The Hated El Train Is Back In Manhattan

Seventy years after the Sixth Avenue el ceased operations, the elevated train is back. Sort of:

The people don’t always ride in a hole in the ground. Those aboard the No. 1 train in Lower Manhattan are now riding part of the way through the air.

There is no view to admire. The trains are still well below street level, on tracks running within a box-shaped concrete tunnel that bisects the World Trade Center site. But instead of soil, the south half of that 975-foot stretch of subway rests on a newly built network of brawny steel beams atop a forest of minipiles reaching down to bedrock.

And in recent weeks, workers have dug out so much soil from around those minipiles that they have created an underpass beneath the subway large enough for construction machinery to pass through. In the reconstruction of the trade center, it is a significant milestone of east meeting west.

Gradually, the entire volume under the subway box will be cleared of soil, until the section from Liberty to Vesey Streets is structurally more like a viaduct than a tunnel.

That will open up nearly 40 feet of vertical space under the tracks. And given how many purposes the site must serve, every cubic inch is precious.

The subway box will eventually be an integral part of the larger, multilevel subterranean structure at the trade center site. Meanwhile, it must be supported on a sturdy but temporary structure while everything is built around it.