Q&A
Port Authority explains stakeholder engagement process for bus terminal redesign
0:38:16
·
139 sec
Port Authority representatives discuss the extensive stakeholder engagement process that informed the redesign of the bus terminal. They explain how community feedback prompted them to pause and reformulate their approach to the project.
- Highlight a 2-year listening period to understand community needs
- Describe engagement with bus carriers to ensure long-term efficiency
- Explain the iterative design process involving community boards and local officials
Hersh Parekh
0:38:16
Sure.
0:38:16
I'm going to ask Glenn Guzzi, who's been on this project, probably since the beginning, to speak to that question.
Kevin Riley
0:38:22
Thank you.
Glenn Guzzi
0:38:23
Good morning, chairman.
Kevin Riley
0:38:24
Good morning.
Glenn Guzzi
0:38:25
So to respond to your question, as you've heard, this project has been thought about for several many years.
0:38:32
There was, several processes that predated our current process.
0:38:38
And through those processes, we received a lot of public feedback, community feedback, which actually prompted us to pause our thinking and reformat how we were going to approach.
0:38:50
The reformat included, reengagement of the community,
Adam Taubman
0:38:53
whether it was elected officials or community
Glenn Guzzi
0:38:53
boards 45 at the time, it was elected officials or community boards 45 at the time, to stop for a moment and say, Okay, tell us now what it is that's important to you, versus us telling the community what we thought they needed.
0:39:07
So, that was a critical movement in how we were approaching the development of the project.
0:39:12
We had no concepts at that point in time because it was more important for us to understand what the community needed out of the project.
0:39:20
Following that, we continued working with the bus carriers, New Jersey Transit, for instance, as the largest carrier in the facility, to understand what was going to be important for the carriers to have in a facility that would enable the facility to stand the test of time so once it opened, it wasn't automatically obsolete to understand how we were going to get 50 plus years out of a facility for an efficient movement of buses.
0:39:47
Once we really spent approximately 2 years listening, we brought in our designers and our architects to start creating massings of the program, to be able to take back to the community boards and the local elected officials to say, Okay, this is what we've heard, this is what we understand your needs to be, this is how we're going to approach massing the project, keeping in mind that we would be taking no private property.
0:40:16
So, from that point, it became a very deep discussion with all of the members of the community boards 4 and 5, primarily 4, to evolve the design to meet their specific needs while also maintaining the needs of the operators and the commuters.
0:40:33
And it continues.
