I’m an area resident and have visited Pier 76 at various times. The problem with 76 is geographic: it is really walled off by the damned Javitz, and no effort was made during the recent Javitz renovation to address that. Pier 76 is an isolated ancillary of Hudson River Park that wasn’t really needed.
There is one population that has found Pier 76 genuinely useful, however: people with wheeled accessories like long boards, electric unicycles, etc.: it’s a large tarmac on which they can zoom around. And I like that those folks are zooming around Pier 76 instead of in other, more populated places.
new funding source for the pier fixes and development from two new residential towers in Northern Hell’s Kitchen. hopefully this survives as is, without a chop.
I believe it’s just due to the geographic placement in relation to the street grid.
Pier 63 was the first pier to be parallel to the street grid and inline with the street it coincides with at which point after every Pier after also does the same until (at the present day) they stop at Pier 99/ 59th St.
The 62 piers south of Pier 63 are perpendicular to the coastline of Manhattan and because of the merging of the original street grid and the 1811 Commissioner’s grid at Houston St this created an uneven layout of piers between streets. Pier 40 was built at Houston St, so that’s where the +40 comes from.