I don t know why Orange and Rockland aren t demanding a transit option; Metro-North is spending mill

In an effort to get money flowing to important infrastructure construction sites, the Obama Administration announced this week that they would fast track a series of near-ready projects, and included among those is our own Tappan Zee. The 56-year-old bridge, well older than we would all like, has long been the subject of replacement studies, and most of those called for some combination of railroad tracks and dedicated bus lanes in order to improve transportation across the Hudson River. Now, transit is off the table.
As LoHud.com s Khurram Saeed reports today , the Tappan Zee replacement project will not include mass transit in its current iteration. To lop $10 billion dollars off the price tag, the fast-tracked span will not include rail lines or bus lanes. While engineers will leave space for such upgrades in the future, that s rarely a guarantee for future funding or construction work.
Advocates recognize the importance apartment rentals new jersey of moving the replacement bridge project from the study phase to reality, but they bemoaned this move as an opportunity lost. We re missing a grand opportunity here, Kate Slevin of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign said. The whole idea was to reduce congestion and provide a focal point for development for the Hudson Valley region. Commuters are still going to be stuck in traffic unless there s an alternative. You re basically doing nothing for congestion.
The ultimate issue is one of price. Under New York State s expensive proposal, apartment rentals new jersey a true multi-modal replacement would cost $16 billion. Of that total, the bridge would clock in at $6.4 billion with $1.9 billion set aside of highway improvements while transit costs would run to $7.7 billion $1 billion apartment rentals new jersey for the bus rapid transit lane and $6.7 billion to run a rail line from Suffern to Tarrytown. The feds will instead throw in a little over $5 billion, and we will once again make the wrong decision with respect to the Tappan Zee Bridge. Funny how history just keeps repeating itself .
Well, isn t that generally applicable to every NY-based construction project? Costs are absurdly apartment rentals new jersey out of control, but the answer can t always be don t build until it s cheaper because it s not going to be cheaper. Someone needs to do some investigating into why everything costs so much to build though.
The GWB would not be the only way to cross the Hudson without the Tappan Zee; there are three rail tunnels, two road tunnels and the Verrazano apartment rentals new jersey south of the GWB, and much of the traffic from Tappan Zee could be diverted to the Bear Mountain and Beacon bridges further north as well. A car ferry should also be provided at the current site of the Tappan Zee.
Should the people of Westchester move to Rockland or the people of Rockland move to Westchester? 287/87 is also a key NAFTA highway bringing freight from NY to Quebec. That better be one very big ferry.
So you re libertarian then? We should all just do whatever we want regardless of how it affects the environment or others? Also the Occupy Wall Streeters are not crazy. You must have confused them with the tea party.
But, why, obviously not. He thinks nothing is wrong with sprawl. No intellectually honest Libertarian can think that, since sprawl depends on inflicting the costs of sprawl on people who don t benefit from it.
Key NAFTA highway = there isn t all that much trade on it, but we need to overbuild it to pretend we re one big multinational economy. Sort of like how in Europe they have key EU axes that result in some lavish train boondoggles on lines that aren t Paris-Lyon and never will be.
The European analogy is that projects of marginal benefits and enormous costs are sold on nebulous grounds of EU integration. One train station costs 6 billion apartment rentals new jersey Euros? Not a problem, let s put it on a trans-European axis twice as long as any HSR run and say that we absolutely must convert it to a through-station.
Freight from the west to the NYC area goes through New Jersey and then the GWB. Freight between New England and points west goes mostly through NYC or via Albany. Freight apartment rentals new jersey from points north to points south crosses the Hudson well north of the Tappan Zee
They don t have continuous cell phone service on the Northway because the Adirondack Park Agency won t let the cell phone companies build towers higher than the tree tops. The towers that are lower than the tree tops have to decorated, badly, as trees. Not that the cell companies decided to spring for multiple towers decorated apartment rentals new jersey like trees when a few well placed towers would do.
CP is spending lots and lots of money upgrading the rail connection between Quebec and Schenectady. You really should tell them that there isn t much freight to be carried. And send a carbon copy to the NYSDOT, they ve been funding some of the work in the hope of getting apartment rentals new jersey trucks off of the Northway and the Thruway.
