Scrivener.net

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Shame of the World Trade Center rebuilding project, IV 

Latest projections say completion of the Freedom Tower at the site of the former World Trade Center is expected in 2018 -- 17 years after the 9/11 attack. Other parts of the rebuilding are equally delayed.

Our mayor is not happy:
Mayor Bloomberg launched a blistering attack against the Port Authority's bungling at Ground Zero yesterday...

"This cannot continue. Last year, when the Port announced its new plan that would fix the problems at the site and lead to progress, it asked us all to hold it accountable. We are, and the results are intolerable," Bloomberg fumed.
New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, the state's most powerful Democrat (including the governor, most assuredly), in whose district the World Trade Center site is located, takes his own slightly more diplomatic shot at the PA.

What's so very wrong with the PA?

Well, apart from it being an autonomous interstate (New York and New Jersey) agency well known in general for its bloated bureaucracy and being answerable to nobody, the particular answer was blurted out yesterday by one of its spokesmen in the current verbal to-and-fro ....

"We'd be happy to be relieved of any multimillion-dollar obligation at the site so we can utilize the money for transportation projects".... [NYDN]
The PA doesn't want to spend money on the World Trade Center rebuilding. What it wants to do is spend money instead building up its own empire of grandoise transport projects. And, boy does it ever! As noted here before in Shame, III.

(Prior posts on the WTC rebuilding getting to this situation: II., I.)

The Empire State Building was built in 470 days, from beginning of excavation work on January 22, 1930, to the grand opening on May 1, 1931.