Amtrak Gateway Tunnels

[EuroStar]

Back on topic, there is a proposal to force the Federal Government to make emergency plans should the tunnels close https://www.amny.com/transit/trump-budg ... 1.28393510. In the house it has one Democratic and one Republican congressmen behind it, so it might get a vote eventually, but I see no chance it hell that it will get a vote in the Senate unless it gets attached to a must pass legislation, basically one of the budget resolutions.

As the federal government made its case, Rep. Peter King (R-Long Island) joined Josh Gottheimer, his colleague from across the aisle and river, at Penn Station. They took to the Amtrak concourse to announce new legislation Monday that would require the federal government to draft an alternative service plan should a Gateway tunnel be forced out of service for repairs.

[EuroStar]

Of course this problem could be solved by making a trade (IE a wall for a tunnel) but nobody seems interested in doing so.

I have no idea why you or anyone thinks that a trade of this type is even remotely possible. Democratic politicians in California and the rest of the West Coast gain nothing from Gateway. Why should a trade like this be good for them? For Republicans the wall is a symbol and even the ones in Maine support building it. But for California or Chicago, the tunnel under the Hudson is a non-entity, so there is no reason for them to support it unless there is something for them and by the time you buy out all democrats by funding pet projects in their states, the cost will be in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

[Tadman]

The geography of a favor given matters much less than the geography of a favor asked.

For example, if Corey Booker asks for federal funding for a tunnel, he'll ask for support from California. California doesn't care where the tunnel is, all they care about is now Booker owes them one. When California wants federal funding for a flyover at LAUPT, Booker owes them one. He has to pay the favor back regardless of the location of the flyover. Instead of a flyover, the favor could be funding fighter planes for Pakistan or a telescope to look at another galaxy. He has to pay it back or he gets no more favors.

Read Charlie Wilson's book. He supported any bill he was asked to for decades. He hardly knew what was in them. But when he needed help getting weapons for Afghan resistance and fighters for Pakistan, he got it. No senator really cared about Pakistan (heck, Wilson didn't either, his girlfriend did and he wanted in her pants).

[JoeG]

How will drafting a plan have any effect? Seems irrelevant to me. Looks like we will have to wait until at least 2021 to make much progress.

[Nasadowsk]

Unfortunately this is not going to change no matter how much you or I do not like it. .

Then suck up and deal with the fact that the country doesn't want to pay 15 billion for 4 miles of tunnel?

[JoeBas]

New York and New Jersey can build a Hudson River Tunnel on their own

Click the link to an article from the Poughkeepsie Journal.

Just promise him we'll name it after him. With big, shiny fake-golden letters.

Done, and done.

[ChesterValley]

I'm surprised that people think this is just about NYC, this problem has been felt across the board. In Philly we are dealing with this whole "local money for local projects" mantra that has infected the FTA right now under the Trump administration which might kill a transit project that's been in the pipeline for 20 years. Trump has tried to kill off the New Starts program under the budget, but after congress rebuffed him the DOT has opted to slow walk out all the funds. Hell the FTA has stated in it's latest funding recommendations report https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.d ... report.pdf

The FY 2019 proposal limits funding for the CIG Program to projects with existing full funding grant agreements. For the remaining projects in the CIG program, FTA is not requesting or recommending funding. Future investments in new transit projects would be funded by the localities that use and benefit from these localized projects.

This website has detailed which projects are still waiting on funding that congress has allocated http://t4america.org/transitfundingdelays/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

But the DOT is gun-ho about new highway programs and projects.

[CarterB]

If Schumer, DiBlasio, Murphy, Booker, et al would cooperate a bit with Trump, perhaps he'd return the favor. Can't really expect Trump to support those who vehemently and verbally attack him at every turn, regardless of merit. I can't blame Trump for ignoring them at this time.

[DutchRailnut]

cooperate with a scammer?? it would only result in further blackmailing by Mr Trump.

[Tadman]

If Schumer, DiBlasio, Murphy, Booker, et al would cooperate a bit with Trump, perhaps he'd return the favor. Can't really expect Trump to support those who vehemently and verbally attack him at every turn, regardless of merit. I can't blame Trump for ignoring them at this time.

Totally agree. He has got nothing but grief from that group. Not just vehement political opposition, but the greatest witch hunt of all time, which now that it is wrapping up, is going to get a congressional encore. Oooookayyyyyyy.

I don't want to see the NEC fail, I want to see it win bigly, but the NEC residents and pols will evidently have to learn the hard way not to bite the hand that feeds it.

[JoeG]

Trump is not a regular politician with whom you can make deals.His regard for the truth is nonexistent. His regard for his own promises is similarly nonexistent. So the usual calculus of Washington deal making does not apply here. Just what does anyone think the Dems could offer Trump that would get him to agree to contribute to Gateway?

[ChesterValley]

Considering there was the so called hamburger summit where the Dem's negotiated 25 Billion for Trump's wall in exchange for the Dreamers to have citizenship and Trump turned around and balked, then after the election shutdown the government and got nothing for his wall...and the North Korea summit where he halted US military exercises for nothing...Honestly how do you negotiate with a person who views deals as a zero-sum game where there are only winners and losers?

So much for infrastructure week...

[AMK0123]

I don't believe this issue started two years ago when Trump got in.... Look at it from a different standpoint. We all see the current state of the MTA and the back and forth between DeBlasio and the other Mayor (Cuomo)…. Any price that they put for a new tunnel and bridge will most likely far exceed that price and probably take twice as long... And don't forget, I'm sure there is probably a birds nest or fish that maybe disrupted, so we'd have to stop to do an environmental study. I can go on and on. This area is not the most infrastructure friendly. On the other hand, this area is very friendly on spending others money like a drunk sailor. I believe our commuters already pay enough for a satisfactory system. Maybe we have to look instead at the past 30 plus years and ask were all the money that should have been for infrastructure go... If I was a large investor I wouldn't place all my bets on this project....

[eolesen]

Look at it this way: Given seven long distance trains into NYC from the tunnels, and a train capacity of 400 each, that's 2800 passengers, or less than the capacity of two NJT trains.

On the other hand, wikipedia posits daily ridership of 113,000 for NJT/NEC and 165,000 for Midtown Direct.

^^^ This ^^^

At best, the tunnels are a Port Authority project.

PFC's are paying for most of the improvements at airports today, so why not impose the equivalent of a $1 PFC each way on current tickets that transit the tunnels... PATH would clear $600M a year on that.

How many commuters stop commuting over a $2 tax increase?

[STrRedWolf]

Oh, Trump will change his tune if... Amtrak picks the Trump Corp to do a Private Public Partnership to build the tunnels and have Amtrak and NJTransit rent the tracks.

Tracks get built... and then investigated before being taken over by Amtrak for non-compliance via court order.