:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/5068843/new-york-subway-fulton-street-transit-center-mta.0.png){kind=spacer}
Getting to and from Nets games has been problematic since Hurricane Sandy hit the metropolitan area a month and a half ago, but looking longer term, the Nets and Barclays Center will be the beneficiaries of a new MTA master plan. Included in the plan is a multi-billion dollar transit complex in Lower Manhattan.
Aspects of the complex will begin opening at the end of this season and be completely in place sometime near the end of the Nets second season in Brooklyn and make the commute a lot easier for those coming to Barclays from Manhattan and New Jersey. For one thing, a fan won't have to brave the cold. It's all underground.
The new complex is rising in Lower Manhattan.As part of the post-911 reconstruction, the MTA is building a vast underground concourse linking PATH and the New York Waterways ferry terminals with all nine subway lines that stop at the Barclays Center station beneath the arena. Some aspects of the Lower Manhattan Transportation Concourse will be open as the Nets first season at Barclays ends this spring, and most will be done a year later.
Anchoring the new concourse on the west will be the $3.2 billion WTC Transportation Center at the northeast corner of the WTC site at Church and Vesey streets, near where the towers stood in Manhattan. It is going to be spectacular architecturally and will form one end of the concourse between the World Financial Center and the MTA's new Fulton Street Transit Center, a $1.4 billion station a few blocks inland. (And yes, the Fulton Street center will have an oculus!)
Through it all, pedestrians will have access to the ferry terminals, PATH and 13 subway lines, nine of which continue on to Barclays Center a few stops away. At Fulton Street, where more than 300,000 riders pass through daily, the MTA is reconfiguring the maze of ramps and passageways in another architecturally spectacular setting. The concourse is now structurally complete with only finishing work inside remaining. It will be partially open next year.
Once it's done, the animation shows what it will look like for a fan connecting from one of the nine lines under the arena to the PATH or ferry terminals or to west side subway lines. It is a bit of a walk, but one fans are not likely to tire of.