NY - NJ Hudson River Tunnel Bites the Dust

[Anonymous]

Phoebe Vet

I am now done with the political portion of this thread and will no longer be following it.

You have no idea how much pleasure this statement brings us each time you toss a hand grenade in here, then make your "dramatic" departure.

 

 

[wanswheel]

It seems unfair that New York would benefit at New Jersey's expense. However, this was a joint project of New Jersey Transit and the Port Authority. Neither state would have anything to do with the funding of it, except for the fact that New Jersey Transit is owned by the residents of New Jersey. Of course, they probably don't want to hear it that Midtown Manhattan is the core of their region. But that was the plan and the name of the plan, ARC, got stuck in The Tunnel.

http://www.thetunnelproject.com/

http://www.panynj.gov/about/history-ports.html

[Phoebe Vet]

Murray:

Maybe you should review that video again.  Senator Dirksen was not defining "conservative", he was explaining what he wants you to believe is the difference between Republicans and Democrats.  And as usual his statements have very little resemblance to reality.

I am now done with the political portion of this thread and will no longer be following it.

[Phoebe Vet]

Alphas:

I made no disparaging remark about the quality or cost of union or non union workers.  I only took issue with you placing the blame for the cost and unionization of the tunnel job on President Obama.

The project was not planned or begun on President Obama's watch, and the unions have had a strangle hold on major construction projects in Manhattan for a very long time.

[Dutchrailnut]

RRKen

Is that fair use???????

 it is according to this:

http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

[Boyd]

Phoebe Vet

 

Murray:

 

I think its an appropriate time in this debate to view this video from the late Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois.  Senator Dirksen makes very reasoned explanation for the need of fiscal responsibility:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm6fnQ5no0o

 

 

 

Yes, we need those fiscally responsible Republicans to return to power.  The fiscally responsible President Reagan tripled the national debt in 8 years.  Then the fiscally responsible President Bush doubled the national debt in 4 years.  Then the fiscally irresponsible Democrat, President Clinton left office with 3 consecutive years of balanced budgets (after vetoing budgets presented to him by the Republican controlled legislature) with 10 more years of balanced budgets projected.  It only took the fiscally responsible President Bush less than a year to turn that into what at the time was the largest deficit in the history of the country.  A record he broke twice more.

Then the anti big government Republican President created the Department of Homeland Security, the largest and most intrusive government agency in the history of the country.

Those Republicans talk a good game though, don't they.  And people keep believing them.

Now while you are complaining that this is political, reflect on who made the FIRST political post by pointing to a political video.

Who spends the money in Washington DC? Its the US House and US Senate spending money like a high maintanance wife with 100 new credit cards each month. In all those years that Republicans presidents supposedly did all of the multiplication of our debt, look at which party was controlling the US House and US Senate in those years. Look at the years were old Bill had a surplus, who controlled the House and Senate? Old Bill cut the defense budget about in half and left us vulnerable. And then what happened? In the decade of the 2000s you could hardly tell the political parties separate from each other as they both spent money like no one else before. I can see where putting off a project like this is letting infrastructure slide backwards. But sometimes when you don't have the money, you really don't have the money.

[MerrilyWeRollAlong]

For those who say Manhattan (New York City) would not benefit from the new tunnels, I would have to strongly disagree.  NJT actually has one of (if not) the highest Reverse Commuter riderships in the country (along with LIRR and Metro-North).  At one point in my career, I happened to be one of the hundred of throusands of people who lived in New York City and commuted to a suburb (of NJ).

New York City is one of the few  US cities in which there are a lot of people who live in the city and work (or go to school) in the surrounding suburbs.  Board any reverse trip train (NJT, LIRR, M-N) and you will find the trains to be at least 1/2 full if not completely full heading against the normal flow.  You can even see it at the bus terminal on any given weekend day morning that there are thousands of NYers boarding buses to NJ .  Coming back in to the NY in the evening is a nightmare, particularly at the Lincoln Tunnel.   In summary, i would have to disagree with the notion that new yorkers would not benefit from the new tunnels.

