$9 Billion In Grants For High Speed NEC Intercity Passenger Rail | Stew's News HSR Special Report
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- čas přidán 27. 07. 2024
- Big money on the way to projects in the most significant intercity passenger rail network in the U.S., the Northeast Corridor. This includes and impacts the only high speed rail service in the United States: Amtrak Acela. This runs at a top speed of 150mph, which will increase to 160mph in a few years. $16 billion in total grants were announced, of which $9 billion will come from the Federal-State Partnership For Intercity Passenger Rail Grant Program. Those FSP grants for the NEC will be covered in this video. These new planning and construction projects also affect many other commuter and intercity passenger rail services in the Northeast Corridor. With these grants, the Federal Railroad Administration hopes to being the NEC into a good state of repair. This means that the Northeast Corridor is so beat down its going to take more than $16 billion just to get it to where it should have been in 1965. How many more billion will it take Amtrak to make this into something resembling a modern high speed rail network?
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railroads.dot.gov/sites/fra.d...
0:00 Intro
0:24 Connecticut
2:41 Maryland
5:18 New Jersey
7:09 New York
8:05 More Connecticut
8:56 New York Penn Station
9:28 Southern NEC Planning
10:03 Pennsylvania
10:35 Up Next
10:58 See You On That Big, Beautiful Freeway!
topics:
Connecticut River Bridge
Connecticut Saugatuck River Bridge
Connecticut Devon Bridge
Connecticut WALK Bridge
Maryland Frederick Douglass Tunnel
Baltimore Penn Station
Maryland Bush River Bridge
Maryland Gunpowder River Bridge
Maryland Susquehanna River Bridge
New Jersey Gateway Program
New Jersey Dock Bridge
Newark Penn Station
New Jersey Sawtooth Bridges
New Jersey New York Hudson Tunnel
New York East River Tunnel
New York Pelham Bay Bridge
New Haven Connecticut to Providence Rhode Island Planning
Northeast Corridor South Speed Improvement Study
Hartford Line
New Haven Line
New Jersey Delco Lead
New York Penn Station
Cornwells Heights Station
Acela
High Speed Rail
Northeast Corridor
NEC
NEC Regional
SEPTA
Amtrak
Acela Express
California High Speed Rail
Just getting the NEC to a state of good repair, and getting Acela to an average speed of 100mph would feel like a victory at this point.
A comment I've heard from people who actually use it is that they care less about speed and a lot more about reliability at this point. These projects should go a long way to minimize delays and increase on-time percentage.
Never gonna average anything close to 100 mph on the NYC-Boston half without a new right of way.
These cities are so close together that it's already a pretty short trip, unless you're going all the way from DC to Boston.@@LucidStew
@@LucidStew I just want the price of Acella tickets to go down enough that I can justify it for trips from Boston to NY, versus a tank of fuel. It's really pricey and its per head, while a tank of fuel doesn't GAS if it's you or a whole family.
@@Gnefitisis Unfortunately Acela is Amtrak's cash cow. They likely also don't have much capacity to meet demand from lower prices due to the delays on the new Alstoms and well as the current ones being past their projected service life.
Bridges should NOT cost this much. The government is getting fleeced by contractors.
Crazy expensive on some of these, especially when I'm saying $744 million is a relatively good deal.
@@LucidStew I hate privatization 😪
Wonder whose company is getting the money?
@@spydula1 Well, look, a not-insignificant portion of the cost is the insanely long planning process, and that's government-led. Also, government mandates union workers and Buy American stipulations, so it's not all profit-taking. Also government's relatively lackadaisical oversight and sort of never-in-a-hurry temperament doesn't go away just because you've made a project completely public.
@@CJbrinkman602It's probably many companies. The common contractor or person can't work on these projects. Pretty much only huge intermediary companies with special completion insurance requirements or those with special connections can bid for big federal contracts. The parent contractor will likely subcontract to other construction companies who in turn will subcontract in turn. All these middle-men skim their take. US needs to wake up...nobody else in the world spends so much and gets so little on big infrastructure projects. Private companies are fleecing our stupid government, but few realize this and most will just blame railroads.
