Odors on PATH Trains

[Gregzs]

There was a time when I was on the trains more than twice each day. I just didn't want to know what that was.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/n...senses.html?_r=2&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha29


On PATH Trains, Noses Wrinkle at a Moldy Mystery
By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY

There comes a moment for riders of the PATH train, a shared, unspoken experience when the air is pierced by a distinct odor.
Sometimes it hits while descending from the street to the station. Sometimes it strikes inside the train. Then just when the nose adjusts, another distinctive smell emerges as the train goes beneath the Hudson River.

For decades, PATH riders have wondered about the smells of their trains. Brian J. Cudahy mentioned the smells in his 1975 book, ???Rails Under the Mighty Hudson.??? He speculated that PATH stations smelled different from New York City subway stations because they tend to be deeper underground, and posited that a moldy odor could be caused by Hudson River water seepage into the tunnels. The only thing he could confirm was that it was distinctive.

???If you had me blindfolded in 1950 and you walked me into Hudson Terminal, I would have known where I was,??? Mr. Cudahy said in an interview. That is because while the subways ???always had the smell of brake shoes,??? PATH trains smelled of ???a touch of dampness.???
No one really knows why PATH trains smell the way they do. New Jersey Transit and Amtrak trains also pass under the Hudson yet do not have the same issues.

PATH riders say, perhaps a bit defensively, that no matter how bad it gets during their ride, the subway is far worse. And yet, there is no denying their own predicament.

???What is that smell???? Bryan Ulrich asked as he settled onto a PATH bench at the 33rd Street station and waited for a Hoboken-bound train. He sniffed and searched for words. ???Mold and chemicals? Something unpleasant? At least it doesn???t smell like urine.???

A more precise answer might be available from Larry Sunshine, president of Plasma Air International, which tries to smooth over unpleasant smells from apartment buildings, schools and airports. Mr. Sunshine, whose experience includes helping to remove smells coming from toilets on 300 train cars in Sydney, Australia, accepted an invitation to try to identify the odors peculiar to PATH trains.

He eagerly arrived at the 33rd Street PATH station, and immediately identified ammonia after stepping into the terminal and spotting the sparkling floors.

Minutes later, Mr. Sunshine suffered from what can be one of the perils of olfactory identification: he adjusted to the scent and it no longer bothered him.

???I know I???m not in a flower patch,??? he said. ???You get used to it very quickly.???

That changed as soon as he boarded a Hoboken-bound car. He curled up his nostrils, rolled back his eyes and lapsed into unflappable concentration. ???I smell something here,??? he said. ???It???s some chemicals.??? He glanced down at the car???s scratch-free, shiny blue seats and asked a PATH official rapid-fire questions about the car???s age.

Then he had his answer: The smell was from the new plastic seats and the newly printed advertising posters.

He noticed that PATH trains smell different from PATH stations. At every Manhattan stop he jumped up and identified smells like ???mildewy steam??? and ???lack of ventilation.???

Just inside the Hudson River tunnel, these smells seemed to blend together. Mr. Sunshine???s ears popped from the air pressure, and his face contorted with curiosity. The new-plastic smell was overwhelmed by an even more potent odor that he said he often eliminates from the basements of homes and schools.

???I smell that mildewy, moldy ??? it???s definitely organic,??? Mr. Sunshine said.
A spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said that PATH was in the process of replacing its 350-car fleet, which explains the new-car smell. He emphasized that the agency did everything it could to give its customers a comfortable experience, even if the tunnels could not be lined with roses.

Mr. Sunshine made a point of noting that the smells did not seem to be hazardous, but he acknowledged that their origins were more puzzling than those found on the subway. When he stepped out of the PATH terminal back at 33rd Street and into a subway station, he had no trouble identifying the scents around him.

With a heightened degree of confidence, he said, ???It smells like French fries.???

 

[Big Pimpin]

How the fuck any human can live in an environment where mass transportation is a way of life is beyond me.

 

[Gregzs]

I was in lower Manhattan a few weeks ago and walked right by St. Paul's; I couldn't see this station from there.

