As components of the World Trade Center project near completion beginning in 2013, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey will realize a “peace dividend, just as our nation did when our troops left Vietnam in the 1970s,” says Patrick J. Foye, PANYNJ executive director. After paying about $7 billion of debt incurred to fund WTC construction, the will dividend will allow the agency to return to its core mission of transportation infrastructure and economic development, he says.
“While it’s early, my own preliminary conclusion having been at the authority for just shy of 100 days now, is that over the last ten years, the agency … has experienced mission-drift, and a diversion of focus from its core mission,” Foye told attendees at the New York Building Congress’s 2012 Annual Membership Meeting and Luncheon Forum on January 23.