The cost of the World Trade Center transportation hub, designed to look like a bird in flight, appears to be soaring again with its final price now expected to climb to $3.8 billion, $400 million over its current budget and 70 percent more than initial estimates, according to documents obtained by The Record in an article yesterday at northjersey.com by Shawn Boburg.

The latest projected increase is laid out in a report written by a federal monitor shortly after Port Authority officials increased the project's budget from $3.2 billion to $3.4 billion in late February, the article said.

"The report warns," the article continued, "that - even after the controversial February increase - the 'budget still does not appear adequate for the ultimate completion of the project.' It adds: 'Recent discussions with the Port Authority' indicate a $3.8 billion final price tag. The 2005 budget for the project was $2.2 billion."

The hub, which will serve as a gateway to Manhattan for tens of thousands of New Jersey commuters each day, is also facing a three-month delay, with completion now expected in March 2015, the report states.

Officials at the Port Authority, the bi-state agency in charge of the federally funded project, brushed aside the estimate and spokesman John Kelly said that "we remain confident in our budget" of $3.4 billion. "And an official at the Federal Transit Administration, which is paying a majority of the hub expenses, stressed that the authority could still hit its current spending target if it manages the project properly," the article added.

Designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, the hub will house a new PATH station and connect to 13 subway lines. Its entrance will be on the northeast corner of the World Trade Center site, across Greenwich Street from the memorial plaza.

Proponents have said the dramatically designed oval-shaped entrance to the transit hall, called the oculus, will be an architectural icon, the article said, "but critics have called it an extravagant PATH station that will largely serve New Jersey commuters."

The 800,000-square-foot hall will have a network of underground pedestrian walkways filled with high-end retail shops and restaurants.

The article said that in 2008 "the authority agreed to a pared-down version of the hub and a new $3.2 billion budget - an increase at that point from $2.5 billion. Among the changes: The comb-like roof of the oculus would no longer open and close, and it would be supported by interior columns instead of stretching uninterrupted across the hall. Marble floors were also replaced with stone. Still, those alterations and budget increases have not served to keep the transit hub within spending estimates."