Portland Oregon is very car-oriented, with freeways slicing apartment rentals new jersey through and ringing its downtown, apartment rentals new jersey and over 70% of trips made by car (vs under 29% in NYC). Their timely transit investments have failed to significantly increase their transit modeshare, which remains below 12% (vs 55% in NYC). But one positive thing Portland did do was tearing down their Harbor Drive freeway. The Tappan Zee deserves the same fate.
Because there s not enough for the travel demand. For the same reason that east siders apartment rentals new jersey should not merely make better use of the Lex Line. The bridges are not the pyramids of Cheops any more than the subways are. We can add to them. They re just cars, they won t hurt you, they won t take away your NPR tote bag.
At a low price, there is presumably so much demand apartment rentals new jersey that nothing could possibly accommodate it. That s why the sensible thing to do is to keep the price high enough where there won t be so much demand which is especially perfectly fair if there is a railroad available as a substitute.
The most cost-efficient way to add trans-Hudson capacity is with new rail tunnels. Additional cars would hurt me, they already kill 150+ pedestrians in NYC every year, and injure many more. That s without even considering the pollution and noise they force on others, or their tendency to get in the way of buses and other more efficient road users.
And that s already at $12 plus the tolls incurred just to get to the crossing. These arguments apartment rentals new jersey are not really what they appear to be. It s just anti-car apartment rentals new jersey lobbying wrapped up in whatever bow looks best at a given time.
Gotta love the irony: people apartment rentals new jersey who insist on making automobile transportation at best unreliable and at worst unusable always are the first to pull the anti-car card. Shit, even if I only made $12/hour, I d rather pay that much to get through quickly apartment rentals new jersey than spend hours crawling through, probably wasting $12 in gas in the process.
The answer shouldn t always be Don t build until it s cheaper, you re right. That s not my attitude toward SAS, which is supremely expensive, but also has supremely high benefits to go with it. But there s a difference apartment rentals new jersey between a subway that depreciates over 100 years and costs $25,000 per weekday rider, and a bridge that depreciates over 50 and costs $50,000 per car.
A Hudson crossing for some sort of high speed rail will be guaranteed considering our airports are at capacity and the US is supposed to grow another 100 Billion in 50 years. Most of them won t go to North Dakota.
The replacement bridge must obviously include a larger support structure to accommodate future rail lines and so government must cough up that portion of the cost right now. This could make it all ink.
It will be nearly impossible to run new high speed rail lines thorough extremely dense NYC so the best option will be a new Hudson 4-track apartment rentals new jersey Tunnel to Penn Station. All trains apartment rentals new jersey go to NYC, so it doesn t matter if they reverse 2 miles to continue north to New England.
Only phase one of the Second Avenue subway, a project guaranteed to have lots of riders, is funded. apartment rentals new jersey If its this difficult to get the Second Avenue Subway going, you can forget about trains going across the Tappen Zee Bridge.
The problem apartment rentals new jersey with the state transportation officials is that they come up with grandiose plans they haven t a chance in hell of getting federal, state, of city funded. They should all be focused on getting the full length Second Avenue Subway, funded and finished since we know it would have lots of riders.
Actually, transit on the Tappan Zee should theoretically be easier to fund then the Second Ave Subway. Remember, the suburban apartment rentals new jersey counties have an outsized influence on the region s transportation funding, which is why we have the East Side Access boondoggle instead of a fully funded subway under Second Ave.
Westchester County has been as jealous and protective of its three Metro-North lines as Nassau has been of the LIRR, often to the detriment of the City and other counties, so maybe the line needs to be extended to White Plains (or in my dreams, Rye or better yet, Stamford) to gain political support from Westchester.
I don t know why Orange and Rockland aren t demanding a transit option; Metro-North is spending millions to repair the useless Port Jervis Line because they complained they pay into the MTA and deserve train service. Well here s their chance for real, useful transit directly across the river, let s see if they really want it.
There is simply something outright apartment rentals new jersey fishy about an $8B rail line period, ON TOP OF A a $5B bridge. What are they doing? Laying down gold track with silver ties? The hard part, the bridge, can be piggybacked; the transit should be relatively easy.
Because the transit option is political fairy dust. It won t be used anywhere near enough to justify building it. The idiotic apartment rentals new jersey newsletters from this process also tout a bike lane. I love biking, and I m sure a bike lane will be nice. But no one I ll go out on a limb here, literally no one will commute from Nyack to Tarrytown in January using a 2 mile long bike lane suspended over the Hudson River. The only thing needed here is more lanes and it s the only thing the body politic refuses to bui