The Freedom Tower

This is a little convoluted but there is a subway train that will run through the center of the World Trade Center site, according to New York One, but the train is actually in a black concrete tunnel box, but technically, it isn’t a subway tunnel.

“That’s because the Port Authority has transferred the weight of the tunnel onto steel supports and is now digging out the ground underneath. Soon, the tunnel will be suspended in midair.

“If you come back in a couple of months, it will be looking like it’s on stilts. It’ll look like some of the old railway trestles you see in the Rocky Mountains in the late 1870s,” said Port Authority Chief Geotechnical Engineer Raymond Sandiford.

The work is necessary because the space beneath the tunnel will eventually become part of the Trade Center basement.

For now there are small underpasses beneath the tunnel, only about enough room for workers and small machinery to maneuver below as they excavate. Eventually the subway tunnel will stand about 50 feet in the air, on what are known as mini-piles that have been drilled deep into bedrock.

“We’re basically building this thing on stilts- about 450 stilts. There are 450 mini-piles that we had to put in there,” said Port Authority Program Director Mark Pagliettini.

Before 9/11, there was actually a station there. The Cortlandt Street stop on what was then the 1 and 9 lines. But the collapse of the World Trade Center destroyed not only the station, but also a portion of the tunnel itself.”