Jeff Smith wrote: ↑Mon May 11, 2020 1:48 pm
https://longislandweekly.com/column-eas ... rr-riders/
Amtraks plans to delay the decades overdue major repairs to the four East River tunnels until after the LIRR begins service into Grand Central Terminal in December 2022 is bad news for both riders and taxpayers.
Delaying the start of work by six years from 2019 to 2024 will increase costs by 300 percent to $1 billion. How will Amtrak and MTA come up with an almost $600 million shortfall? Continued deterioration of the East River Tunnels over this time period could result in an increased scope of work.
Combined with responses to the procurement process from contractors, this could then result in a final price tag of several hundred million more than the current engineers’ estimate. Remember only one of four East River Tunnels can be worked on at a time. Two of four tunnels suffered significant damage from Super Storm Sandy in 2012. They may require one to two years for repair work. The remaining two tunnels will need one year each. As a result, this project may not be completed until 2030.
The Federal Transit Administration provided $432 billion in June 2016 to the MTA. These funds were intended to be spent quickly for 2012 Super Storm Sandy-related work in the East River Tunnels to bring them up to a state of good repair. Amtrak may not begin to use these funds for another 8 years, until 2024. This does no one any good.
...
I agree with the last sentence of this article... -_-
Also, why is Amtrak delaying this again? Is it due to them not receiving enough due to the pandemic? $1
billion is what they received and should be enough to fix one of the lifelines of their precious Northeast Corridor, which one of the only lines Amtrak
really seems to care about (not counting the state-owned lines). Why can't Amtrak split the bill with LIRR, NJT, MTA Bridges and Tunnels (it is a tunnel used by the MTA after all), NY state, or... ANYONE???
"Look down, step over, and watch the gap!" - Dr. John Clarke, The Gap Rap (2010)