposals (the Jamaica Airtrain station, the new terminals at JFK) demonstrate a renewed understanding that appealing design is intertwined with delivering good service.

There are those who think the Authority should use outside designers for all its projects. But there are strong examples elsewhere of in-house design excellence. Paul Andreu has built spectacular projects with his Paris Airports Authority; Roland Paoletti’s staff designers at the London Underground are equal to the work of the big names putting the finishing touches on the new Jubilee Line. Davidson’s team could, but has not yet reached these standards.

The International Arrivals Hall grafted onto Newark’s Terminal B introduces welcome daylight, but is otherwise blandly functional. The Newark Monorail, and canopies at JFK’s American terminal needed a lighter touch.

Outsourcing has its weaknesses, too. As the Port has privatized, more projects are done for “tenants” (airlines, usually) by outside designers. But familiarity with Port procedures has too often won out over design quality. William Nicholas Boudova, two of whose partners were once Authority designers, was responsible for the dismal, highway-strip look of LaGuardia’s Delta/Northwest terminal. Fortunately, the light-filled US Air terminal followed as did the elegant trusses of Terminal One (which is still marred by some clumsy details and prison-dayroom lighting at the departure lounges). Both SOM’s International Terminal and TAMS’ American terminal appear to be even better designs, but risk codifying a new airport clich�: the truss-supported, winglike curved roof. None look as elegantly detailed as the competition in London (Norman Foster), Hong Kong (also Foster), Osaka (Renzo Piano), Paris (Paul Andreu), or Kuala Lumpur (Kisho Kurakawa).

To its credit, the Authority has begun to introduce some of New York’s best firms in limited consulting roles, such as Smith-Miller and Hawkinson and Parsons + Fernandez-Casteilero. There are many firms in the city whose designs are top tier and who have amply demonstrated mastery of projects as complex as terminals, toll plazas or bus stations. If the New York region’s best talent was unleashed, there is no reason the Port’s facilities could not achieve unequaled greatness.

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	Port in a Storm Grid, Spring 1999 At 11:28 on a recent Saturday morning a Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH) train departs 33rd Street in Manhattan, a traveler on board bound for Newark International Airport. After another train and a grimy bus, the traveler arrives at Newark’s Terminal C. Time elapsed for the 15-mile trip: 62 minutes. The next morning, the traveler descends an escalator through a soaring glass and stainless-steel arrival hall in London’s Heathrow Airport. A waiting train whooshes the traveler at speeds of over 100 mph to Paddington Station in central London. Time elapsed: 15 minutes. It is such contrasts that have come to haunt the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates not only Newark Airport, but also the Newark-bound train and bus. It’s a commonplace that the quasi-public Port Authority shapes the region and the economy as no other New York metro entity can. More than 14 million tons of freight pass through its container ports and other waterborne freight facilities each year. Its three major airports handle 84 million passengers annually; it collects tolls from 118 million people annually for its Hudson River tunnels and bridges; it operates its own transit system (PATH) and the nation’s busiest bus terminal, at 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan. Its real-estate holdings are scattered throughout the five boroughs and along the New Jersey side of the Hudson. And yet its airports fall far behind major national-gateway competitors in customer comfort, satisfaction, and delay-free arrivals and departures. While most big-city airports now offer fast airport-to-city rail connections, New York users fume as their taxis or buses get clogged in Port Authority tunnels, and their trains rattle over bridges built at the turn of the century. Winds of change are buffeting the Port Authority, however, because critics and even the Authority itself increasingly recognize that its lumbering, sometimes sclerotic conurbation of enterprises are less and less competitive in today’s volatile global economy. After a period of drift, then retrenchment, it is focusing–and, more importantly, rebuilding–the gigantic but obsolete transportation infrastructure it controls. Consider John F. Kennedy International Airport. The $450 million Terminal 1 just opened. A new $1.5-billion International Arrivals building (Terminal 4) is under construction. American Airlines has announced that it will build a new, $1 billion terminal after already sinking $220 million to hold together its worn-out terminals 8 and 9. British Airways is in the midst of a phased, $200-million reconstruction of Terminal 7. A long-awaited, still-controversial $1.2-billion light-rail connection from the airport to the subway and Long Island Rail Road is underway. And that’s after billions have been spent on roadways, utilities, landscaping, and garages. But investment elsewhere hardly lags JFK. Over 10 years, $824 million has been spent