[alphas]

Phoebe Vet,

If you had been following the news concerning the road stimulus projects, you must have read where Obama has ruled the contractors must be union.    They no longer can be non-union and pay the Davis-Bacon required "prevailing wage" when working on government funded projects--which has been the norm for years in many parts of the USA.   In many parts of the country there are very few or no union contractors.  Now its possible in northern NJ that all the contractors are union--I don't know.   I can say that in my experience whenever a job had a mixture of union and non-union contractors [which actually offen occurred],  there was no difference in the quality of the work and usually the non-union workers tended to work a little harder.    If the primary contractor was non-union then the project mostly was completed on time or very close to it [and sometimes even early if the weather cooperated].    If the primary contractor was union then the project tended to run beyond the original estimated completion date, sometimes significantly. 

I have to wonder that if this tunnel project was allowed to bring in the equipment and personnel from the European company that did the Chunnel, could the project could be done cheaper and faster than what is now expected?   I remember reading they did a good job for CN when they dug the new tunnel at Port Huron.   If the main purpose behind building the new tunnel is to help the traveling public, then that or other possible solutions should be explored.   However, if the main purpose in the eyes of the Feds is to create jobs for 8 or more years, my personal belief is the Obama administration should commit to covering any costs above the estimate at the time the construction began instead of placing all the overrun on the backs of the NJ taxpayers, many of whom probably don't significantly benefit from the tunnel's construction.  

      

[blue streak 1]

BaltACD

 

I view it as no more than a 'campaign statement' for Christie's next election.  'I tried to stop the tunnel.'  He want others to step up and 'force' NJ to do the right thing....then he has plausible deniability.  Politics...pure politics.

BaltACD

 

I view it as no more than a 'campaign statement' for Christie's next election.  'I tried to stop the tunnel.'  He want others to step up and 'force' NJ to do the right thing....then he has plausible deniability.  Politics...pure politics.

Good analysis.

Wouldn't you have liked to been a fly on the wall during the Christie and LaHood meeting?

LaHood could have taken several tacts. The one I would have used is.

OK -- NJ will get no funds for any transit and that money and the money you got for the tunnel is due back immediately. This money will be distributed to the states that want it ( Washington, NC, Va, Florida, California) so they can speed up their HSR projects. 

Additionaly no road funds will be forthcoming for 180 days while the EPA reviews your compliance with polution reductions requirements.

Of course none of this will be announced for 30 days or until past the November elections.

[Anonymous]

Dutch, you are only uspposed to post the link and a shot synopsis if necessary....The Mod's don't want the entire article posted.

[RRKen]

Is that fair use???????

[Dutchrailnut]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/09/opinion/09herbert.html

New York Times
October 8, 2010

Policy at Its Worst

By BOB HERBERT


We can go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and
threaten to blow Iran off the face of the planet.
We can conduct a nonstop campaign of drone and
helicopter attacks in Pakistan and run a network
of secret prisons around the world. We are the
mightiest nation mankind has ever seen.

But we can’t seem to build a railroad tunnel to
carry commuters between New Jersey and New York.

The United States is not just losing its capacity
to do great things. It’s losing its soul. It’s
speeding down an increasingly rubble-strewn path
to a region where being second rate is good enough.

The railroad tunnel was the kind of
infrastructure project that used to get done in
the United States almost as a matter of routine.
It was a big and expensive project, but the
payoff would have been huge. It would have
reduced congestion and pollution in the New
York-New Jersey corridor. It would have generated
economic activity and put thousands of people to
work. It would have enabled twice as many
passengers to ride the trains on that heavily
traveled route between the two states.

