Port Authority unveils new, electric
concepts for Midtown Bus Terminal
BY MARK HALLUM
The Port Authority of New
York and New Jersey
produced details on reenvisioning
the Midtown Bus
Terminal on Jan. 21 that will
keep the facility within its current
boundaries and accommodate
zero-emissions technology.
The plan consolidates up to 30
proposals and Executive Director
Rick Cotton is confi dent that the
agency has faithfully designed
a plan that will please residents
of the surrounding community
as well as commuters who held
the belief that the reincarnation
would be less convenient to the 12
connecting subway lines.
All buses will also be stored
off-street with charging capacities
for an entire fl eet.
“We are eliminating the two
alternatives that involve bus facilities
west of 11th Avenue. We are
proceeding with the base building
place alternative, but we are making
dramatic modifi cations to address
what we heard,” Cotton said.
“Obviously, we are in an extremely
diffi cult time; no one makes light
of that. But this is a project where
our target is to have the new Port
Authority Bus Terminal open in
the 2030 to 2031 timeframe, it is
a structure that is designed to last
30 years. So, this is the long term.”
One remaining obstacle to
the Port Authorities’ ambitions
PHOTO: PORT AUTHORITY OF NEW YORK AND NEW JERSEY
remains the fi nancial fallout from
COVID-19 and the expectation
that funding for the project will
need the support of the federal
government, for which Cotton
said the agency is still lobbying
for in Washington.
Some sources of funding include
the proceeds from the sale
of development rights of four new
high-rise towers, payments in lieu
of taxes with the New York City
government, and grants from the
federal government.
The new main terminal will
boast fi ve fl oors of about 160 bus
gates from 2 million square feet
that Cotton said would be fully
Americans with Disabilities Act
compliant.
Staging and storage of buses will
take place on four stories between
Ninth and Tenth Avenues which
will have the capacity for 300 to
350 buses. Up to 350,000 square
feet of ramps between Tenth and
11th Avenues will give buses direct
access to the Lincoln Tunnel and a
new underpass below Ninth Avenue
to the lower levels of the facility will
reduce congestion on main roads.
During the reconstruction of
the main terminal, Port Authority
expects to have a temporary
terminal a block to the southwest
to continue operations. The temporary
terminal would then serve
as the indoor staging and storage
area, according to Chief of Major
Capital Projects Steven Plate.
Thursday marked the day
that the Federal Transit Administration
requested to begin an
environmental review and the
Port Authority put a request for
industry feedback about how to
implement these plans.
The new projections for the
facility, which has been updated
every few decades since it was
built in 1950 to the most recent
facelift happening in the 1980s,
will offer 3.5 acres of green space
and the exterior will have retail
space facing the street.
According to Cotton, Port Authority
will not need to acquire
more land for the development.
Maloney urges Biden and Harris to finally make the
Equal Rights Amendment part of the U.S. Constitution
BY ROBERT POZARYCKI
New York Congresswoman
Carolyn Maloney wants
the Biden administration
to seize the best opportunity in
years to ratify the Equal Rights
Amendment (ERA), a nearly
50-year effort to formally encode
gender equality in the U.S.
Constitution.
Maloney, who represents parts
of western Queens, northern
Brooklyn, Midtown Manhattan
and the Lower East Side, wrote
to President Joe Biden and Vice
President Kamala Harris on
Friday urging that they move
toward completing the ratifi cation
of the amendment. That
process was impeded, according
to the congresswoman, by former
President Donald Trump, who
signed a legal memo during his
administration which prevented
the certifi cation process with the
National Archivist from moving
forward.
Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney.
The Biden-Harris ticket
had made ratifying the ERA a
campaign promise in the 2020
election.
The ERA — which would
formally acknowledge that all
men and women are created
equal, and endowed with the
same inalienable rights — met the
fi rst two phases of the three-part
ratifi cation process in Congress
between 1971 and 1972, securing
suffi cient majorities in the House
FILE PHOTO/MARK HALLUM
and Senate. But the ERA came
with a sunset clause in the form of
a deadline for ratifi cation within
seven years of Congressional
approval.
All Constitutional amendments
must receive a two-thirds majority
vote in both houses of Congress,
then be approved by three-fourths
of all state legislatures, to be fully
ratifi ed. Constitutional amendments
are so rare that there have
been just 27 amendments since
the U.S. Constitution was ratifi ed
in 1789 — with the most recent
amendment ratifi ed 28 years ago,
in 1992.
A few states short of ratifi cation,
the deadline was extended in 1979
by three years, but it lapsed in 1982
without any other states taking up
the amendment for a vote.
The MeToo movement revived
efforts in recent years to get the
ERA ratifi ed. Nevada’s legislature
passed the ERA in 2017, followed
a year later by legislators in Illinois.
Finally, last January, Virginia became
the 38th state of the Union
to approve the ERA, meeting the
three-fourths requirement for
ratifi cation — though some constitutional
scholars dispute its validity
due to the expired sunset clause.
The Trump memo that blocked
the ratifi cation process, according
to Maloney, “is unsupported by law
and contradictors prior guidance
issued by the National Archivist
indicating that he would publish
the Equal Rights Amendment upon
receiving notice of ratifi cation by
the 38th state, which has now
occurred.”
Maloney, who has sponsored
Congressional legislation to ratify
the ERA every year since 1997,
told the Biden administration that
it’s time to make the amendment
a reality.
“Now that the Equal Rights
Amendment has been ratifi ed by
a majority of states, I urge you to
prioritize your campaign promise
and direct the National Archivist
to immediately perform his ministerial
role as required by law to
publish the Equal Rights Amendment
as part of the Constitution of
the United States,” Maloney wrote
in her letter to Biden and Harris.
She added that the House
also has plans to pass a resolution
“eliminating the arbitrary timeline
previously imposed for ratifi cation”
of the ERA. Maloney urged Vice
President Harris to “encourage the
Senate to prioritize this issue” in
the weeks ahead.
4 January 28, 2021 Schneps Media