On the 1, waiting for Godot

It was on 9/11 — 16 years and 15 days ago — that the Cortlandt St. station of the No. 1 train was destroyed as the World Trade Center above it collapsed. Thankfully, on that horrendous day, no one was hurt in the subway. The MTA rebuilt the tracks and got trains running again a year after the attacks. Since then, by conservative estimates, 1.6 million fully loaded trains have passed by Cortlandt.

Not one of them has stopped. To the shame of New York, the station is still closed.

The culprits are the MTA and Port Authority, which batted it back and forth as the PA splurged on its adjacent $4.4 billion marble PATH station.

Monday, the MTA’s Chief Development Officer Janno Lieber passed the buck, declaring the firm now working on the project, Judlau Contracting, was at fault:

“The contractor’s work in the last couple of months has not been consistent with the contractor’s schedule, let alone the schedule that we have directed and believe to be the accurate schedule for the project, and we have put them on notice that this is non-compliant with their obligations.”

Hearing that, the MTA board got so fed up that they killed a $105,770,233 contract with Judlau to spruce up some Eighth Ave. stations. We don’t blame Judlau. We blame the MTA. Cortlandt St. was first opened on July 1, 1918. Get it reopened by its 100th birthday. Or else.