They should have designed the bridges so no water traffic can disrupt train service. This can allow the train to reach 90 or 100 MPH. There is many opportunities missed here. The price for a fixed-span bridge is 1B but the price for a swing bridge is more expensive than that, the fixed span bridge could have also reduce maintenance costs, saving hundreds of millions of dollars per year.
They consider fixed span alternatives for these. I read some explanation about the WALK bridge where they thought it would be too difficult to build up the approach ramps without disturbing the adjacent structures. I'm not sure what the problem is with Connecticut River Bridge, although the coast east of New Haven is a mess, so I guess they figure why bother. They'll probably ultimately bypass that up to Hartford and then across to Providence.
It would be ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE to see a side by side comparison of these kinds of numbers for the Design and Construction of Highway Infrastructure appropriations...
Railroad appropriations sound expensive, until you start comparing how much highway bridges, interchanges, and construction are costing.
NDHS, the National Defense Highway System (aka: Interstate) was created so that Eisenhower could move military equipment across the country efficiently, if ever needed. It was NOT funded to provide the Personal Freedom that people today seem to think they're entitled to.
In the summer of 1919, a young Lieutenant Colonel named Dwight D. Eisenhower participated in the first Army transcontinental motor convoy. The expedition consisted of 81 motorized Army vehicles that crossed the United States from Washington, DC, to San Francisco, a venture covering a distance of 3,251 miles in 62 days!
The Federal Highway Administration budget for 2023 was about $69 billion. It's significantly more, but the NHS has about ten times the mileage that Amtrak services. Mostly I think the cost is indicative of having neglected the NEC infrastructure too long. I'm generally a proponent of infrastructure where it will actually be used, and the NEC is demonstrably used by a lot of people and many on a daily basis.
@@LucidStew I meant no disparagement to the cogent information in your video. Rather my comment is directed to those who want to spend little money except on infrastructure for the roads they use as individuals. lmho, we in the US seem to have lost sight of the fact that infrastructure and projects to benefit the many are a good thing, and that in some cases can best be accomplished by government rather than private enterprise.
@@robertrawley1115 No need to apologize. I didn't perceive any disparagement. I absolutely agree. Good infrastructure benefits everyone in some way and one of the explicit missions of the federal government is 'to promote the General Welfare'. I see private enterprise as a tool for the government to use that allows it flexibility and agility that legislative work lacks. However, the government can do many great things on its own. I've been to many national parks and have a great appreciation for the system. I recognize it would be far different with greater private involvement inside the parks. However, those parks are also greatly supplemented by many private enterprises that support visitors around the parks. There can be a synergy between the two to all our benefit.
EXCELLENT comment, and explains why I don't really give a shit about the cost to build passenger railways given how this country pours all our tax dollars down the throat of the interstate highway network.
The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944 was the first act and not created for Eisenhower. The primary justification for the interstate system was civilian in nature. The defense was not added under 1956 to the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. The defense was just Congress adding it the bill it would have passed regardless of the "defense". A 10 sec google search bust the myths.
Excellent overview, thank you. Incredible to think that the *average* age of the bridges and tunnels being replaced with these grants is 116 years.
A drop in the bucket, but progress. Thanks for the overview.
Really it's a very big drop, but into a ripping hot pan. $9 billion dollars should go a lot further than this!
It's about time this country FINALLY invested money to bringing the northeast corridor into modern standards (although, I would prefer they build an entirely brand new NEC spine, but progress is progress). And for those complaining about the price tag, the northeast in general is a very expensive area so I am not really surprised. Had we done this decades ago, it probably wouldn't cost this much and take this long.
I don't think people understand how massive The Gateway Project is. Its more than just new tunnels. They are literally building a few dozen new interlockings and adding another set of Mainline tracks between Newark and New York
but why is the tunnel curved
@@mickeygraeme2201is there some reason it shouldn't be?
