From CBS News:
More Tunnels Would Greatly Ease Service at Penn Station
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — A sobering thought for commuters inconvenienced by the derailment — experts said it would have been a relatively minor event if new tunnels had been built under the Hudson.
The utter chaos at Penn Station reduced service for the 600,000 people who normally commute from the busiest transit hub in the nation.
As CBS2 Political Reporter Marcia Kramer explained, it could have been avoided — a new tunnel under the Hudson would have made all the difference in the world.
“Even if Monday’s incident had happened, eight of the nine tracks that were closed would have been used, would have been connected to the new tunnel,” Interim Executive Director, Jon Porcari, Gateway Program Development Corp, explained.
The great irony of Chris Christie’s George Washington Bridge downfall (grotesque though it was) is that it wasn’t his original or greatest sin. That was his single-handed assassination of the ARC Tunnel Project, which would have built a new rail tunnel under the Hudson beginning in 2010. Christie’s Bridge scandal was his Al Capone tax evasion.
I’ve been on the Tunnel Assassin beat for a while now. Almost two years ago I wrote: Christie's Railmaggedon Grows Closer:
I call him the Tunnel Assassin. Chris Christie, the man who killed the most vital infrastructure project of the 21st Century. The man who sentenced people in NJ, NY, all over the Northeast and the rest of the country to more poisonous air, days, weeks and months of time lost sitting in traffic, three and four hour commutes on crowded trains and the likelihood of a Mega-Gridlock, paralyzing the most vital transportation hub perhaps in the world.
The New York Times today reports that we are already in the early stages of Christie's Railmaggeddon.
For the third day in a row, electrical problems in century-old rail tunnels under the Hudson River on Wednesday stymied the commutes of tens of thousands of New Jersey Transit riders, illustrating again the shortcomings of the region’s languishing infrastructure system.
The delays, coming a week after the board of New Jersey Transit approved a major fare increase, created chaos during the morning rush and gave rise to another round of questions about Gov. Chris Christie’s decision five years ago to halt construction of a new rail tunnel.
Mr. Christie’s office referred questions to New Jersey Transit, which blamed Amtrak’s maintenance problems.
Terrible as they were, the 2015 electrical and yesterday’s derailment problems are just the “quiet car” of the train wreck to happen if the existing, aging tunnels are completely out of service. In 2014 the New York Post, of all places, featured: Jersey's Coming Tunnel Repair Nightmare,
Two years ago, Superstorm Sandy inundated the tunnel with salt water. The residue is causing “significant damage to key tunnel components,” including tracks, signals and electricity, Amtrak said. “A permanent fix is required.”
To do repairs, Amtrak must shut down each of the tunnel’s two tracks in turn. That means traffic can only run one way at a time — which means cutting Amtrak and NJ Transit service by 75 percent.
This would:
- Paralyze Manhattan with cars.
- Cause traffic problems — car, truck and rail — from Washington through Fort Lee to Boston.
- Bring nationwide airport delays, as Acela users switch to planes.
In 2013, I wrote in Christie, the GW Bridge and the Culture of Fear:
Who will suffer? Anyone who breathes the air on both sides of the Hudson, anyone who vegetates in a car for an unnecessary hour on that hellish circular ramp on the Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel, anyone who would have gotten years' worth of employment on the project and all of us for the lost economic development of the region and country.
Why did Christie kill the tunnel? Because that was (and is) the thing to do for Republicans, especially those seen as Presidential possibilities. Killing rail projects is as de rigeur as tax cuts and killing Obamacare — whether in NY/NJ, Wisconsin, Florida and elsewhere.
The cost in health, wasted time, employment and lives means nothing to these creeps.