overhauling LaGuardia. The PA spent $225 million on a monorail at Newark Airport, plus hundreds of millions on other improvements. Additional hundreds of millions are committed or being spent on tunnels, bridges, the PATH system, and a new set of Hudson River ferry terminals. In January, the Authority announced a 40-year, $6-billion initiative to dredge harbor channels and upgrade landside facilities for a new generation of giant container ships. Hey, Big Spender Focusing on transportation infrastructure is a big enough job, most observers say. That’s because building, operating, and financing such facilities is becoming increasingly complex, especially at the jammed airports. New roads, gates, and taxiways must be inserted with surgical precision into space that was originally designed to support a fraction of today’s traffic load–while keeping the whole juggernaut in 24-hour business. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, for example, has placed the bulk of the new International Arrivals Terminal inboard and outboard of the vastly overburdened original, snaking just a little of it through the existing building so that at least 10 gates remain operational throughout the project. It’s an eight-phase construction ballet of rerouted corridors, ticketing areas, and baggage-claim carousels along with the mind-boggling spaghetti of utilities. No matter how brilliant the design, says Tony Vacchione, associate partner at Skidmore Owings & Merrill, “you can’t built it if you don’t accommodate these logistical necessities.” It is such complexities that push costs to astronomical levels. The 16-gate, $1-billion International Arrivals Terminal cost one-fourth the entire 26-square-mile Denver airport, completed only in 1995. And the billion-dollar terminal is no longer confined to New York: San Francisco’s overhauled terminal complex is coming in at $2.5 billion; Boston is spending $1 billion on a new replacement terminal. And new airports in Hong Kong and Osaka cost a dizzying $20 billion and $14 billion respectively. The new work at Terminals 1, 4, 7 and 8 at JFK will probably trigger near-term replacement of Terminals 2 and 3 (leased by Delta) and terminals 5 and 6 (TWA). New billions may be needed, according to Wood Lockhart, a pilot for a major airline who also has a Ph.D. in architectural history. And the money’s not just to handle the continued growth in travel. As in other older cities, New York metro airports “are not configured for the new generation of much larger airplanes” due early next century. These planes may seat 600 or more passengers, says Lockhart, who sits on an International Civil Aviation Association committee studying their effect on airports, and may require wider taxiways, greater spacing between runways, and reconfigured gates. Ticketing, departure lounges, and baggage-claim systems may need major reconstruction. Streamlining the Colossus Where is the money to come from? The Port Authority points to improving revenues, but most of its activities earn only modest profits or lose money, which is among the reasons it has pledged to narrow its agenda, focusing primarily on building, operating, and maintaining transportation infrastructure. In targeting transportation the Port has steadily ramped up capital spending, from $669 million in 1995 to a record $1.1 billion in 1998, according to Authority spokesman David Cahill. The current spending level will likely continue for at least several years. “It’s the right direction,” says Hugh O’Neill, who was the Authority’s assistant director for planning and business development from 1985 to 1991. But it also represents a massive shift and an arguably diminished role for a once-proud empire. From its roots in 1921 as the operator of the Hudson River tunnels, the Port Authority has grown into a colossus with $2.2 billion in 1997 gross operating revenues. Over the years, says H. Claude Shostal, president of the Regional Plan Association, “They took a lot on, and became large, and lost their focus somewhat.” Non-core assets include the World Trade Center; industrial parks in Elizabeth, N.J.; Bathgate, in the Bronx; and Yonkers. It is involved in the Newark Legal Center, the Essex County Resource Recovery facility, the Staten Island Teleport, and is a partner in the Queens West development and in a mixed-use waterfront development in Hoboken. “I think there is a role for the Port Authority to invest where a quasi-public entity can stimulate private interests,” explains O’Neill, who now heads Appleseed, a consulting firm that does a mix of economic and community development. “You build your success, and then get out.” While this has been the rationale behind the Port’s past economic-development activities, critics see the Port as insufficiently agile to play the real-estate game. The PA’s huge, vertically integrated management infrastructure was created in part to execute projects on the order of the World Trade Center, but such iconic megaprojects are no longer the economic-development order of the day. The Authority is negotiating a contract of sale on the Yonkers Industrial Park. An agent will soon be hired to net lease the Newark Legal Center. This divestment of activities unrelated to transportation continues to move slowly. The World Trade Center has seen $377 million