Posted on 06/08/2009 4:30:45 PM PDT by ml/nj
New Jersey officials have been planning the next train tunnel under the Hudson River for so long that it is already on its third name. This month, work is scheduled to begin on the Mass Transit Tunnel — formerly known as the Trans-Hudson Express and, before that, Access to the Region’s Core — more than 15 years after it was conceived.
A ceremonial groundbreaking was set for Monday alongside a highway in North Bergen, N.J., the site of the first small piece of what could be the biggest transit project in the country. The tunnel, which is expected to take eight years to complete, bears a current price tag of $8.7 billion. That is about $6 billion less than the so-called Big Dig highway tunnel in Boston cost but about $6 billion more than the project’s original price.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I've lived in Northern NJ for the past 35+ years. I live about a half hour west of Manhattan and go into the city probably as often as anyone who doesn't work there. I was conditioned during my youth growing up on Long Island a similar distance from the city to regularly use the Long Island Railroad. But I have NEVER taken a train into Manhatten from NJ. Not only that, but with the exception of my wife who used the train for a few months while working in NYC, I do not know anyone who has ever even talked about using one of the trains. (Correction: My daughter took a train out of the city on 9/12 when all she wanted to do was get out of there, and I picked her up at a station a convenient 35 minutes away from our house.) The closest line to me is a "commuter" line which means they have one track and they only have eastbound trains in the morning and westbound trains in the evening. I'm not sure whether this is still true but the trains used to only go to Hoboken, NJ, from where one had to take a PATH train (glorified subway) which only has a half dozen stations in NYC. From what I understand some people actually use the Big Dig Tunnel.
This is a boondoggle which will make the Big Dig look like the Little Dipper.
ML/NJ
Politicians will spend recklessly until we toss them out of office.
Does the Mob have job listings?
This tunnel, however, is woefully unecessary. The old Penn railroad tunnel is more than sufficient for current needs.
Big Dig II
No! REALLY NO!
Trains used to be built by private business, that had or tried to have some sense of the return on the investment they were making. The politicians who build these railroads have a different sort of return on investment in mind.
ML/NJ
Eight years to build? As a goobermint contract, likely longer. The original tunnels, still in use and built by the Pennsylvania Railroad about a hundred years ago (William Wallace Atterbury I think was the president of the PRR at the time) took nowhere near that long.
No, it was Alexander Cassatt. Atterbury was president of the Pennsy when the Northeast Corridor was electrified in the early Thirties.
Lincoln tunnel took three years in the thirties.
These are the times that try men's souls, if they have any brains anyway.
ML/NJ
They think this is going to re-habilitate corzine.
The approaches took 4 years, started in 1933, contractors for the various sections were George M Brewster & Son, Porier-McLane, B. Perini & Sons and Clinton Asphalt Co.
That segment of the Northeast Corridor Line has been running beyond its operational capacity for years -- basically since they instituted the Midtown Direct service in the mid-1990s.
Airplanes.
I doubt anyone living where I do now used a train in 1950 either. When I use public transit, I take a bus which doesn't use any Interstate highways at all. My guess is that only a small percentage of the buses that go into NYC from NJ are ever on an Interstate, not counting the absurd designation of the helix into the Lincoln Tunnel as I-495.
ML/NJ
The biggest challenge is squeezing the additional tracks and new station platforms into the area adjacent to the existing Penn Station in Manhattan. Most people have no idea how costly and time-consuming it is to do a construction project underground in a place where you have to work around existing infrastructure and utilities and reinforce building foundations as you go along.
I am involved in the estimate preparation for one of the Joint Ventures, this is a Design/Build project...NO EXTRA'S...make me a tunnel from here to here (under river portion is in mud)and the land portions are in rock.
The NY station will cost as much as the under river section.
And for the ‘the Contractors are ripping us off crowd’ the only reason the Contractors are taking the tremendous risks of bidding and building this tunnel is TO MAKE A PROFIT, risk and reward theory...remember that in school
They have real customers, people that work but don’t want to live in high-density high-tax NYC, so it’s not a boondoggle. It’s a logical increase in capacity, driven by a dislike of leftist life in NYC. I don’t understand your hostility. It’s pro-family and will increase NJ property values. I moved to NJ last year for job reasons and recently bought a house that is walking distance to a NJ commuter train station into Manhattan, so I’m biased the other way. I’d be anti-growth if NJ was a beautiful Shangri la where I wanted to retire, but it was paved over long ago.
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