Moynihan Station plan derailed.

Carved in the Farley Post Office's stone facade above its Eighth Avenue row of Corinthian columns is the inscription: Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift, completion of their appointed rounds.

Perhaps it should have also included mention of the Public Authorities Control Board.

Last week, the powerful state agency rejected Governor Pataki's plan to transform the building s eastern annex into an extension of Penn Station to be called Moynihan Station after the late New York State senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan who long championed the project.

The decision by the PACB will mean the building s days as a post office--the only one in the city open 24 hours a day 7 days a week--may now continue for at least a little while longer.

The roughly $900 plan was struck down by assembly speaker Sheldon Silver, one of the PACB's three voting members whose unanimous approval was necessary for the proposed transit hub to receive state funding critical to its financing. Silver had voiced problems with the current project plan since it was first brought before the PACB in August, forcing it to be postponed twice and failed to show up to a special PACB meeting on October 13 scheduled by the governor in an effort to expedite approval.

"The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it's so rare, Pataki said in a statement last Wednesday, repeating a quote by senator Moynihan. "Today ... Speaker Silver has remarkably proven those words true."

"Speaker Silver has single-handily prevented the most important civic and transportation project in the nation today from proceeding. The Moynihan Station project was a decade in the making with widespread support including that of two presidents, four past and present senators, two mayors and the community."

Chief among Silver's criticism of the current plan were various financial concerns but also the absence of the more sweeping redevelopment plans thought to accompany the construction of Moynihan Station.

Tapped by the Empire State Development Agency last year to carry out the development of the train station, developers Vornado and The Related Companies quietly floated a larger plan among state and city officials to relocate Madison Square Garden to the Farley Building's western annex, build office towers on the current MSG site, and conduct a significant renovation of Penn Station.

"Once again, I strongly support a Moynihan Station project that actually renovates Penn Station and establishes a modern transportation center providing real benefits to hundreds of thousands of New York commuters and subway users," Silver said in a letter to Pataki last Wednesday before the PACB vote. "The proposal before the Public Authorities Control Board does not come close to achieving this goal ... it fails to renovate any space at the existing Penn Station. It does not build any new facilities for the MTA subways, Long Island Railroad, Metro North or Amtrak. The only modern facilities being built are for New Jersey Transit. We must do better."

ESDC officials have insisted that the current project could be the opening step in that larger plan, whose lengthy formal approval process they say could have been sorted out as the construction of Moynihan Station was already underway. Governor Pataki said recently that delaying the project to widen its scope could add tens of millions of dollars to the cost of eventually building Moynihan Station. He estimated that station's cost of construction is expanding by $5-$10 million a month.

On Wednesday morning Silver proposed a compromise, although it didn't do much to advance the ESDC's plans for Moynihan Station directly. While not endorsing the station plan, Silver suggested completing the ESDC's $90 million acquisition of the Farley Building, a purchase that would prevent a major obstacle to the state's future development of the building: a sale of the building by the Post Office to another party. Silver noted that the ESDC had begun the purchase illegally by putting down a nonrefundable $50 million payment without PACB approval. The two other voting members on the PACB, representatives of Governor Pataki and senate majority leader Joseph Bruno, rejected that proposal. Many expect Moynihan Station's development to lay dormant now until the larger plan is put through to the PACB, a process that could take months and would put the project under the control of a new governor.