The project had been in the works for 20 years,
and ground had already been broken when the
governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, rejected
the project on Thursday, saying that his state
could not afford its share of the costs. Extreme
pressure is being exerted from federal officials
and others to get Mr. Christie to change his
mind, but, as of now, the project is a no-go.

This is a railroad tunnel we’re talking about.
We’re not trying to go to the Moon. This is not
the Manhattan Project. It’s a railroad tunnel
that’s needed to take people back and forth to
work and to ease the pressure on the existing
tunnel, a wilting two-track facility that’s about
100 years old. What is the matter with us?

The Chinese could build it. The Turks could build it. We can’t build it.

One day after Governor Christie made his
devastating announcement about the tunnel, the
U.S. Labor Department released its latest
unemployment statistics. They show that the
nation remains locked in an employment crisis,
unable to provide work for millions who want and
need it. One of the major potential solutions to
this crisis is all around us. America’s
infrastructure is indisputably in sorry shape,
and upgrading it to meet the needs of the 21st
century is far and away the best strategy for putting people back to work.

The railroad tunnel project, all set and ready to
go, would have provided jobs for 6,000
construction workers, not to mention all the
residual employment that accompanies such
projects. What we’ll get instead, if it is not
built, is the increased pollution and worsening
traffic jams that result when tens of thousands
of commuters who would have preferred to take the
train are redirected to their automobiles.

This is government policy at its pathetic worst.
But it’s not the first policy disaster of Mr.
Christie’s short tenure as governor. He blew a
golden opportunity (along with $400 million in
federal funds) to participate in the Obama
administration’s Race to the Top competition to
improve the nation’s public school systems. New
Jersey’s bid came up needlessly and
embarrassingly short because of a mistake in the
application and the governor’s refusal to sign
off on an agreement that had been reached with the teachers’ union.

This failure to take part in a nationwide
initiative to bolster public education comes at a
time when the United States, once the world’s
leader in the percentage of young people with
college degrees, has fallen to a humiliating 12th
place among 36 developed nations.

No one can accuse the governor of New Jersey of
being a visionary. But his stumbling and bumbling
and his inability to chart a clear path to a
better future is, frankly, just the latest
example of the dismal leadership that Americans
have endured for many years. Where once we were
the innovators, the pathfinders, the model for
the rest of the world, now we just can’t seem to get it done.

We can’t put the population to work, or get the
kids through college, or raise the living
standards of the middle class and the poor. We
can’t rebuild the infrastructure or curb our
destructive overreliance on fossil fuels.

There have been many times when the U.S. has
stunned the world with the breadth and greatness
of its achievements — the Marshall Plan, the G.I.
Bill, the world’s highest standard of living, the
world’s finest higher education system, the space program, and on and on.

Somewhere, somehow, things went haywire. The
nation that built the Erie Canal and Hoover Dam
and the transcontinental railroad can’t even
build a tunnel beneath the Hudson River from New Jersey to New York.

[Modelcar]

henry6

But Modelcar, it isn't just politicians after votes, it is also our businessmen who ignore infrastructure and modernization in favor of profits and dividends, factors which bring us to this point too often.  A steel industry working from 19th Century blueprints in the mid and late 20th Century allowed the likes of Venzuela and Japan to knock out our production; deferred maintenance in favor of dividends and profits happens in all industries.  Then we either cow tow to foreign imports or reinvent the wheel at higher costs.  We don't plan for reinvestiment, imporvements, retiring old and implimenting new in business or government but rather jump from crisis to crisis with huge money outlays.  We don't follow guidlines, advice, history lessons, or the manuals, we just point fingers at whoever we think should take the blame...and hope they'll pay for it instead of us paying for it.

 

I agree with what you say....I'm just adding we need to do many of the items {policies}, you speak of, but our history of the past half plus century of trying to "police" the world, leaves us with a deep hole of economics that makes it so difficult for us {The USA}, to start doing the advancements and updates we need.

