Port Authority Approves Big Building Plan

By ASHLEY MATOS

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey on Thursday unanimously approved an ambitious $32.2 billion capital plan that would build an AirTrain to LaGuardia Airport, build a new PA bus terminal and extend the PATH rail system to Newark Airport

Proponents of the plan said that a new bus terminal was necessary because the present site was already at a 95 percent capacity.

“What I’ve seen all too often happen is the rhetoric around what’s not perfect. We cannot allow perfect to be the enemy of good. This is a very good capital plan,” said Gary LaBarbera, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York.

Most of the public speakers at the meeting were there to argue for better wages and benefits for airport workers. “While you debate how you’re going to spend all those billions of dollars on projects, we are scrambling around with pennies,” said Steven Leone, a Newark Airport worker. He said that the plan was a slap in the face to him, and other airport workers.

Rachel Cohen of Service Employees International Union said that workers at JFK and LaGuardia earn $11 an hour, the New York City minimum wage, while Newark Airport workers only make $10.10 an hour.

“The workers are fighting for parity for all contracted airport workers and believe that Newark Airport workers do the same work as their co-workers at JFK and LaGuardia and should be paid the same,” she said. “The workers are also calling on the Port Authority to make good on their promise from over two years ago to create wage and benefit plan to ensure that all workers at the three NYC-area airport have good family-sustaining jobs.”

This view was echoed by colleagues.

“It is wrong to make tax payers pay to modernize JFK and LaGuardia if these renovations only help the airlines make bigger profits but do nothing to help put resources into our communities,” said Alyanna Perez, LaGuardia Airport worker

“God is going to judge us for the life we live and what we offer our fellow citizens.” Michael DeFrietas, JFK worker.

Other witnesses urged members to include other amenities, such as wider pedestrian and bicycle paths on the George Washington Bridge.

Columbia graduate student Dustin Fry argued that that 20 deaths per year would be prevented by expanding the bridge. He and others contended that the present paths were no longer adequate on the highly- trafficked bridge.