Does the gateway project also include more platforms at NY Penn? Because isn't that the main bottleneck for NJ commuters into NYC?
@@mickeygraeme2201 To limit the amount of air shafts needed.
@@Whatneeds2bsaid Penn Station South would build more platforms and layover tracks for Penn Station.
This shouldn't have taken 2 decades to do
Not only that, most of these projects probably should have happened 20 years. Serious neglect by government, which we should not accept for any form of infrastructure.
The US really needs to prioritize public transit more.
Finally the grant announcements are happening! 🎉 This is a great summary video
That new Hudson Tunnel is also more than what Brightline West is looking to build their route for.
It does include a complete overhaul of the existing tunnels so they'll be as close to new as possible.
Keep in mind Brightline is building in a highway median over flat desert ground vs in an underwater tunnel. Very different conditions.
Brightline will end up costing more than the current est of $15B especially as construction will not start this year as they have been stating.
Good news for Connecticut. The New Haven to New York section of the NEC is in desperate need of infrastructure upgrades. It's the slowest section of the NEC
It would be interesting to hear how much all these improvements will shave off the journey.
I'm guessing about 10 mins from NYC to each end.
@@LucidStew I've been convinced that the appropriations for the NEC are fair given the just massive ridership potential there relative to most of the country...but if we're talking about a 10 minute savings then IDK, I think I'd like to get might my Atlanta to Charlotte HSR instead.
I wish they'd give Philly & Jersey a tunnel too , & not just NY-NJ
PA is somewhat neglected in the immediate future. The Philadelphia 30th St. District Plan is the largest project in PA. Maybe next year. All PA projects in the NEC backlog total about $2.5 billion.
A tunnel would absolutely open up viable regional rail for South Jersey in a way not currently possible. It could even help revive the old Shore lines to Cape May, Ocean City, and Wildwood.
They don't have a tunnel, but they do have a bridge! Has anyone proposed expanding the Patco speed line? They use standard gauge trains, we just need to build one that satisfies the FRA. Surely those development/engineering costs are cheaper than these bridge/tunnel prices lol
This vid is awesome, I love seeing on maps whats the projects are. Excited for all the connecticut stuff, being from fairfield county, those bridges are kinda sketchy, and it was like that 15 years ago. Can't wait to visit my parents and see the work going on.
Thanks. I tried to add some value beyond just reading from the pdf. All the flying around gives a little better sense of where everything is, I think.
overall these improvements are going to be good, these projects are long overdue, but they are frustratingly expensive
This is a good start. Maybe it will spread across the rest of the Amtrack service area like a beneficial wave. Good report.
There are still things in the backlog, so I'd expect the same next year. If you look at the completion dates on these things, we're seriously talking about 2040 before any real progress on speed even STARTS.
@@LucidStew That's OK. It should happen in my lifetime, and I was born in 1948, so there is still plenty of time, at least another 35 years!
@@oldgandy5355 By then there should be more exciting things happening in other parts of the country. Most specifically Brightline West may be running, CAHSR MAY be running to S.F. by then, and maybe, MAYBE Houston to Fort Worth.
Good REPORT! *Subscribed* 👍
thank you!
Awesome report! Looking forward to seeing the updates happen. 45mph blockers between NYC and Boston simply shouldn't exist.
Is there any information on how many at-grade crossings will be removed in connection with this funding?
The three Maryland bridges will eliminate interaction with watercraft completely. The Saugatuck and Devon bridges might, as well. Fixed span alternatives are considered in all these scenarios. For the WALK and Connecticut River bridges, they CHOSE the moving alternative. Beyond that, I didn't see anything implied and explicitly indicated in the release or any of the related information I read through.
There are 11 grade-level crossings, all smaller roads/driveways in CT. These are being gradually eliminated already thru the 2017 Amtrak Future NEC Plan.
