"What are we doing with the network that we've built so far, and more importantly, what are we going to do with it in the future?" asked Chris Ward, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, in a presentation before the New York Building Congress. With the region expected to add 2.2 million residents by the year 2040, he said, careful planning is necessary to anticipate and accommodate the region's highway, air, rail and shipping traffic 30 years hence.

Among the examples Ward gave was that of the George Washington Bridge, which he said "really has no off-peak period" today. The bridge linking upper Manhattan to Fort Lee, NJ also illustrated a couple of other points: the region's planners in the 1920s wisely anticipated heavier use in the future, moving it from its originally projected location in Midtown; and its steel-truss design was a cost-saving compromise on the massive stone-masonry construction intended by architect Cass Gilbert.

"Budgets will always be budgets," Ward said in his presentation at the New York Academy of Sciences at 7 World Trade Center. "But if we plan for the things we need, we can still achieve greatness."