It should have been done by
now.
2018 was the expected
completion date of the new railroad tunnels under the Hudson River first
proposed in 2009. At the time the $9
billion project was the biggest infrastructure project in the country. Now it’s just a footnote to history.
Why do rail tunnels from New
York’s Penn Station to New Jersey matter to us here in Connecticut? Because they are the weakest but most crucial
link in the northeast corridor, the $50 billion heart
of the US economy. Imagine trying to get
to Philadelphia or Washington without Amtrak running through our state, into those
tunnels and to points south.
There are 23 bridges and
tunnels connecting Manhattan from the north and east. But between that island and New Jersey there
are only six… two of them those rail tunnels built in 1910. And when super-storm Sandy flooded those
tunnels in October 2012 with 3.5 million gallons of salt water, their lifespan
was shortened by decades due to corrosion.
If one of those two rail
tunnels were to fail, the entire nation would be in an economic crisis.
New York’s Penn Station was
never built to handle the 430,000 daily passengers it now handles each day (vs
the 750,000 who enter the much-larger Grand Central Terminal). Amtrak, NJ Transit and the LIRR carry twice
as many riders at Penn as New York’s three airports combined.
New Jersey and Pennsylvania
residents alone make up 16% of Manhattan’s workforce. Their rail commuting options are so tight
that many rely on the 7700 daily commuter buses that bring them into the
transit cesspool known as The Port Authority bus terminal.
All that could have changed
if the 2009 plan to build additional rail tunnels had gone through. But then, along came Chris Christie, the
newly elected Governor of the Garden State who balked at the cost and pulled
the plug.
Cynics say that he did so to
instead spend money on highways and keep the state’s gasoline tax low for
another few years, even after repaying Uncle Sam for $95 million already spent
on the project.
Now the
project has been redesigned… and re-priced at a
staggering $20 billion, which also includes adding seven more tracks at the
overcrowded Penn Station. The new target
for completion is 2030. Of the total,
both NY and NJ would each contribute $3.6 billion with another $1.9 billion coming
from the Port Authority.
But that’s only if President
Trump’s promise for $1 trillion of spending on infrastructure makes it through Congress. And that seems iffy. The Trump campaign promise hinges on
public-private-partnerships (P3’s). The
White House even convened a panel of high powered business leaders to study the
idea, but they all quit after the President’s comments following the
Charlottesville riots.
Imagine that: Tweets that killed a tunnel.
Even basking in the glow of
tax reform, I don’t think Congress has the appetite to tackle the
infrastructure plan if it adds further to the deficit. Worse yet, those in the red states so loathe
the liberal New York area that they’d just love to see us crumble… like an
aging railroad tunnel.
Posted with permission of Hearst CT Media.