Thank you for the great summaries!
So good to see us investing in our HSR infrastructure, now if we could get it in more places. We need to spend more money on trains than we do on highways. Also Stew hoping you will checkout the Rio Grande Plan here in SLC. I think you could make a great video outlining it. They are getting ready to release their feasibility study in December!!!
FSP-National grants soon, but only half as much as NEC this year.
@@LucidStew Cant wait to watch! Hope you consider looking up the Rio Grande Plan and maybe even do a video on it.
The $17 bn Atlanta-Charlotte HSR should really be built, considering it's just the price for a tunnel in the NEC.
I had it closer to $15 billion if done by 2033, but that's by the official estimate in 2012. It may have changed since.
In a number of these water crossings I couldn't fail to notice an adjacent highway/freeway fixed bridge, yet it is proposed to build a new moveable rail bridge!!!??? Why? Just build a new fixed rail bridge the same height as the road bridge!!! Tall vessels aren't delayed, no moveable portion to maintain, and train speeds can be higher.
Grade is much less of a concern with roads. Interstate standards are up to 6% grade. Generally the NEC is trying to stay below 2%.
Exciting news!
Still mad that the Newark, DE station, which has been half finished for half a decade now, got nothing. The staircase to nowhere continues without a destination, and Newark gets no service improvements.
In order to get these awards the project has to be in the NEC project backlog, and work on that Newark, DE station is not there. There is at least an additional $18 billion coming from these grants in the next 4 years, so still might happen, but has to make it into the backlog first.
Wow 3.5B and 17B on just 2 NEC projects. Is that a better way for the federal government to spend their transit funds compared to other high speed rail projects? Does it actually help more passengers?
It's a good question. I made this point in one of my other videos about the perception that building HSR in the U.S. is just monumentally expensive. Meanwhile, it may be the case that we're only building it in the monumentally expensive areas. Part of this is definitely political. The NEC alone gets twice the grant pot of the rest of the country minus the NEC. The NEC is a big portion of American intercity rail traffic, but if that were equitable the rest of the country would be getting at least as much as NEC does.
This Hudson River tunnel is going to cost more than a similar length of the Second Avenue Subway in New York City cost! 😧
amazing video, ty
Damn those are some expensive bridges. We wouldn't have been able to tunnel under the river for the same price?
In the ones I've looked at more closely, I haven't seen any tunnel alternatives mentioned.
Sweet!
These are when the MTA (New York City) doesn't want to do it, cost estimates.
Do you think the plan for the Frederick Douglass Tunnel replacement is maybe a missed opportunity to relocate Baltimore's station closer to downtown?
Well, Baltimore Penn is currently a goofy site for a station, given the location of I-83. The aborted attempt to bring I-70 through the city would handle about 1/4 of the distance of getting under downtown from the west without too much trouble. You'd need a 4 mile long tunnel, but about a mile of that could be cut and cover under U.S. 40. It would be more expensive, but faster. TLDR: yeah.
Perhaps the map isn't accurate, but it looks like it goes *directly* under the Penn-north metro station. A missed connection if I've ever seen one.
I remember when some of the preliminary discussions about the NEC second spine started and around Baltimore, the talk was about the possibility of either adding a train station to Downtown or getting rid of the current Penn Station altogether. The location for the station would be site of the former Mechanic Theatre. But a local developer purchased the property with the intention of building apartments there. That never happened so I believe it might be possible to one day get a station in that location. It’s too bad that the planning for this is so behind where Maryland currently is with the reborn Red Line project. Red Line will be in the vicinity of this location which might possibly be a location for a future Downtown Baltimore NEC HSR/Amtrak station. Hopefully, if the second spine does become a reality, they can make good connections between the two (since it seems the Red Line will be built soon). I doubt it will happen during my lifetime, though.
Any news on Brightline West funding from the Feds?
FSP-National grants haven't been announced yet.
