Project of the Year - Airport

AirTrain JFK Terminal at Jamaica Station

Many consider the Long Island Rail Road's Jamaica Station in Queens to be at the heart of the system. If so, then constructing a terminal for the AirTrain JFK light rail system there was like doing open-heart surgery.

One judge who agreed that Jamaica was a critical central hub for LIRR said completing a new station there was tremendous. "At Jamaica, because you have the active railroad running and the freight railroad, you had extraordinarily complex issues to deal with," the judge said.

The $389 million project created a multimodal transfer point that links the new light rail system to the LIRR, New York City Transit subway lines, and ground transportation systems. The terminal in the Jamaica section of Queens - at the northwest corner of 94th Avenue and Sutphin Boulevard - is about 3 mi. from John F. Kennedy International Airport.

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A major component of the project is the new Vertical Circulation Building-Jamaica Central Control Building, a 250,000-sq.-ft. structure with seven floors. The building enables passenger connections to the AirTrain JFK system, and will feature passenger baggage check-in facilities and flight-related information in the future. That structure's architectural finishes include glass and aluminum curtain wall, terrazzo floors, stainless steel, marble, granite and veneer plaster walls, and metal-panel ceilings.

The project also entailed building a new "portal" structure over the LIRR tracks, with elevators, escalators, and moving walkways that connect the new circulation building to existing LIRR and New York City Transit facilities.

Finishing those connections also required work on the existing LIRR facilities. That big job involved replacing all platforms and canopies, platform facilities, and systems. On that portion, the project team faced historic preservation requirements, including approval from the New York State Historic Preservation Office on platform canopy design to preserve the historical nature of Jamaica Station.

The LIRR station also entailed renovating the stairs from platforms to street, replacing the existing Westerly Bridge, and reconfiguring Sutphin Boulevard between Archer and 94th Avenues, adding a new street concourse. A final phase is demolishing the LIRR's existing transfer mezzanine and stairways from street level at Sutphin Boulevard, replacing them with new stairways to the LIRR platform level.

The project also involved expansion and renovation of the existing subway station mezzanine. Three new high-capacity elevators in the subway mezzanine space shuttle passengers between subway, street, and portal levels.

Completing construction within the busy stations of LIRR and the Sutphin Boulevard/Archer Avenue subway stations required installing varying temporary and permanent design features. It also required integration with railroad and transit operations -including 54-hour weekend track outages - as well as detailed construction planning and staging to minimize disruption to riders.

Other efforts to minimize disruption included maintenance and protection of traffic, community outreach, vibration monitoring, and condition surveys. The project crews performed work during off-peak hours whenever possible and limited their use of cranes on the street. The project team had materials delivered to the site - and debris removed - by rail.

The project, jointly sponsored by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, got its financing from capital funding from those agencies and from passenger facility charges.

But the project required coordination of other agencies and organizations beyond the Port Authority and MTA, including LIRR, New York City Transit, the city's Department of Transportation and Department of Environmental Protection, Con Edison, Keyspan, and local community groups.

The design of the terminal also envisions future expansion. It allows for an additional 10 stories as well as baggage-handling and security-screening systems.