Well today I just had to go down and investigate the new Cortlandt Street Station as advisories listed it opening in time for the tenth anniversary of 9/11 at the odd hour of 5pm. I also read on Second Avenue Sagas, my favorite blog for subway news (no personal affiliation, just a fan), that there was a ribbon cutting scheduled for 3pm and the station would open thereafter. After finishing this mornings update at 2:10pm I rode the A train down to 42 Street, and walked through the tunnel to Times Square (2 more photos of the lower mezzanine and one of the upper), realizing I made a mistake in the summery of that station before switching to the downtown R train (reaching the downtown N,Q,R at Times Square from the A or 7 requires one less short block of underground walking) which bypassed Cortlandt Street at almost exactly 3pm.
Not having an Unlimited Ride MetroCard in my wallet I took it the extra stop down to Whitehall Street and used the free crossover their (Rector doesn’t have one) taking an uptown train to Cortlandt Street–(rebuilt stations has 45 new photos of the station and 6 of artwork) and finding the area of the platform where the staircase to the underpass to the downtown platform not taped off but with four cops and many more employees present, only allowing dignitaries and valid members of the press (I am not) down to the underpass where I later learned the speeches were taking place (Second Avenue Sagas’ coverage again).
At that point I decided I didn’t feel like waiting thinking it would open to the general public now at 5 o’clock and wanted to refresh my memory about a few things for some other lower Manhattan Station summaries I’m currently working on and took the next R train to City Hall and walked towards Fulton Street stopping in the new William Street entrance, the now other completed part of the transit center (with the same light blue, brick sized tiles as the Dey Street Passageway) and checked my iPhone noticing that the MTA had put a ‘Cortlandt Street Station reopened’ headline on their website. I quickly walked back to Cortlandt Street and entered through the part time entrance inside 1 Liberty Plaza whose underpass to the downtown side is outside a fare control. An employee told me that portion of the station was still crowded with dignitaries and not opened yet, I walked to the inbound entrance and saw the final train to bypass Cortlandt Street, as I was fumbling refilling my MetroCard, a R46 downtown train, empty its destination signs blank, entered for the dignitaries to board at 3:58pm.
Then I entered the station and was maybe the 4th member of the public (there were still some employees, news media including one from Japan I think, dignitaries around) to go through the main Dey Street underpass and up to the downtown platform photographing the first regular downtown train stopping there since August 2005 at 4:03pm (WOW, for once something happened an hour early on the subway and wasn’t late).
I let that train go by wanting to take some more photos (and while making the current station pages realizing I’ll need to return, didn’t catch all the artwork nor a decent photo of the underpass) and then took a picture of employees securing this door that leads straight into daylight and the bathtub of Ground Zero (it has a Danger decal on it for good reason).
After that it seemed only fitting to ride through the site on the 1 train and I needed to take it up to 125 Street anyway so I took the second train to stop at Cortlandt Street to Whitehall Street and used that two year old transfer for the 1 up to 125 Street-(a new page with 4 photos of the artwork and the first 3 of the mezzanine), there I found some artwork I never noticed before on the mezzanine.
The day ended with a very slow ride on the M4 home (using my free transfer) after running my errands there.
The other mini-adventure I went on occurred yesterday on Labor Day taking a neighborhood walk to 191 Street–(4 more photos of the station and one more of the artwork) to finally photograph one of the two portions of the stained glass artwork that is still viewable to the public (the area for secondary 2nd elevator doors is now fenced off and closed). This I neglected to notice until a recent trip through the station
The stop also had no train service this weekend either so shuttle buses were running instead, this one articulated was barely able to pull a U-turn a few blocks away from the station, (1 shuttle buses were running in two sections here to 168 Street and from 242 Street to 207 Street on the A-train, Fort George Hill makes one continuous bus route impractical):
