Amtrak Gateway Tunnels

[JoeG]

I guess things are inching forward. At this rate the job may be finished by 2040 or so. Let's hope the old tunnels hold up till then.
So far I see little evidence that Congress is able or willing to make a deal to get funding for major infrastructure projects. Mr Trump also shows little interest in infrastructure, despite his earlier bluster on the subject.

Of course, the last major rail infrastructure project, the Long Island Rail Road link to Grand Central, is still limping along, years behind schedule, gulping millions of dollars a day in cost overruns.

The Second Avenue Subway, designed in 1928 as a six track subway linking Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx, has finally completed 3 stations of a double track line. More to come, eventually.

Maybe 2040 is too optimistic.

[gokeefe]

So far I see little evidence that Congress is able or willing to make a deal to get funding for major infrastructure projects.

I see 650,000,000 pieces of evidence that Congress has found a way to fund this project one year at a time if necessary.

Just because they don't pay for it all at once doesn't mean it can't or won't happen.

[EuroStar]

While this certainly is a positive for the project, I do not believe that the real tunnelling can begin until a large chuck of money is secured, probably on the order of $6-8 billion. You cannot start building a tunnel while hoping that every year for the next 10 years Congress will allocate you $650 million for this. This money is probably good for Amtrak to finish the concrete casing on the Manhattan side plus some other odds and ends, but they cannot start the real tunnel on this money especially given that it is still subject to US DOT approval before the funds get used.

[JCGUY]

If every dollar of that funding was used for Gateway, it would amount to approximately 5% of the total cost of the project.

[Nasadowsk]

So far I see little evidence that Congress is able or willing to make a deal to get funding for major infrastructure projects. Mr Trump also shows little interest in infrastructure, despite his earlier bluster on the subject.

At 3 times the cost of the Gothard Base Tunnel, for a 2 mile tunnel, I couldn't imagine why the feds aren't eager to fund it...

The problem isn't in DC, the problem is this project simply costs too damn much. Joe.average out in the midwest, south, west, etc, really doesn't care if some Wall Street banker's constantly late to work, or has to suffer the horrors of taking a bus instead of the train. Especially at 30 billion for a short tunnel, with the excuse of "NYC is an expensive place". Nobody outside the NYC metro (and, honestly, quite a few folks inside the NYC metro), really cares about the existing tunnels - it doesn't affect them one bit. Yeah, we can whine about the economic impact of losing the tunnels. Ok, sure, whatever. Companies and people will just relocate outside Manhattan if things suck that much.

Move the decimal place to the left one notch, you might get federal funding for it.

[mtuandrew]

I’ve heard the “but my taxes” argument a lot recently in terms of many different topics, so instead of fighting it let me ask: how would you move that decimal place and reduce the cost by 10x? Answers like “move it to the middle of nowhere” and “have Elon do it” don’t count because you’re still working within the confines of the Hudson River and New York metropolitan area, with all the politics that goes with it.

EDIT: and for fairness’ sake, my preferred cost-saving method is to build tunnel segments at a shipyard, freeze & encapsulate the affected toxic muck, sink pile walls on either side of the tunnels, then dredge out the muck in order to lay tunnel segments within that trench. That still means a TBM at either shore, but not much pushing a tunnel through muck itself. It also means a change in Federal legislation, an unpopular one but targeted toward this single purpose if at all possible.

[JCGUY]

I don't understand why the last administration didn't apply actual cash to this project for its most loyal base of support. There was a supposed "pledge", whatever that means. I do understand why the current administration would not be receptive, as the entirety of the elected officials in this area have presented themselves as reflexive and implacable foes. In two years you'll get a brand new super-lefty administration in all likelihood, and I'll post a comment wondering why real money isn't forthcoming, and so on...

I would note that the entire purported $13 billion figure could be floated in its entirety with 30 year amortizing bonds paying $430 million of principal per year (plus interest at muni bond rates). Why NJ is utterly unable to handle this expense on its own given the critical and urgent nature of this project, in its own telling, is beyond me. That amount is between 1 and 2% of NJ's annual state budget.

[mtuandrew]

JCGUY: perhaps in the two years when there may be a Democratic President and will be a Democratic NJ governor - likely a Democrat in Albany too - there will be funding for Gateway. Gov Christie was in no hurry to participate in a project that NJ would pay for, nor one that would benefit his political enemies in Trenton or in DC. (If Romney had won in 2012, Gateway probably would be started by now as a showpiece of his second term because he would have had an agreeable governor in NJ.)

[Greg Moore]

I'm going to star with I'm mostly pro-Union.
That said, reading some of the articles on the 2nd Ave Subway definitely make me think there's some featherbedding (there's other issues to why I think the 2AS is taking so long and costs so much, but that's not the question.)