worth of upgrading in preparation for turning it over to a private real estate enterprise through a long-term operating and managing lease. The WTC earned only $5 million for the Authority in 1997, but the picture has gotten much rosier. A blockbuster, 600,000-square-foot lease by Empire Blue Cross last year brought the complex to well above 90% occupancy, and a number of smaller leases filled it to near capacity. Early this year, Sun Microsystems leased more than 40,000 square feet; WTC real estate executives hope to use that deal to bring in other high-tech firms to create their own Silicon Alley within the complex. An intended sale of the World Trade Center was announced at the nadir of the real-estate business cycle. but the bid-out of a long-term lease for day-to-day operations and capital investments has still not gotten beyond the prequalification process now that many observers see the cycle nearing a peak. (The Authority will still own the land and buildings.) It planned to sign an agreement by the third quarter of 1999, but an Authority source says this will not likely occur until early next year. The Port does have one closely watched economic-development project in the pipeline, says Cherrie Nanninga, the Authority’s director of real estate, and that is the offering of 1 million square feet of air rights for a new skyscraper over the Port Authority Bus Terminal. (The Authority will obtain some combination of up-front payment and rent proceeds.) The deal is made attractive by the sunnier development climate of Times Square, The 42nd Development Project brought in architect Robert A.M. Stern’s office to help shape proposal guidelines prepared with the Port Authority by architects Beyer Blinder Belle. Five strong teams submitted responses: Silverstein Properties with Kohn Pederson Fox Architects; Park Tower Realty with architects Wood and Zapata; Forest City Ratner with Hardy Holzmann Pfeiffer, Norman Rosenblum, and Perkins Eastman architects; Laurence Rubin with Starrett Corp. and Vornado (Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, architect); and LCOR with HOK. The Port Authority’s selection committee is in its final phase of evaluation, says Nanninga, “We’ve got five exciting proposals.” Beyer Blinder Belle is helping in the evaluations as is E & Y Kenneth Leventhal (EYKL) for market and financial issues. A short list is in preparation. “The next steps will be discussed with the Port Authority’s Board of Commissioners,” adds Nanninga. Forging a New Identity In spite of its restructuring efforts, there are still many who see the Port Authority as a top-down, command-and-control dinosaur. “It has become a mechanism for poor management and transfer payments to New Jersey.” says Joseph B. Rose, Chairman of the New York City Planning Commission and director of the Dept. of City Planning. “It’s a disgrace to New York that it has allowed the situation to persist.” Though the city has vocally focused on the subsidizing of New Jersey, the Port attracts plenty of other critics, though almost no insiders or informed observers will go on the record–especially if they seek work from or do work for the Authority. One public official found the Authority’s planning processes simply “bewildering.” But the Port will only face greater challenges to its planning acumen and leadership. Almost every observer of regional economic health thinks that fast, efficient rail service to JFK is vital, for example. If the Port succumbs to pressure from airlines on financing for the Airtrain (in a suit, the carriers have objected to using an FAA-approved passenger tax), or poorly executes it, the billions sunk into facilities could prove wasted, failing to arrest JFK’s market-share slide. Executive Director Robert E. Boyle also must deal with the famously pugnacious Giuliani Administration. Giuliani has made a persuasive case that airport profits go primarily to underwrite subsidies for PATH and the bus terminal, both of which benefit New Jersey commuters. And the mayor seeks to wrest control of the New York airports from the Authority. The lease on the city-owned airports comes due in 2015. No friend of the city takeover, RPA’s Shostal nonetheless agrees that Port-determined differentials in PATH fares (they are one-third less than Transit Authority fares) and tolls (a $4 roundtrip compared to a $7 one for other bridges and tunnels) are indefensible. “We could build everything we need to build,” says Shostal, if these figures were equalized. He admits that such changes are “highly politically charged.” Internally, the Port has made changes to get projects built faster and operate facilities more efficiently. It may already be the most privatized airport operator in the U.S. In terms of design and construction, it is among the most flexible. Depending on the project, it will design, bid and build in the conventional way or design-build it. At JFK’s Terminal 4 and the Airtrain, the Port has contracted with operating entities and airline consortia to design, build, operate, and manage. (DBOM is the Authority’s unfortunate acronym for this.) The Authority still maintains a large, diversified staff of engineers and architects, whose job it is to design and manage construction. It has its own quality-assurance division, even its own materials-testing labs. Robert