Amtrak Gateway Tunnels

Greg Moore wrote:Boardman is upping the FUD.

This is not necessarily a bad thing though.

I could not agree more!

But, in the future, when Amtrak plans tunnel outages in the current North River Tunnels, will this be on a daily basis, or just weekends (like the current PATH Tunnels between NJ and Lower Manhattan)?

From Amtrak's http://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/458/748/FY1 ... l-Plan.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;:
The $1.8 billion includes the majority of work to complete the North Portal Bridge, finish the remaining portion of the tunnel box from Penn Station to the Hudson River and complete all studies for the Gateway program.

Doesn't this mean that the Tunnel will not actually be extended to the Hudson River Bulkhead, but actually just to 12th Avenue?

ExCon90 wrote: Under Gateway the Amtrak trains will use the same tracks they use now, and Amtrak will deadhead them to Sunnyside just as they do now. You seem to be assuming that if ARC existed, Amtrak trains would be diverted to the Cavern, and I'm assuming that they wouldn't be, for the reasons I stated. And as for the period between 9 pm and 6 am, there aren't that many Amtrak trains to be handled, and from 6 am to 9 pm would be the worst time to tie up the cavern with Amtrak trains needing more TLC than NJT trains.

Ah yes they are going to be spending 20 billion dollars so everything can remain the way it is now.

Adirondacker wrote:Ah yes they are going to be spending 20 billion dollars so everything can remain the way it is now.

I can't tell what your point is.Is it the money or what they get for it? As with the Connecticut shore line bridges, sometimes you just spend a lot of money and mostly just replace old stuff. There's a big element of that in Gateway, sure, but there's also a lot of *more* of the same, not just same of the same.

Ah yes they are going to be spending 20 billion dollars so everything can remain the way it is now.

I like the way things are: trains can go from Penn Station NY to NJ and points south. If the investment isn't made, one or both of the Hudson tunnels will close and billions of dollars per year will be lost because people can't take a train from NJ to Manhattan, and the NEC will effectively be cut in half. Acela from Washington to Newark isn't as useful as Washington to NYP (and Boston). Any rational business would make the investment, but our dysfunctional Congress doesn't make decisions based on logic, evidence or common sense.

There is now more political interest for a Secaucus Loop.

http://www.midhudsonnews.com/News/2014/ ... 5Aug14.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The Secaucus loop is a great idea and would be huge to see come to fruition. How long that takes if it even does happen is a whole different story.

DanD3815 wrote:The Secaucus loop is a great idea and would be huge to see come to fruition. How long that takes if it even does happen is a whole different story.

Yes, because now all these trains can fit through the existing tunnels too.

Thomas wrote:There is now more political interest for a Secaucus Loop.

http://www.midhudsonnews.com/News/2014/ ... 5Aug14.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

There was always political interest. Political interest never died off. There is political interest in bringing in more Raritan Valley Line trains too.

None of it matters without slots and it is going to be hard to pry that many slots away from the PJC and Midclown Direct passengers to make room for all the people that have political interest.

Interesting article in yesterday's Asbury Park Press. Governor Christie got into an roaring Twitter battle with New Jersey commuters earlier this month after Amtrak was forced to shut down a Hudson River tunnel during rush hour. Yet this could be nothing more than a taste of the nightmare that awaits New Jersey rail commuters in another decade or two.

Joseph Boardman of Amtrak has warned, due to salt water damage from Sandy (similar to what PATH tunnels suffered), sometime between now and 2034 the Hudson tunnels to Penn Station will have to be taken out of service one at a time for a major overhaul. Without any additional capacity to get NJ commuters into Manhattan, the stage is set for an absolute catastrophe. It's beginning to seem to me somewhat inevitable that this will happen. Perhaps there is a way out. This is from the article in yesterday's Asbury Park Press:

A group of rail advocates, led by Joe Clift, a former Long Island Rail Road planning director, has come up with a less expensive idea of building a minimum operating segment of Gateway, building one new tunnel, using some of the superstorm Sandy resiliency funds out there. This would allow Amtrak to take the old tunnels out of service, one at a time and repair the damage from Sandy after a century of service. News link

The Asbury Park Press makes the point, though, for this to happen, New Jersey needs to start pushing the idea that there is some real urgency to this.

Seriously, the should commit to one tube now and plenty of stubs left for a second tube.

Arlington wrote:Seriously, the should commit to one tube now and plenty of stubs left for a second tube.

Perhaps.

On the flip side, I'm sure they're really pressing for two tunnels know with the thought that if they get ONE tunnel, they'll never get the money for the 2nd because "Hey, you've got redundancy, and now you want MORE?"

So it may be a bit of a game of chicken.

Also, I suspect doing two tunnels separately would cost noticeably more than doing them at the same time.

Finally, how many stubs for a 2nd tunnel do you really need.. one for each end, right

But seriously, we should all be pushing our politicos to support Gateway. It's critical to NYC and NJ and the NEC in general.

Greg Moore wrote:Finally, how many stubs for a 2nd tunnel do you really need.. one for each end, right

For what it was worth, I was thinking between the different construction methods and/or at any shared structures (like a vent building) might need stubs both for the approaches or vent structures and for the approach-to-tunnel transitions, so 4:
Western mainline-to-appraoch
Western shoreline approach-to-submerged "transition" (like a launch box / shared emergency egress / vent structure)
Eastern shoreline approach-to-submerged "transition" (like a launch box / shared emergency egress / vent structure)
Eastern approach-to-Gateway

I'm confused. I don't think Gateway or ARC for that matter ever contemplated 2 tunnels. It was one tunnel with 2 tracks. So how do you build less than that? I suppose you could only build enough of the interior to support the one track but either way you are boring the tunnel.

bleet wrote:I'm confused. I don't think Gateway or ARC for that matter ever contemplated 2 tunnels. It was one tunnel with 2 tracks. So how do you build less than that? I suppose you could only build enough of the interior to support the one track but either way you are boring the tunnel.

I'm pretty sure in both cases they planned on two tunnels, one track each.

Don't confuse the tunnel box with the tunnel under the river. It's easier to bore two tunnels of the appropriate diameter than one that has to be some sort of ellipse or something (since you don't want to (and really can't) dig a 25'-30' diameter tunnel under the river (actually probably even bigger than that since you'd have to put both tracks side by side and still need room on the outer edges).

Greg Moore wrote:

Arlington wrote:Seriously, the should commit to one tube now and plenty of stubs left for a second tube.

Perhaps.

On the flip side, I'm sure they're really pressing for two tunnels know with the thought that if they get ONE tunnel, they'll never get the money for the 2nd because "Hey, you've got redundancy, and now you want MORE?"

So it may be a bit of a game of chicken.

Also, I suspect doing two tunnels separately would cost noticeably more than doing them at the same time.

Finally, how many stubs for a 2nd tunnel do you really need.. one for each end, right

But seriously, we should all be pushing our politicos to support Gateway. It's critical to NYC and NJ and the NEC in general.

GM,TM and Everyone: This is the project that Amtrak and NJT desperately needs - Joe Clift has the right idea here: Let's get SOMETHING done...

The two Hudson/North River Tunnels are not getting any younger...Let's start with alleviating the two prime bottlenecks between NYP and NWK
which are the two tunnel lines and the Portal Bridge...Both are 103 years old (104 later this year) and need rebuilding and replacing respectively...

I feel that doing nothing in this case is not a option and when the time comes that either of this infrastructure needs to be closed this may cause
what could be called a commuters nightmare putting it as mildly as possible...

MACTRAXX