单选题 Every morning at four-thirty, sixty concrete trucks—from Brooklyn, from Queens, from New Jersey— race in the dark over bridges and through tunnels and converge at the intersection of West and Verse Streets, where One World Trade Center is going up. Concrete is perishable, A load will spoil in ninety minutes once it has left the hatching plant. The trucks pull up to the construction site. They dump their loads into big baskets with hydraulic pumping systems. Eleven thousand three hundred tons of superstructure steel are waiting. The other day, Chris Ward, the executive director of the Port Authority, which is supervising the project, stood three hundred feet in the air, on what will be the twentieth of One World Trade Center's hundred and four floors, and said, "This site will be understood by the public on how well this tower rises, but the real metric is how quickly the concrete gets poured. " Toward the building's core, where office workers will one day ride elevators, members of Local 46 of the Metallic Lathers and Reinforcing Ironworkers union were torch-cutting rebar. Sparks flew. Below, tiny fluorescent-vested figures trundled dollies and hoisted planks in what looked like a scene from "Fraggle Rock. "
Ward, who is fifty-five, took the Port Authority job in May of 2008. He inherited a huge, politically impossible mess: nineteen public agencies, two developers, a hundred and one contractors, and thirty-three architects have stakes in the World Trade Center redevelopment project. Ward's first act was to order a reevaluation of the plans for the site. Thanks to him, a memorial will be completed in time for the tenth anniversary of September 11th—sooner than it might have been, but, for a lot of people, not soon enough. Ward wears a blue suit and speaks like a technocrat, but his handshake is a crusher and he knows his girders. He didn't like the name Freedom Tower—as One World Trade Center was originally called—any more than anyone else did. He said, "That sense that New York needs a new downtown, that we need to defeat the terrorists—was it inevitable, that language? I don't know, but I can understand why it happened. "
He is concerned that large-scale, sentimental thinking—"monumentalism," he calls it—has paralyzed the rebuilding process. "The political rhetoric, the sense that New York had to do everything huge at one time, obscured the construction reality," he said. He pointed out some steel bundles, dangling from a crane, and explained how the speeded-up schedule for the memorial affected the sequencing of PATH service, which affected the building of the "1 box"—the pod that encases the tracks of the No. 1 train, which runs directly through the site—which, in turn, affected the building of Larry Silverstein's Three World Trade Center. To Ward, the site is a delicate, mutating mesh of counterweighted considerations—a high-stakes game of pickup sticks.
New York is not Dubai. "People always say, 'How come One World Trade Center is taking so long? The Empire State Building was built in fifteen months,' " Ward said. "Yeah, well, people forget that five people died building the Empire State Building. " He noted that, while Dubai "can literally rip up and relocate an entire town," plans for a floating swimming-pool barge in city waters were delayed for years because of red tape. Walking, on ground level, through dirt and nails—but little garbage—he spotted the looming jackknife of the new Goldman Sachs tower, at 200 West Street. "People say, 'This Goldman Sachs building got built in four years. Why is One World Trade Center taking so long? ' Well, one reason is that this is getting built on top of a PATH train, and Goldman Sachs got built on top of a fucking parking lot !"
The memorial is starting to come together. Standing on a concrete platform facing north, you can envision water gushing from spigots, which have been provisionally duct-taped in place, and rushing down thirty-foot granite walls into a pair of reflecting pools. The other day, workers were affixing slabs of granite to the wails.
In mid-May, construction on One World Trade Center reached the twentieth floor, or what is called the "typical office floor"—the point beyond which the rest of the stories are easily replicated—and the hope is that, from now on, the building will rise about a floor every ten days.
"It's thrilling when you see it, but it's nerve-racking," Ward said. "The margin for error in this town is tough. /

单选题 As to the World Trade Center, which of the following is NOT mentioned in the first paragraph?

【正确答案】 D

【答案解析】细节题。由题干定位至第一段。首句提到“Every morning at four-thirty，sixty concrete trucks—from Brooklyn，from Queens，from New Jersey—race in the dark over bridges and through tunnels and converge at the intersection of West and Vesey Streets，where One World Trade Center is going up”，这里明确指出世贸中心的修建地址是west and Vesey Streets，但没有说是否为原世贸中心地址，故[D]为答案。第七句指出“The other day，Chris Ward．the executrixes director of the Port Authority，which is supervising the project，stood three hundred feet in the air，on what will be the twentieth of One World Trade Center's hundred and four floors…”，[A]符合文意；最后两句描写了工人忙于建设的场景“…members of Local 46 of the Metallic Lathers and Reinforcing Ironworkers union were torch-cutting rebar．Sparks flew．Below，tiny fluorescent vested figures trundled dollies and hoisted planks in what looked like a scene from‘Fraggle Rock．’”，[B]符合文意；首句中的“Every morning at four-thirty，sixty concrete trucks—from Brooklyn，from Queens，from New Jersey—race in the dark…”表明[C]符合文意。

单选题 The reconstruction of the World Trade Center

【正确答案】 D

【答案解析】推断题。第二段第二句指出“He inherited a huge，politically impossible mess：nineteen public agencies，two developers，a hundred and one contractors，and thirty-three architects have stakes in the World Trade Center redevelopment project．”，重建工程涉及这么多方面的人力和机构，由句中的a huge，politically impossible mess可以看出任务艰巨，故[D]为答案。文中没有提到社会各界都参与了世贸中心的重建工作，排除[A]；第四句指出“Thanks to him，a memorial will be completed in time for the tenth anniversary of September 11th—sooner than it might have been，but，for a lot of people，not soon enough”，由首段内容可知，世贸中心已在建设中，而纪念碑即将竣工，显然两者的建设不存在先后关系，[B]不符合文意；该句中的“sooner than it might have been，but，for a lot of people．not soon enough”表明许多人认为纪念碑建造进展缓慢，与世贸中心的建设进展情况无关，排除[C]。

单选题 According to Ward, the name Freedom Tower may

单选题 It can be inferred from the passage that

【正确答案】 C

【答案解析】推断题。由选项中的Dubai定位至第四段。首句指出“New York is not Dubai．”，之后作者就该句展开说明。“People always say，‘How come tie World Trade Center is taking so long? The Empire State Building
was built in fifteen months，…Ward said．“Yeah，well，people forget that five people died building the Empire State Building．”，显然，此处是谈论工程进度问题，Ward就人们质疑世贸中心建设速度慢做出的回应。接着他又指出“while Dubai can literally rip Lip and relocate an entire town，plans for a floating swimming pool barge in city waters were delayed for years because of red tape”，同样这也是对建设速度所作的说明，由此可以推断，Ward认为纽约和迪拜不同，虽然迪拜可以以很快的速度进行建设，但有些小事上却由于官场的繁文缛节而拖拖拉拉，故[C]为答案。文中比较的是纽约和迪拜的建设速度，不涉及其他方面，[A]和[B]均无依据；同理，文中没有提及迪拜的建筑质量如何，排除[D]。