This really is just them Trying to speed up that NYC to Boston time in Connecticut
I think their main concern with most of these upgrades is reliability and volume. Any speed gain is something of a side effect. real speed improvements will come when they figure out a way to bypass the Connecticut between New Haven and Providence.
I would love to see a video about the potential second spine from NY to Boston. I know it would be ridiculously expensive but I’m curious what route you would choose to make it the most cost-effective.
I will be covering the idea in an NEC video in about a month.
Good video report, Mr. Stew. Might I ask if you can share that website with the NEC Commission study you showed at 9:45?
nec-commission.com
WOW
I'm really curious how these bridge projects are going to be constructed. Are there going to be breaks on the NEC for months/years? They need to apply that highway repair energy that’s (hopefully) going strong in Philadelphia. News reports on that project are unclear, but Atlanta rebuilt our highway in 43 days!
They're doing a lot of side-by-side work so they can keep 2 tracks open all the way through construction. You'll notice both WALK and Susquehanna have two double-tracked structures. Not a coincidence. They can also do temp structures. Some things I ran across while researching indicate they should not require full shutdowns, and if they do happen, they wouldn't last more than a few days.
Amtrak and the Amtrak acela program has bullets. Yes trains that has the ability to reach speeds of up to 200 plus mph. This means, they are half way there. Now construct new tracks and build a new line for these bullets to give rise to full status and not only service passengers in the northeast corridor but, servicing passengers up and down the entire United States Eastern seaboard from Boston Massachusetts to Jacksonville Florida stopping in not only the major cities of the north east corridor, but also one city in each southern state it travels through. The United States Atlantic bullet line. This would free up the increased heavy traffic on i-95 and other highways and would relieve many who sit stranded at airports due to cancellations and delays during the holidays and travel seasons. This would greatly improve infrastructure and economic growth and would stand as a symbol of technical advancement as it does in the far more advanced countries of the far east and Europe. The United States Atlantic bullet line would move millions of americans up and down the entire United States Eastern seaboard every year and reaching speeds of up to 200 to 225 plus mph and not a ripple on your martinis. 3 times a year i make the 831 mile drive from Lancaster Pennsylvania to Jacksonville Florida and takes me 11.5 to 12.5 hours or, 14 to 16 hours by EV. But with the Atlantic bullet line, i could make the 40 minutes drive to Philadelphia Pennsylvania, board the bullet and be in Jacksonville Florida in about 4 to 6 hours. You damn right i would park my car and take the train!! With all the money wasted by our government, there's no reason why this endeavor can't be achieved. But there again this is the so called mighty United States of America. This all should of been done decades ago but americans continue to be blinded and never seeing the benefits of these modern marvels of transportation which is also, (fully electric). May the California highspeed rail project succeed and may Amtrak finally wake up one day and do it right. Highspeed bullet trains and maglev super train technology, the new american dream.......
Small piece of feedback, “Sandy” was not a “little tropical storm” it was a category 3 hurricane that caused over $70,000,000,000.00 (seventy billion dollars) of damage. At least two of the noted projects in this video are intended to repair some of the damage from 11 years ago.
I didn't say "little tropical storm". I said 'post-tropical storm', which is correct. I didn't feel the need to go into further detail about the storm because the video is about trains, not storms.
@@LucidStew “post hurricane “ would have been more accurate and less minimizing.
@@DavidBM134S Post hurricane isn't a real weather term. The term Post-tropical storm includes storms that were once hurricanes. I'm not sure what your issue is.
Can you comment on why Connecticut new bridge costs are so incredibly high? Are these bridges similar in cost to the fixed span highway bridges often adjacent to them?
I do not know, as of yet, why they are so expensive. While fixed span is often an alternative in these CT bridges, they are not being chosen for a variety of reasons. All the new CT ones in the video will be moveable.
Too bad the new Acela trains keep getting delayed.
looking like it might by 2025 at this point.
