Amtrak Gateway Tunnels

Safetee wrote:500 miles or even 5000 miles of high speed rail with no decent rail access to New York City and in particular mid town Manhattan just won't fly.
Whether or not the tunnel is the answer or possibly a bridge to connect with access tracks to both Grand Central and Penn Station that could be more flexible and cost effective.

A counter argument, what good will two new tunnels under the Hudson River be if Penn Station can't handle any additional trains? Doubling the entry and exit tracks doesn't double the tracks at the platforms.

I'm also pretty sure the rest of the country; like California, Texas, Rocky Mountains, Pacific Northwest, Florida, and the Midwest can do just fine with their own HSR lines without including New York City.

The problem of taking one tunnel bore OOS now is the other one will still need the every other weekend shutdown to remain operational. ie no service many weekends !!!

Before we go too far, we need to remind ourselves that the current tunnels have about 24 trains run through them per hour -- and that's Amtrak AND NJ Transit trains. If they go down to one tunnel, that goes to 6/hour.

My question is, how many of those 24/hour on average are Amtrak and how many are NJTransit?

From NJ Transit, two lines solidly serve NYP (NEC, Raritan) while four split between NYP and Hoboken (North Jersey Coast, Gladstone, Morristown, Montclair-Bontoon). The maximum they have is 11 trains/hour, and there's little "slop" or adjustment time between them.

Amtrak has numerous lines, NE Regional and Accela being the bulk of them. The NEC schedule lists them all. Condensed down, they are running four trains maximum through each track/tunnel an hour, but there seems to be some adjustment space so they can make a consistent 3/hour/direction.

Comparing the two by hour, it looks like it's 13 trains per hour per track max (Okay, it can be 26 for the entire tunnel). Most of this is NJ Transit.

If a tunnel goes down, NJ Transit effectively gets screwed.

Um... how much is a bridge over the River Hudson?

How much is a bridge over the Hudson?? A fraction of the cost of a new tunnel under the Hudson with far less tidal fill ins to think about. If Penn handled just Amtrak Corridor and all related long distance trains with the Long Island and GCT handled the Amtrak Empire service, NJT and Metro North I'm inclined to believe that the passenger rail world on Manhattan and beyond would be a happier place.

Where do we put the bridge? Where do we put the Jersey approaches? More importantly and more expensively, where do we put the Manhattan approaches? Do we bridge via Staten Island and the Bay Ridge Branch, and if so, what do we do with NWK and SEC? If via the Hudson, how do we get the favor of the stakeholders and people paying the bill?

Non-starter.

Safetee wrote:How much is a bridge over the Hudson?? A fraction of the cost of a new tunnel under the Hudson with far less tidal fill ins to think about.

I beg to differ.... Forget for a minute that a bridge will never happen, but the cost of real estate acquisition alone would be astronomical. To keep it at a reasonable grade requires long approaches in both NJ and NYC. People here were commenting on the cost of acquiring Block 780 for the Penn South expansion, but a Manhattan approach would need several blocks of some of the most expensive real estate in the world.

As far as in-water impact, the two (at least) bridge piers needed in the water would be far more disruptive than any remediation of the TBM low-cover area for the tunnel.

Safetee wrote:How much is a bridge over the Hudson?

At least $200 billion before any of the bridge gets built.

I'm not clear what the current Gateway price tag is, but i do know that whatever it is by the time it gets finished Penn will still be overcrowded and in the meantime the finished price tag will have ballooned geometrically if not astronomically. There are no cheap solutions, and each second that goes by for whatever the solution is, it gets more expensive as well. Fitting 19th century planned facilities into a 21st century world is always going to be excruciatingly expensive especially in Manhattan.

My gut feeling is that something has to give. I think that Amtrak could easily send it's Empire trains to Grand Central but that wont relieve too much pressure. No question that Penn is the NEC bridge between Boston and Washington so Amtrak corridor traffic has to be protected. Long island RR has no where else to go so they're staying. NJT is the elephant in the room. Maybe the best cheapest alternative is to put some if not all of those Jersey commuters back on the boats.

Silly question: how feasible would it be to relay (not rebuild, you can’t rebuild iron tubes) the northern pair of PATH tunnels, build a vault station under HOB, and rebuild the Midtown spur for PSNY-sized cars? The tunnels are there and I believe they are the least-used of all the trans-Hudson tubes per passengers/hour - still busy, but New York could potentially get along without them for 5 (10?) years while they are rebuilt & enlarged.

BTW, to give you an idea on a bridge. I believe the Coast Guard requires on the Hudson up to Albany 110' clearance. Or you need a lift or swing or something. That's a non-starter given the amount of boat vs train traffic.

So, even at a 2% grade, 110' clearance, well I'll let you do the math.

I realize the comment was probably made in jest, but for anyone seriously considering it.

The solution is a tunnel and to get them started sooner rather than later.

There is already a bridge over the Hudson with space for two tracks--The George Washington Bridge. I don't know if the clearances and load will allow for modern trainsets. The access routes to the bridge would also be a problem.

GWB lowerlevel,not high enough for catenary,NYC(MN) style 3rd rail possible,NO easy access to connect to any commuter rail lines.
NO easy access to any NYCTA subway lines as well

I thought someone might bring up the GWB. But as Backshophoss points out, that's a complete non-starter.

For one thing, it's 7 miles north of the current tunnels.

So that's 14 miles out of your way and you're not going to be averaging 60mph along that so you're already looking at 15 more minutes to your ride (since no one will want to get off in northern Manhattan).

You're also going to have to do a long of tunneling/cutting along the Palisades to get up to the bridge and then buy a LOT of real estate on the western edge of Manhattan to get back down to Penn Station level.

Now the good news is, you could in theory tie into the Empire connection.
What's sort of interesting is, you could just about make the distance from the GWB to where the Empire connection goes underground, but the curve would be very tight.

Something like this might be useful and considered for a Subway line to New Jersey, but is a non-starter for Amtrak or NJTransit.

Any kind of rail access is lost to all the the Interstate and local roads tha converge to the GWB on the NJ side,the NY side is a concrete bunker like
maze of exits/entry points.,also any connection to the Hudson line to GCT from High Bridge is a long way down,and get vetoed by NYCDEC,
one of the major water mains crosses on High Bridge .

Talk of bridges is nonsense at this point. The two tunnels need to be built.

It's not about what Penn can handle, it's about what the existing tunnels, in their current state, can handle. They are dangerously in need of major repairs. We're often without one and it causes chaos to the rush hour commutes.

As for Penn, part of Gateway includes expanding it. There are plenty of good plans in place. We just need to $$ investment in the region. And no one has the ability to get it done. That's the failure.