Loretta Weinberg and Bob Gordon

After several years of political infighting, construction of a new Port Authority Bus Terminal with capacity for 30,000 more commuters is on the fast track.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has combined the federally required environmental review and the preliminary engineering into a single contract that could enable construction to begin as early as 2020.

Most important, Steven Plate, the Port Authority’s Chief of Major Capital Projects, reported that structural engineers have determined that the “build in place” concept that would add two floors to the existing Port Authority Bus Terminal is a viable option that will be included in the federal Environmental Impact Statement review.

For the past eight months, we have been pushing hard both publicly and privately to ensure that the “build in place” option receives full consideration. John Degnan, who led the charge for a new bus terminal during his three-year tenure as Port Authority chairman, officially requested the study in April.

While we fully supported plans to build a new bus terminal one block west of the current site when the first midtown bus terminal options were unveiled two years ago, we believe that the “build in place” option has several important advantages.

First, providing expanded capacity for more than 30,000 additional New Jersey commuters daily on the existing site between Eighth and Ninth Avenues and 40th and 41st Streets preserves direct access through the existing underground passageways to 11 New York subway lines – an advantage that cannot be duplicated at any other site.

Second, the “build in place” option would certainly be preferable to New York City neighborhood groups who worried that some of the other options being considered would have required the condemnation or acquisition of more than 160 private properties.

Third, the plan envisioned by Thornton Tomasetti and Parsons Brinckerhoff, the engineering firms hired by the Port Authority, provides for a “top-down” construction schedule that would build the new fifth and sixth floors on top of the existing bus terminal first, thus providing an immediate increase in capacity.

The new fifth and sixth floors would replace the existing parking deck and have their own entrance and exit ramps. After completion of the fifth and sixth floors, the existing bus terminal would be rebuilt, starting with the fourth floor, and then rebuilding the third, the second and first floors in order. One of the last steps would be replacing the original 1950 structural slabs, which were not built to carry the newer, heavier buses that now use the terminal and should be replaced in the next 15 to 20 years.

Building from the top down while maintaining full operations in an existing facility is not a new concept. Philadelphia Children’s Hospital and the New York Hospital for Special Surgery both maintained full hospital operations while adding floors, and the Port Authority built its World Trade Center Oculus PATH station from the top down.

The Port Authority’s Federal Environmental Impact Statement process, which will be completed on the same two-year expedited schedule as the Gateway Rail Tunnel project, will provide a cost-benefit analysis of all alternatives, including the original idea of building a new terminal one block west and the Regional Plan Association’s proposal for a new terminal under the Javits Center. We will fairly and carefully review all of the options, as will the Port Authority board and staff.

But the “build in place” option clearly would achieve our most important goal of providing additional bus commuter capacity during the current 2017-2026 Port Authority Capital Plan. The bus terminal, which handled 232,000 passenger trips a day in 2011, has already exceeded its 2020 projection of 270,000 daily trips, making it clear that we need to build a bus terminal at least large enough to meet 2040 projections of 337,000 bus riders a day.

Increasing trans-Hudson commuter capacity – by expanding the bus terminal, increasing the number of PATH trains, and growing our ferry fleet – is critical because federal funding for the Gateway Rail Tunnel project is so uncertain. It is quite possible that completion of the full Gateway project could slide into the mid-2030s and the tunnels themselves might not be finished until 2030.

We all know the “commuter Armageddon” scenario: If one of the existing Sandy-damaged tunnels into New York Penn Station has to close for repairs before the new tunnels are finished, NJ Transit would lose 75 percent of its rail capacity to New York, and 60,000 NJ Transit rail commuters would have to find another way to get to Manhattan.

Lawmakers:Replace bus terminal with trains? N.J. lawmakers push back on proposal

New Leaders:New leaders take helm of a better Port Authority

Getting the existing bus terminal expanded as quickly as possible to accommodate 30,000 additional commuters is the most important – and most achievable – option to mitigate the impact of a rail tunnel closure.

That makes the Port Authority Bus Terminal the most important mass transit project in the region. While Gateway is dependent on federal funding and the vicissitudes of national politics, the Port Authority Bus Terminal expansion is within our control. The Port Authority’s 2017-2026 Capital Plan already has set aside $3.5 billion for the new bus terminal, and if we need to redirect additional funding from other projects to get it built quickly, we can and should do so.

Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg, D-Teaneck, and Senate Legislative Oversight Committee Chair Bob Gordon, D-Fair Lawn, serve as New Jersey representatives on the Port Authority’s Bus Terminal Working Group.