Massimo A. Pellegrini

With the impending shutdown of the New York City subway system’s L train, 240,000 daily riders will lose their means of transportation. In Manhattan, 14th Street will be closed to passenger cars during the business day because of a dramatic increase in bus traffic. This situation calls for a new means of mass transit: the L-Evated Cycle-Way. The Cycle-Way would facilitate bike traffic across 14th Street and would extend from Brooklyn to the West Side Highway. The proposal will allow for a new kind of station to be installed at key points along the Cycle-Way.

This proposal explores the tension between passage and destination in the program of a station. A series of interacting passages and volumes are woven into a dense structural system, radiating outward to meet the context of the site. The core is a site where travelers can stop and observe traffic between modes of transportation. Auxiliary spaces allow for through travel and transfer between the underground subway and PATH trains, street-level automotive traffic, and the Cycle-Way. The building’s components and systems create a sense of transparency, offering a glimpse of the inner workings of the machine that is urban mass transit.