Two mile tunnel in Baltimore to cut 2.5 minutes …. How is this efficient use of money
Can someone explain to me why PA barely recieved any grant money from the feds.
Part of it is the way the process works. In order to receive a grant, a project must first be part of the NEC backlog. Currently PA projects represent about 2.5% of that. Another part is that a pretty big percentage of overall NEC backlog is station related. MOST of that is for just Washington Union Station and New York Penn. PA's biggest project in the backlog has to do with the 30th St. station. I think it's also the case of the projects that were chosen being desperately neglected comparatively.
@@LucidStew Thank you 👍
But still, 9B is very little money compared to the backlog of the NEC. It has been estimated there is more than 200B dollars in repair backlog on the NEC, 9B in grants is less than 5% of the total money needed to fix all the broken stuff on the NEC. On the IIJA, only 66B dollars will go towards ALL rail in ALL of the U.S. to split across every agency, which isn't even enough to cover 1/2 of the costs on the NEC.
Most of the backlog will be covered by other agencies. The backlog total is ~$106 billion, but the IIJA share of that is only $20-24 billion.
Any reason you refer to MTA Metro-North Railroad as "MTA North" in this video and in your High Speed Rail news video?
Its shorthand? I suppose I could say MTA Metro-North? Does MTA North not effectively convey what I'm talking about?
@@LucidStew It is understandable that a person from car-centric California might not recognize that Metro-North is a distinctly different part of the MTA, apart from its massive and very complicated subway operation. Metro-North, as I'm sure you know, is the MTA's commuter rail operation on rail lines once owned by the New York Central Railroad and the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad. In the last analysis, everyone familiar with New York City area railroads knew what you meant, so the unjustifiably critical comment was most assuredly.........
NIT PICKING.
@@michaeljones7927 Now that I read it, I realize I wasn't thinking at all about how it might be confused with geographic north. It's interesting how focused people are on things being said exactly the way they're familiar with.
If you’re looking for a shorthand, “Metro-North” is better than MTA North, since that’s closer to the name of the second busiest commuter rail system in North America 😅
Through running in Penn station
How many minutes are they expecting these upgrades to shave off?
Might be zero. It really depends on scheduling. Most of these are meant mainly to solidify reliability and capacity. However, you might be looking at 10 minutes on the NYC-D.C. side, that's mostly between Baltimore and Wilmington. Between NYC and New Haven, roughly the same. We won't know for 15 years?
There are not really upgrades. If those projects are not done, the infrastructures may become so old that no train can run on NEC any more.
Are these dedicated passenger rail lines?
No. Not a lot of freight on the NEC, but one of the complaints about the Frederick Douglass Tunnel for instance is the expected increase in local freight traffic through it.
Boo boo! The walk bridge is not a dual lift bridge, it’s a swing bridge. It’s being *replaced* with a dual lift bridge. 2:14
I think that's a different interpretation of what I said. I said it was the 'dual-tracked double-lift WALK bridge replacement'. I can see how that wording could be misinterpreted to imply that the dual-tracked double-lift was being replaced rather than being the replacement. However, I do indicate that the existing bridge is a swing bridge a few seconds later.
Fair enough 🙂 I am just glad to have this channel!
The best way to pay for these projects and more? A dedicated carbon tax with a Green Transit fund... We have it here in Canada however the money tends to be given back to people as rebates more than project financing which defeats the purpose of it if you ask me... Already with the money collected we could have paid for several new LRT lines as well as the Edmonton-Calgary HSR project that's been planned since the early 1980's...
Some states already have carbon taxes. If you're talking about federal, I'd rank that extremely unlikely without a supermajority for the left.
I never understood why the states along the NEC never got together to start upgrading parts of the line. New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania are all states with wealthy residents who pay some of the highest taxes in the nation. They could easily afford most of these construction projects, if not all of them. All of these projects were needed back in 1990, why now? And why with tax money from places around the country that will never see any benefit from this construction like Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, New Mexico, Oklahoma, etc?
