NEW YORK -- The New York Daily news reports that the state-city agency charged with rebuilding lower Manhattan will explore creating a downtown transit hub along the lines of Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal, the board chairman said yesterday.

John Whitehead, head of the Lower Manhattan Redevelopment Corp., said rebuilding and improving mass transit links around the World Trade Center site is a priority for the panel.

Transit repair would be addressed in two broad phases. Short-term emergency needs -- the resumption of PATH train and subway service -- would be completed as quickly as possible, Whitehead said at the agency's second meeting.

At the same time, the agency would explore constructing a "central terminal ... akin to the major terminals that are uptown," Whitehead said. The Long Island Rail Road could be connected to the terminal, but nothing has been decided.

An East-West Passage

Several preliminary concepts are being worked on. The most detailed, coming from the Port Authority, envisions an underground mega-hub with connections to the PATH and 14 subway lines, and retail space similar to what was in the destroyed World Trade Center concourse.

Stretching 3,000 feet, the passageway would originate at the World Financial Center along West St. -- near expanded commuter ferry slips on the Hudson River -- and extend to William St. on the east side.

Customers could whisk through the hub on airport-style people movers to reach shops, a new PATH station below Ground Zero or subway stops -- the 1 and 9 lines on the west side, the N and R trains at Church St. and the 2, 3, 4, 5, A, C, E, J, M and Z lines at the Broadway-Nassau/Fulton St. station.

That station, a dingy depot that connects a tangle of subway lines initially constructed to be separate, also would receive a facelift and be expanded to include more retail space.

"The idea is to replicate what we did at the World Trade Center over at Fulton," said Chris Ward, the PA's chief of strategic planning. "If we are going to build a great PATH station, there also should be something similar on the east side."

About 70,000 subway riders a day pass through turnstiles into the Broadway-Nassau/Fulton St. station. Tens of thousands more transfer there.

Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesman Tom Kelly said the agency is working with the PA to develop a subway-PATH plan but added that the concepts were in "preliminary stages."

"The MTA will go along with whatever the ultimate decision is by the redevelopment agency," he said.

Bringing Downtown Back

The PA has estimated that building a PATH station would cost about $1.5 billion and take four to five years.

In the meantime, it will construct a temporary station with an entrance on Church St. that could be open in 18 months to two years.

The possibility of better rail connections and a renovated Broadway-Nassau/Fulton St. station was praised by Gene Russianoff, staff attorney with the Straphangers Campaign.

"It seems to me there is a consensus that transportation is key to bringing downtown back," he said. "If you want to attract people, you have to make it better than it was, and better means better connections."