New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is all about looking tough. The truth, not so much. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie isn't letting the revelation that his
supposed reasons for killing a planned rail tunnel between New Jersey and New York were false stop him from insisting he made the right call. Now, in addition to continuing his lies about the cost concerns he initially cited as the reason not to double commuter train capacity,
he's mocking the value of adding the tunnel at all:
“So when they want to build a tunnel to the basement of Macy’s, and stick the New Jersey taxpayers with a bill of three-to-five billion dollars over — no matter how much the administration yells and screams, you have to say no,” he said in a speech at a conference on taxes and the economy in Manhattan held by the George W. Bush Institute.
Here's the funny thing about Manhattan: It's a compressed space, things are close to each other, and even if the trains would be running directly into the basement of Macy's, the fact that they were running more frequently and were more likely to be on time than under the current circumstances would mean commuters would still face fewer delays. That would have had a
major economic impact:
It would have reduced round-trip commutes by as much as 30 minutes, and boosted the value of homes near transit stations by $18 billion, according to the Regional Plan Association, a New York-based transit-advocacy group.
Christie's original, false version of the costs associated with the project (which he appears to be sticking to) also leaves out the 59,900 jobs that would have been directly involved in building the tunnel, as well as tens of thousands more that would have been indirectly created by the massive construction project. This project would have provided both an immediate boost to New Jersey's economy and strengthened it for decades to come. But it was more important to Chris Christie to look tough and say no than to do what was best for his state.