I think its a good question why these things were put off so long, but at the same time it is an interstate project and its going to require leadership from the federal government. I think the benefit would be more easily conveyed if we had some sort of coherent, semi-national HSR network. But then again, we also need to figure out how places like Montana and Wyoming aren't neglected despite it making no sense to build HSR there. Better Amtrak service, maybe subsidies for bus lines, or maybe just whatever they infrastructure they happen to need money for.
Those states see the benefit because much of the Northeast pays more in federal taxes than they recieve, as well as being responsible for something like 15-20% of the countrys GDP. Someone has to subsidize all of these states that are unattractive for many different reasons.
stew ypu made a bobi it he hel,'s gate bridge that is between queens and not hell gate as you said,
Nope, it's the Hell Gate Bridge.
God I am going to scream if Amtrak decides to build an entire new mainline in NE, serving less communities, for much more money compared to the existing line that they maybe need to realign like 15 miles of, tops. DC to Boston isn’t the only trip that people take on this line, and most congestion problems can be fixed by just upgrading from 2 tracks to 3 or 4. Please, Amtrak, don’t neglect what already works and just focus on updating the current corridor that serves significantly more people than the alternatives
I think it's pronounced "house-a-tonic" not "hoose-a-tonic"
I just find their arguments on all these bridges extremely unconvincing price-wise. (without reading them of course) Looking at one of the three sets of Environ'l Docs for the Susquehanna River Bridge... well before even looking at that, it's a pretty good looking bridge. All their pictures are deliberately unflattering. Next they'll wanna replace the Hell Gate with another angelically-all-white wisp of modernity, or really, least expensive construction. What portion of all these bridges, none of which are finished with design. or funded... what portion will last 100 years? I'm expecting more Millennium Towers in coming years, and I'm not sure the fix is altogether in on that either.
I haven' gotten to it yet but expect a large part of the spending will go to removing the old piers of this one and the previous ones to the north and south. You can see how that could easily take several billions. Admittedly the swing span is problematic, especially if you prefer construction labor-and-planning to maintenance labor-and-planning. I'm afraid converting to a lift span would undermine the existing foundations, but someone clever could probably find a way. (It was done on the Boonton line over the Passaic - shorter but higher - after shipping declined they just left it in place. The bridge was very heavy construction so they attached the lift mechanism without building separate foundations. Then justified closing the ESSENTIAL line by saying the bridge had a tilt. (Negligible I believe, less than 1" at top, and stable.) There's also the problem of having the new Susquehanna bridge either higher or deflected not unlike the Frederick Douglas Tunnel, but of court not near as circuitous. (If I were him and dead I think I would object. You could make everyone there-more than-whole with beautiful new residential construction, using the alignment worked out by the PRR in the 1930's, without having to go whatever ridiculous speed from a full stop at the station to get through it in time. ...flying around heavily superelevated max-maintenance geometry. Same grift as Tehachapie and Hud. Tun. Project.
Obviously the bridge ought to be fixed up, but you can never depend... or I never have any faith in them any more to do that, much less a gigantic project like they're planning. It might be best just to replace one overstressed member at a time., or one oerstreessed truss. That could be done efficiently. I think there is a lot going on with padding these things out. And the merits of the planned outcomes are questionable. The Hudson Tunnel is ridiculously circuitous yet the original 1910 drawing is clear where the new Hudson River tunnel(s) would go, and Amtrak had the MTA sell off the easement for it in 2015, after 105 years. Hence the circuitous "Box" - which in current plans is changed from the original in that it was supposed to go down at 3% on the NY side, but now they've changed it so the third section of the box (which supposedly broke ground the other day) will zig-zag back up to end in a 2% grade running clear across the river, which is problematic, because it's FEET from the navigation channel in wet, sandy, silty clayey mud, where the river bottom moves up and down considerably with the tide. The current tubes move something like six inches max I think in the middle, and they're more than a tunnel breadth below the botton, which is the minimum standard.
