Coscia champions costly Calatrava station.

Port Authority chairman Anthony Coscia argued that the Calatrava Station's elaborate and expensive design was part of a larger mission for the bistate transit agency to create an aesthetically striking transit hub that would encourage development surrounding the World Trade Center site.

"Look at Grand Central Terminal and all the development that that station spurred," Coscia said. "That's the kind of structure that we're trying to build here. This is more than just a transit center, it's designed to have an impact on downtown."

The problem of course has been the station's soaring cost. Port Authority executives have vowed to value engineer the project back down to a figure close to its original $2.2 billion budget, around $2.5 billion. Sources told rew-online.com that the project had soared in recent months close to $4 billion. Last week, an official at the Federal Transit Administration, the federal agency paying for $2.2 billion of the station's cost, said that there was the expectation within the FTA that the station would end up costing a staggering $3 billion. AI though Coscia said that the Port Authority would bring the cost within the $2.5 billion range, he conceded that a final cost analysis of the project wouldn't be available until about three to four months. Coscia's comments came as the Port Authority has scrambled to justify the mounting cost of building the stunning station, which features a glass winged oculus designed by the famed architect Santiago Calatrava as its signature element. Somewhere between 50,000 and 75,000 commuters pass daily through the temporary transit terminal at the WTC site now. Transit experts say that when the office towers at the WTC site are built and filled with tenants, that number may swell to around 100,000.

Meanwhile, Penn Station has around 600,000 commuters daily and is sorely in need of funds to pay for an overhaul and expansion of the station so that it can handle the growing flow of passengers that pass through. Some transit advocates think that a more modest structure should be built at the WTC site in place of Calatrava Station and that the funds should be put towards projects like Penn Station, which many argue are more urgently needed.

Coscia rejected the notion that the Calatrava Station's current comparatively sparse number of passengers should dictate whether the expensive project gets built. He said that the number of riders using the station would eventually grow and hinted that the grandeur and size of the station would encourage and could accommodate a larger flow of passengers.

"This transit hub has enormous capacity, which we're going to need over the next ten to fifteen to twenty years," Coscia said. "Regrettable are those projects that didn't factor in the added capacity. Instead, this station will be an anchor for Lower Manhattan for years to come."