After an Earlier Delay, the Fulton Street Transit Center Finally Rises - NYTimes.com

December 23, 2011, 6:57 pm
After an Earlier Delay, the Fulton Street Transit Center Finally Rises

By DAVID W. DUNLAP

David W. Dunlap/The New York Times Uday R. Durg.
For a moment, Uday R. Durg, who directs Lower Manhattan projects for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority???s capital construction unit, looks out of place in his hard hat and reflective orange safety vest. He is standing just a few yards from a construction zone at the Fulton Street Transit Center, but he is surrounded by ordinary straphangers in ordinary street clothes.
Whether hurrying through the handsome new straightaway that has replaced the maze of switchback ramps along the A and C lines or standing on the widened, ornamented and newly opened southbound platform on the R line, the traveling public has begun to occupy completed portions of the sprawling complex. ???For the first time,??? Mr. Durg said, ???people are walking through the transit center.???
It will be more than two years before they can gaze up at the 110-foot-high dome ??? which transit officials are calling the oculus ??? that crowns the main transit center building, at Fulton Street and Broadway. But the volume already exists in the raw structural steel, and it???s impossible not to be a bit awe-struck when walking into the soaring space, whose complexity calls to mind the drawings of Piranesi. ???Every time I see this, my blood races,??? Mr. Durg said. ???This is what an engineer dreams of.???
Multimedia

Linking Subway Lines


An animated walk through the Fulton Street Transit Center from 2007. (The completion dates were correct at the time.)

• See the animated graphic»

The Fulton Street Transit Center is the sum of many parts. From west to east, they include a new concourse between the E and R lines; a rehabilitated R train station; a passageway under Dey Street that links the PATH, E and R lines to stations on the 2, 3, 4, 5, A, C, J and Z lines; a new entrance (or headhouse) at Dey Street and Broadway; the main transit center building and the rehabilitated 19th-century Corbin Building on Broadway, with 70,000 square feet of retail space; the new mezzanine along the A and C lines; and a rehabilitated station on the 2 and 3 lines.
If there is a single underlying design philosophy, it is to try to make some logistical and visual sense out of the tangle of subway lines that converge in the blocks east of the World Trade Center. But there is more. James Carpenter, a master in the use and manipulation of light, has been involved as collaborating artist in the design of the oculus and the long Dey Street passageway. ???We???re trying to create a great public space, not just connect stations,??? Mr. Durg said.
When its design was unveiled in 2004, the center was to have been completed in 2007 at a cost of $750 million. The schedule now calls for its completion in 2014 at a cost of $1.4 billion. Like so many other projects in the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan, the transit center was announced with an understated budget and an overstated timetable. Officials were eager ??? probably too eager ??? to reassure New York that downtown could be instantly rebuilt after the catastrophic destruction caused by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Inevitably, problems and complications played havoc with the estimates. When timetables slipped and the budgets grew, again and again, a general skepticism took hold about reconstruction efforts. But at the opening of the memorial on the attacks??? 10th anniversary, as the public focused again on the area around the World Trade Center, it became clear that many of the grand plans were finally taking three-dimensional form, in steel and concrete.

David W. Dunlap/The New York Times Interior of the main transit center building under construction.
In the last few months, at the transit center, parts of the A and C mezzanine have opened, as has the southbound platform of the Cortlandt Street station on the R line. The construction of an entrance at 135 William Street and the northbound platform of the Cortlandt Street station had already been finished, as had a temporary passageway from the A and C lines to the 4 and 5 lines. In the spring, the transportation authority expects to begin in earnest its search for a retail operator who will run the space in the main building and in the Corbin Building under a master lease. By the summer, Mr. Durg said, the Dey Street headhouse, passageway and concourse will be completed.
When that happens, the public will once again have a chance to see all the panels composing Margie Hughto???s ???Trade, Treasure and Travel,??? a series of 10 ceramic relief murals that were installed in the Cortlandt Street station in 1997 as part of the Arts for Transit program. Her work, influenced by the Ishtar Gate of Babylon but featuring contemporary imagery as well, was meant to evoke an archaeological treasure house. One panel shows the World Trade Center, rising in the distance over the Brooklyn Bridge, against a blue sky and a cumulus cloud. The transportation authority will place a plaque next to this work explaining that the murals survived the attacks.
Besides maintaining the artistic integrity of Ms. Hughto???s composition, the inclusion of the World Trade Center panel will enrich the sense of history that the Fulton Street Transit Center carries forward. Those who care to do so will be able to pause for a moment and recall a time when a billowing form behind the twin towers could only have been imagined as a passing cloud.
This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: December 27, 2011
An earlier version of this post incorrectly described the entrance to the Fulton Street Transit Center at 135 William Street. It is a new entrance, not a rehabilitated one. The post also misstated one of the subway lines served by the new center. The M train, rerouted last year, no longer runs through Lower Manhattan, as it did when the center was planned. In one reference, the post also incorrectly described a mezzanine. It parallels the A and C lines, not the A and E lines.