Of course the current tunnel is shot and not worth rebuilding. Sandy damage was 2012; the assessment with many, many core samples was 2014 or something, and the proposal by London Bridge Contractors was later, but did not propose remediating the structural damage, which requires replacing the special 1" rebars that run the length of the tubes. With 48 in ea. tube I believe, at top and bottom. I believe it would have to be done under pressure. It's just not worth it. I've had an engineer tell me to my face it's structurally sound. Bullshit, the worst leakage + core samples is where GG1's and the like run out of the Jersey bedrock into the mud going east at 60mph every three minutes for 80- years. And they say the metal of the Susquehanna Bridge is deformed and stressed? It's like Champlain Towers South - they always say once you see spalling and bare metal (which was clearly evident in the tunnel in 2013) then unless it's addressed immediately the damage "progresses exponentially" - The concrete no longer clings to the metal expanded by rusting. It crurmbles off and then the catenary falls out of the ceiling and creates a mess which is at least partly deliberate. The tubes have to be demo-ed and rebuilt. And that's a novel procedure that needs studying fast.
I always enjoy your input, Bruce. I feel like I get more insight from reading your comments for 3 minutes than I do looking at docs for 3 hours. I was reading the other day that the Hell Gate bridge is expected to stand for 1000 years. I suppose that means it was over-engineered slightly... from an aesthetic standpoint I like the new Susquehanna bridges better than the current. The current bridge is just a long box truss. It's pretty uninteresting. The height-to-length of the new structure, and proportion of the main spans to the whole structure is much more pleasing. As to its absolutely necessity, I don't yet have an opinion. My exposure to the NEC as of yet is minimal, so obviously there is much to learn.
In regards to the FDT, do you have a link to the PRR alignment you're referencing? I'm curious to see it. Also, what is your opinion on rerouting that tunnel under downtown instead? I know Ameristar's proposal does so. I also looked at it briefly after being ask by another commenter. Seems like the weirdo freeway stub they have there on the west side gets you into downtown easily, then under the Howard St. tunnel, and roughly under U.S. 40 back to the NEC row would do it.
I suppose choosing to do the near impossible would partially explain the cost on the Hudson Tunnel project. I wonder what the cost would be on demolishing and rebuilding the North River tunnels.
@@LucidStew My friend from Egypt finally arrived as I read your first sentence, then was delayed for a couple of hours. I suppose there's something to be said for having two new bridges with complementary alignments and fixed spans. What a job to remove that thing though. Maybe they can use the existing piers?I I thought Ameristar had given up. There have been a number of different tunnel proposals. The worst is the one that goes thru Penn to GCT. There's no place to put a curve. And then you'd have the 6-track station with two-track tunnel north connected to everything from the west. Maybe if you demo-ed a lot of buildings you could get and acceptable curve. I think that underground station at GCT should function eventually as a stop along the way from Long Island to the Financial District downtown. They built Calatrava's bird-like station there (but refused to pay for flapping wings, and insisted on a lot of modification Calatrava didn't like, but have train service there hasn't been discussed since they got decided to build the station. Strange.
sounds like hyperinflation is here.
Construction costs for just about everything are apparently up massively around the country.
Compare to China , the USA have long to go.
From one american copy and paste city to another...
Really, so Washington D.C. and New York City are copy-paste?
It’s kind of disgusting that they want to spend THIS much money on trains when we already have a developed and well funded personal transportation infrastructure system 🤷♂️
The federal highway system costs $70 billion a year and it is nearly built out. Rail and air are the places left to go in terms of intercity infrastructure. The FHS work will mainly be additional lanes and maintenance in the future. Meanwhile, the country is projected to host an additional 40 million people in 50 years. Given the lead time, now is the time to start planning to meet that demand with air and rail. Most of the projects discussed here wont be done until the mid to late 2030s.
You must not realize how important the northeast corridor is ALONE (not even gonna mention the tunnels in NYC….)
WOW