They replaced ties, track, ductwork and strung almost 100 hundred kilometers of cable. All the while, other crews worked 16-hour days, 6 days a week to rebuild the entire station from scratch.

In November 2003, the station reopened, the first public space to open on the trade centre site since 9.11. Workers finished the job one month ahead of schedule.

"They said it couldn't be done but it was done."

Yet the real work has just begun. This station is only temporary. From unprecedented tragedy has emerged a rare opportunity, the chance to reinvent the ancient infrastructure at the heart of the modern megacity. This gaping hole is destined to become a thriving hub.

We are going to build a new transit-center here now, and that is the first terminal that Lower Manhattan will have.

Charles A. Gargano is Vice Chairman of the Port Authority. His vision of a new Path station is destined to link up with another bold transformation, just blocks away. With more than a quarter million entries, exits, and transfers each day, Fulton Street is the busiest subway station in Lower Manhattan. It's also the most confusing, a subterranean jigsaw puzzle and pieces don't fit.

The Fulton Street subway station is actually a complex of 6 stations built over three decades to serve 12 competing subway lines, each fighting for passengers. Discouraging transfers between lines were deliberately built-in. For almost a century, commuters groped through this transit nightmare. Then it got worse. When the Path Train station was built, no one envisoned a link to Fulton. The result, two key rail-hubs and no connection. Now comes a multi-billion-dollar operation to untangle veins and unclog arteries.

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