 

[lacero]

interesting thanks for sharing.

 

[ExLe]

YouTube Video

 

[getmyjive11]

The smell is hobo piss.

 

[min0 lee]

The smell is hobo piss.[/QUOT]
Everybody pisses and shits there.

 

[Gregzs]

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304626804579363013633022416?mod=dist_smartbrief

Port Authority Funds PATH Link to Newark Airport

$1.5 Billion Project is in Capital Spending Plan, Along With Airport Renovations

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey will forge ahead with a $1.5 billion plan to connect its PATH train system to the rail station at Newark Liberty International Airport, officials said Tuesday.

The PATH extension to the airport from its current terminus in downtown Newark is a key priority of New Jersey officials at the bistate authority. It also has drawn support from real estate interests in downtown Manhattan, who believe a quicker connection to a key regional airport will boost the competitiveness of a rebounding residential and office district.

The announcement comes as part of the Port Authority's proposed 10-year, $27.6 billion capital spending plan, which was unveiled Tuesday morning at a committee meeting of the authority's Board of Commissioners. The spending plan had been delayed for months by wrangling within the agency, as representatives of New York and New Jersey negotiated over which of the states' respective priorities would get funding, officials said.

Among the other big-ticket projects the authority will commit to completing by 2023 are $8 billion in upgrades to two of its most-maligned facilities: the Central Terminal Building at La Guardia Airport and Terminal A at Newark. The authority will also spend to upgrade PATH stations, improve access to container port facilities and continue major repair operations, such as the $1.2 billion project to replace the 85-year-old suspender cables that support the roadways across the George Washington Bridge.

Officials hailed the plan as part of a continuing effort to return the authority to its core mission: building and maintaining the transportation infrastructure that links the states and the region. The agency recently endured more than a decade of politically contentious efforts to rebuild the World Trade Center complex and continues to absorb criticism after apparently politically motivated lane closures at the George Washington Bridge last year.

The authority will focus on keeping its costs in balance and managing its debts as the capital plan is adjusted over the next decade, Vice Chairman Scott Rechler said. If costs increase, some projects will have to "exit" the authority's agenda, or new sources of capital will have to be developed to pay for them, he added.

"We're going to pay as we go, and if we can't afford to do something, we're not going to do it," Commissioner David Steiner said.

New Jersey officials have lobbied hard for the PATH extension, including the now-departed deputy executive director of the authority, Bill Baroni, who resigned in the bridge scandal. In September, The Wall Street Journal reported that Mr. Baroni, in negotiations to bring major air-carrier service to Atlantic City International Airport, had suggested that the authority would be willing to complement new service by building the rail link to Newark.

United Airlines eventually announced a decision to extend service to Atlantic City, and an airline spokesman said at the time that discussions of the PATH extension project were "irrelevant to the Atlantic City service." United is the dominant airline at Newark, carrying about 70% of the passengers who use the airport annually.

The project has strong support from groups that have lobbied to improve the region's airports, such as the nonprofit Global Gateway Alliance.

"Extending PATH from the World Trade Center stop directly to Newark Airport is affordable," the group's Chairman, Joe Sitt, said Tuesday. "It is doable, requiring a less than two mile track extension from Newark Penn Station, rather than having to dig a new tunnel or build flyovers. It is good for New York. It is good for New Jersey."

Officials inside and outside the authority have questioned whether the PATH spending should be as high a priority as it has been in the new capital plan. Several pointed to ongoing state-of-good-repair needs at the authority's two tunnels and four bridges.

A port spokesman said that about $1.2 billion of the $1.5 billion total PATH project cost will be spent over the decade covered by the plan.

Meanwhile, the authority still must cope with its most eye-catching and politically delicate project of all: in the next five years, it will spend $4.9 billion to complete the development of the World Trade Center complex in lower Manhattan, officials said.