[Anonymous]

Phoebe Vet

Murray:

I think its an appropriate time in this debate to view this video from the late Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois.  Senator Dirksen makes very reasoned explanation for the need of fiscal responsibility:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm6fnQ5no0o

 

 

Yes, we need those fiscally responsible Republicans to return to power.  The fiscally responsible President Reagan tripled the national debt in 8 years.  Then the fiscally responsible President Bush doubled the national debt in 4 years.  Then the fiscally irresponsible Democrat, President Clinton left office with 3 consecutive years of balanced budgets (after vetoing budgets presented to him by the Republican controlled legislature) with 10 more years of balanced budgets projected.  It only took the fiscally responsible President Bush less than a year to turn that into what at the time was the largest deficit in the history of the country.  A record he broke twice more.

Then the anti big government Republican President created the Department of Homeland Security, the largest and most intrusive government agency in the history of the country.

Those Republicans talk a good game though, don't they.  And people keep believing them.

Now while you are complaining that this is political, reflect on who made the FIRST political post by pointing to a political video.

Well unfortunately Phoebie, like most of the statements you make on this forum you don't take the time to read (let alone properly comprehend) the information posted.  Where in my post did I make a complaint over anyone's post being a political statement?  Hang on Phoebie...I'll even help you out....NO WHERE!!!!!

You, young man need to stop putting words in my mouth that I did not say.  You do that again, and I'll be less than gracious to you in my response...I guarantee.

[RRKen]

Phoebe Vet

Murray:

I think its an appropriate time in this debate to view this video from the late Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois.  Senator Dirksen makes very reasoned explanation for the need of fiscal responsibility:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm6fnQ5no0o

 Now while you are complaining that this is political, reflect on who made the FIRST political post by pointing to a political video.

Problem is, I believe he posted that not for political reasons, but as a historical reference.    There are many young people here who are not aware of what a fiscal conservative is.    I thought the link was appropriate.   However a defensive demeanor is not appropriate.

 

[eolafan]

Dutchrailnut

The tunnel has no benefit to manhatan, only to NJ people.

 The more NJ people work in NY the more money flows into NJ in taxes.

 meanwhile the dayli services for these  NJ people is provided by NYC during their work hours, like fire protection, police, infrastructure etc.

 If tunnel is not built NY will keep functioning it will just emploly a lot more New Yorker and raise their standard of living including the housing market.

 

IIRC from my days working in Manhattan and living in Westchester I still  had to pay NYC income tax just for the priviledge of working there...not so today?

[Phoebe Vet]

Murray

I think its an appropriate time in this debate to view this video from the late Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois.  Senator Dirksen makes very reasoned explanation for the need of fiscal responsibility:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm6fnQ5no0o

 

Yes, we need those fiscally responsible Republicans to return to power.  The fiscally responsible President Reagan tripled the national debt in 8 years.  Then the fiscally responsible President Bush doubled the national debt in 4 years.  Then the fiscally irresponsible Democrat, President Clinton left office with 3 consecutive years of balanced budgets (after vetoing budgets presented to him by the Republican controlled legislature) with 10 more years of balanced budgets projected.  It only took the fiscally responsible President Bush less than a year to turn that into what at the time was the largest deficit in the history of the country.  A record he broke twice more.

Then the anti big government Republican President created the Department of Homeland Security, the largest and most intrusive government agency in the history of the country.

Those Republicans talk a good game though, don't they.  And people keep believing them.

Now while you are complaining that this is political, reflect on who made the FIRST political post by pointing to a political video.

[henry6]

NJ.com news is reporting tonight--10-9-10-- that Christie has won the Virginia State Tea Party Straw Poll for President.  Raise your hand if you're suprised (there should be very few hands up). 

Yes, Murray, the Senator from IL was very astute on money matters.   But the point is that if we would plan for the future with programs to maintain and imrove services then prices shouldn't surprise us and be a problem  Politicians rather buy votes than invest in reality and business invstors rather receive dividends today rather than tomorrow.

