Here is an article the Bergen Record published in 1991 on the pedestrian tunnel between 34th and 42nd Streets.
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TRANSIT AGENCY SHUTS CRIME-RIDDEN TUNNEL
CONCEDES THE ACTION WAS OVERDUE
An underground pedestrian tunnel between subway stations was the site of dozens of crimes last year, and the transit police tried to get it closed.
Plans to close the path became lost in a bureaucratic maze until Wednesday, when a 22-year-old woman was raped there during the evening's rush hour.
On Friday, the gates were padlocked. Transit Authority officials said they should have acted sooner to close the crime-ridden subway tunnel where three women were raped and two others were sexually assaulted during the last nine months.
The walkway, which links the 34th Street and 42nd Street subway stations on Sixth Avenue, was closed by an emergency request of the transit police early Thursday.
The crime rate in the tunnel had grown so severe that after a rape on July 25, 1990, the transit police formally requested in a letter that the Transit Authority close the passageway.
The request "got wound up in the normal process," of public hearings, said TA spokesman Jared Lebow. "In retrospect, it should have been highlighted more forcefully; most probably action would have been taken and it would have been closed," Lebow said.
"Unfortunately, you learn a lesson the hard way. I think we learned a lesson," Lebow added.
Since the July 30, 1990, letter to the Transit Authority, two women were raped, one woman was the victim of an attempted rape, and another was sexually assaulted in the passageway, said transit police spokesman Al O'Leary.
TA President Alan Kiepper said Friday he would review transit police recommendations regarding any other high-crime walkways and subway tunnels, and would order emergency closings if they were warranted.
"In hindsight, we regret not being more forceful earlier on, to get the passageway closed," O'Leary said. "We might have prevented the last four sex crimes."
Transit police increased patrols after the July 1990 rape, but "it is a horror of a passageway to patrol because of the bends and rises; there's no clear sight line," O'Leary said.
On Sept. 20, 1990, Transit Authority officials wrote back to the police and said they had discussed closing the tunnel with the local community board, which agreed with the transit police.
The proposal was presented along with numerous other subway changes in a series of four public hearings held in February, and was scheduled to go before the board of the Metropolitan Transit Authority next month.