So I do think, to a point the union is ensuring, "we've go X people, so make sure all X get jobs." I can't entirely disagree.
That said, some of the jobs (again various articles) are probably pointless.

So... approach the problem differently.

"Look, we have a bucket of $5B. We have a choice, we can use your numbers and prices and crew numbers and build project X. OR, you can find a way to do it for 1/2 the price, $2.5B. And if so, we'll target another $2.5B project. So you get the name number of jobs, we get more done AND you get the positive publicity of getting more done and not the current negative publicity."

Is it THAT simple, obviously not, but I think guaranteeing that reducing head count on a specific project won't reduce overall spending may help.

[SRich]

So Mr Greg you say the problem is the unions ?

[bostontrainguy]

JCGUY: perhaps in the two years when there may be a Democratic President and will be a Democratic NJ governor - likely a Democrat in Albany too - there will be funding for Gateway. Gov Christie was in no hurry to participate in a project that NJ would pay for, nor one that would benefit his political enemies in Trenton or in DC. (If Romney had won in 2012, Gateway probably would be started by now as a showpiece of his second term because he would have had an agreeable governor in NJ.)

Actually wouldn't that have probably been ARC? That was not a well designed project and I think waiting for Gateway will be better in the long run.

"Christie was actually right to pull out of ARC because it became a flawed project," said Len Resto, New Jersey Association of Railroad Passengers president. "ARC had morphed into an NJ Transit venture, once it became a four-track stub-end terminal in Macy's basement and Amtrak pulled out."

[Defiant]

Well actually, in this region, there is almost never a perfectly designed project. We have no idea what the final shape of Gateway will be when or if it will be built. Waiting for Gateway might be better in a long run if and only if existing 150 year old tunnels don't fail. And if there is no other Superstorm like Sandy. And that is a very big if. If at least one tunnel fails, the region will likely plunge into absolute chaos with unprecedented economic damage.

ARC was far from perfect but it had one huge advantage. It was funded and was being built and would've given NJT another option to get across Hudson. I think canceling it to pay for Governor's more favorite projects was almost a crime. And I believe most of the design problems with ARC were caused by clueless Republicans who wanted to kill Amtrak.

[Nasadowsk]

ARC was far from perfect but it had one huge advantage. It was funded and was being built and would've given NJT another option to get across Hudson. .

Given the cost overruns on East Side Access, where the bulk of the tunneling was already done, why does anyone think ARC would have come remotely near it's cost estimate?

Also, NJT operating in/out of a 6 track stub terminal? So, 10-15 billion dollars (or more?) for a handful of trains an hour? What a bargain!

Then one day a tunnel into Penn pops, and we're back at square one.

So...spend another 15-20 billion for new Penn tunnels?

I want to know where this amazing money tree is located, and how I can get one. They seem awfully useful...

[Ridgefielder]

So far I see little evidence that Congress is able or willing to make a deal to get funding for major infrastructure projects. Mr Trump also shows little interest in infrastructure, despite his earlier bluster on the subject.

At 3 times the cost of the Gothard Base Tunnel, for a 2 mile tunnel, I couldn't imagine why the feds aren't eager to fund it...

The problem isn't in DC, the problem is this project simply costs too damn much. Joe.average out in the midwest, south, west, etc, really doesn't care if some Wall Street banker's constantly late to work, or has to suffer the horrors of taking a bus instead of the train. Especially at 30 billion for a short tunnel, with the excuse of "NYC is an expensive place". Nobody outside the NYC metro (and, honestly, quite a few folks inside the NYC metro), really cares about the existing tunnels - it doesn't affect them one bit. Yeah, we can whine about the economic impact of losing the tunnels. Ok, sure, whatever. Companies and people will just relocate outside Manhattan if things suck that much.

Move the decimal place to the left one notch, you might get federal funding for it.

You realize there are 8,000,000 people in NYC proper and 20,000,000 in the NYC Metro area as a whole, right? That's almost 6% of the population of the US.

To put it another way- there are more people in NYC than there are in the State of Indiana, and there are more people in the Metro area than there are in the states of Illinois and Indiana combined.

And I can assure you the bulk of the people humping it to work every day in New York City on NJ Transit aren't "Wall Street bankers" but are in fact every bit as Joe Average as the guy sitting in his car cursing at the traffic on the Dan Ryan.

[eolesen]

The last time there was a reasonable chance to get funding was in 2010. Obama held the House and Senate, but rolled the dice with HSR grants instead of improving basic rail.

There's a chance of a Democrat President in 2020, but that won't guarantee funding as R's will likely hold the majority in the Senate in 2020 and it takes both chambers to get the funding.

NY and NJ's best bet right now would be to put partisanship aside, and work out a simple Gateway for Wall trade.

But, I don't see them doing that, given you have Senators from both NY and NJ vying for the nomination.