Davidson, chief architect in the Engineering/Architecture Division, commands 70 architects who design everything from monorail stations to terminal improvements and toll booths. (The division consists of 700, the balance of whom are engineers.) It’s not unprecedented for airport operators to have a substantial in-house design staff, but it is unusual. Davidson says the complexity of the Port’s projects demands the “extensive knowledge base” of his “very experienced and very talented group.” Depending on need, Davidson can staff a project entirely in-house, as a combination of in-house and on-call consultants (i.e., consultants who have long-term agreements with the Authority), or entirely with consultants. “The thrust is efficiency and flexibility,” he explains adding that the setup puts his group constantly in competition with outside consultants. “We’ll get to do the work as long as it’s the best quality.” The latest facilities--the monorail and International Arrivals Halls, at Newark, and Terminal One, at JFK--are clearly superior to earlier work the Port has done. Planning for new facilities also appears to be more sophisticated. The Airtrain, for example, has been criticized because it will require passengers to change to and from the system at the Jamaica station of the Long Island Rail Road, exposing patrons to the vagaries of LIRR schedules. If the service proves fast, frequent and convenient (the Authority is studying baggage check-in at Jamaica--possibly even at Penn Station), it would be one of the first Port projects to exceed the generally low expectations its endless planning has created. That would be real evidence of a new and vital Port Authority. Sidebar New Facilities Up the Design Ante An Assessment As choices for business and leisure travel grow, cities are using airport facilities strategically, not only making sure they work well, but using terminal design to make that critical first impression and as a symbol for its host location. Increasingly airline associations and travel publications rate facilities not just for on-time arrivals and prompt luggage delivery, but for aesthetic appeal and wayfinding clarity. Unfortunately, Port Authority facilities have generally sent a less-than-positive message. The situation is improving, however. Robert Davidson has raised the quality of the Port Authority’s design above the depths represented by the dingy, incomprehensibly laid-out Port Authority Bus Terminal. And outside architects who have worked with the Port universally laud Davidson’s defense of design quality within an organization in which inertia can still rule the day. Davidson’s graphics team, for example, fights a perpetually losing battle with facilities operators who seem to think nothing of slapping new signs next to, or over, old signs, no matter the amateurish image, visual chaos and wayfinding incomprehensibility that result. Port Authority leadership has only intermittently seen design quality as central to its mission. But recent proposals (the Jamaica Airtrain station, the new terminals at JFK) demonstrate a renewed understanding that appealing design is intertwined with delivering good service. There are those who think the Authority should use outside designers for all its projects. But there are strong examples elsewhere of in-house design excellence. Paul Andreu has built spectacular projects with his Paris Airports Authority; Roland Paoletti’s staff designers at the London Underground are equal to the work of the big names putting the finishing touches on the new Jubilee Line. Davidson’s team could, but has not yet reached these standards. The International Arrivals Hall grafted onto Newark’s Terminal B introduces welcome daylight, but is otherwise blandly functional. The Newark Monorail, and canopies at JFK’s American terminal needed a lighter touch. Outsourcing has its weaknesses, too. As the Port has privatized, more projects are done for “tenants” (airlines, usually) by outside designers. But familiarity with Port procedures has too often won out over design quality. William Nicholas Boudova, two of whose partners were once Authority designers, was responsible for the dismal, highway-strip look of LaGuardia’s Delta/Northwest terminal. Fortunately, the light-filled US Air terminal followed as did the elegant trusses of Terminal One (which is still marred by some clumsy details and prison-dayroom lighting at the departure lounges). Both SOM’s International Terminal and TAMS’ American terminal appear to be even better designs, but risk codifying a new airport clich�: the truss-supported, winglike curved roof. None look as elegantly detailed as the competition in London (Norman Foster), Hong Kong (also Foster), Osaka (Renzo Piano), Paris (Paul Andreu), or Kuala Lumpur (Kisho Kurakawa). To its credit, the Authority has begun to introduce some of New York’s best firms in limited consulting roles, such as Smith-Miller and Hawkinson and Parsons + Fernandez-Casteilero. There are many firms in the city whose designs are top tier and who have amply demonstrated mastery of projects as complex as terminals, toll plazas or bus stations. If the New York region’s best talent was unleashed, there is no reason the Port’s facilities could not achieve unequaled greatness.
� copyright 2006 James S. Russell \| terms