[Dutchrailnut]

The tunnel has no benefit to manhatan, only to NJ people.

 The more NJ people work in NY the more money flows into NJ in taxes.

 meanwhile the dayli services for these  NJ people is provided by NYC during their work hours, like fire protection, police, infrastructure etc.

 If tunnel is not built NY will keep functioning it will just emploly a lot more New Yorker and raise their standard of living including the housing market.

 

[Anonymous]

I think its an appropriate time in this debate to view this video from the late Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois.  Senator Dirksen makes very reasoned explanation for the need of fiscal responsibility:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm6fnQ5no0o

 

[schlimm]

The operative term in much of business for many years is "Short Term" (let tomorrow take care of itself).

[jclass]

Well, connecting North and South Stations in Boston got lost in the Big Dig shuffle.

My guess is this is all about Manhattan.  A tunnel will be built for Manhattan, and Manhattan alone, and we'll all get to pay for it.

[BaltACD]

Maintenance and evolution of facilities is hard work and has no glitz and sizzle.....however, without it everything falls apart and wears out.

[henry6]

But Modelcar, it isn't just politicians after votes, it is also our businessmen who ignore infrastructure and modernization in favor of profits and dividends, factors which bring us to this point too often.  A steel industry working from 19th Century blueprints in the mid and late 20th Century allowed the likes of Venzuela and Japan to knock out our production; deferred maintenance in favor of dividends and profits happens in all industries.  Then we either cow tow to foreign imports or reinvent the wheel at higher costs.  We don't plan for reinvestiment, imporvements, retiring old and implimenting new in business or government but rather jump from crisis to crisis with huge money outlays.  We don't follow guidlines, advice, history lessons, or the manuals, we just point fingers at whoever we think should take the blame...and hope they'll pay for it instead of us paying for it.

[BaltACD]

henry6

Yeah, the idea that Christie was saying he would take the money out of hand and repave the roads was a major concern for me.  That plus no mention of replacing or asking for another tunnel plan. Christie has been the darling of the the  Tea Party Movement in many ways.  Lets hope this will show that shooting from the hip with an empty gun does not solve any problems but actually can make things worse.  It's OK to criticize but if you don't have an alternative plan, or your statements show you do not understand the problem or the solutions, then it is better to drink water.

I view it as no more than a 'campaign statement' for Christie's next election.  'I tried to stop the tunnel.'  He want others to step up and 'force' NJ to do the right thing....then he has plausible deniability.  Politics...pure politics.

[ns3010]

Below the pictures, click on the thing that looks like this:

-->|

It will bring you to the last two items, the first of which is a map.

[Boyd]

ns3010

 

Boyd:

 

Is there a map anywhere showing where this proposed tunnel is going?

 

 

http://www.arctunnel.com/gallery/

Second to last item.

I was looking for a map of its route and not just pictures.

[Modelcar]

Keeping politics out of {my}, comments please....But this subject is just one example of why we're {our country}, falling behind in modernizing many things in the free world, and in this case again....transportation.

It's about time somehow....we {all of us}, figure this out, and start doing our updates in this country...perhaps let some of the rest of the countries step up and help "police" the world, and give Uncle Sam a rest in trying to do it all.....using our resourses on every place except home....!

[Phoebe Vet]

alphas

 (3) I assume Obama is requiring only union labor on the project like the other stimulus projects,

 

Now that's funny.  It's President Obama's fault that you can't get a huge construction project done in NYC without using union workers.  What dream world have you been living in for the last 50 years?

[Phoebe Vet]

Don't you think that all those commuters would get a good paying job in NJ and avoid the commute if they could?  The fact is that northern NJ is populated primarily by people who work in Manhattan and Philadelphia but don't want to live there.  You can help them improve their commute, or you can chase them away to other areas where the commute is easier.  Pick one.