Gov. outlines $5B transit plan.

Governor Pataki outlined a long-awaited plan to spend up to $5 billion to restore and upgrade transportation in Lower Manhattan, including new above-ground hubs at the World Trade Center site and at the Fulton Street subway stations, as well as a rebuilt subway terminal at South Ferry.

Several of the projects would require significant excavation that could disrupt commuters and downtown traffic patterns through the end of the decade. Pataki outlined the projects in a letter to federal officials overseeing the $21 billion in aid promised to New York to recover from the 9/11 terrorist attack. It calls for construction to begin next year and continue through at least 2007 in the case of the subway projects, and 2009 for the trade center project.

The projects have been the subject of weeks of contentious negotiations among officials, including Governor Pataki, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. The plan essentially calls for the improvement of existing transit lines downtown but does not propose any new commuter connections, disappointing some business leaders who have said that greater access to downtown is crucial to the revival of Lower Manhattan.

"This process has to be moved along," said Peter Sabesan, a principal at Hunter Realty. "We have an office on lower Broadway and transportation in the downtown area is severly lacking. You have rebuild the World Trade Center site but you must have a transportation in place for people get to the area. And we're talking about a plan that will a decade to fully implement. The rebuilding of PATH is vital; more important than the renovations on the subway. Although the configuration needs reworking, the subway is running. PATH, for many commuters, is really a bares-bones system compared to before Sept plans. 11, 2001."

The largest of the projects includes up to $2 billion for the transportation hub at the trade center site. It would include an expanded terminal for the PATH commuter line, new connections to the subway lines that stop nearby, and a new transit hall that officials have called a downtown Grand Central. A $750 million Fulton Street Transit Center would reconfigure the stations that serve the nine different subway lines stopping there. It would also provide another aboveground building with a central entrance to all the lines. Joining the two stations would be an underground concourse stretching from the Fulton Street center to the World Financial Center. Senator Charles E. Schumer, who has criticized some of the transportation proposals floated in recent weeks, said that Mr. Pataki "is focusing on the big proposals that are most needed to make downtown a transportation center."

Another $400 million would go toward a new three-track, two-platform terminal at South Ferry, for the 1 and 9 subway lines, with underground connections to the Whitehall subway station and the new Staten Island Ferry Terminal. An additional $1.7 billion to $2 billion would be spread among several projects, including $500 million for bus facilities and street restoration at the trade center site.

The original plan envisioned linking the area's myriad transit lines by building an east-west underground passageway 50 feet wide and 2,500 feet long, with moving walkways and perhaps shops and stores. City officials and downtown community groups have feared that the Port Authority wants an underground mall similar to the previous trade center concourse; they prefer retail stores to be at ground level and open to the street.

The projects would spread new construction zones throughout downtown for years to come. Some of the heaviest construction would be at the Fulton Street subway complex, where more than 275,000 riders pass through every weekday. Transit officials said that they do not foresee rerouting trains or bypassing the stations during construction, in part because there are few ways to alter service through the complex, but construction would sometimes close stairways and passages, making transfers much more difficult. A $140 million project to repair sewers, water mains and other parts of streets was under way in Lower Manhattan. That is expected to keep dozens of streets torn up for the next few years.