8 ms·

De Blasio Postpones Work on Crucial Water Tunnel

77 points by jstreebin 11y ago

mikeyouse 11y ago
Cities like SF and NYC should receive far more Federal money than they currently do for infrastructure projects. For decades, they've pumped billions of dollars out of their areas in Federal taxes that could dramatically improve quality of life. Invest in services for your most prosperous areas and magnify the impact of that investment -- Much of it will come back in the form of future taxes guaranteeing a decent multiplier on the spending.
- Retric 11y ago
  In this case it's BS, but NYC has plenty of budget for this project they are just spending it on other things. In the wider context it comes down to politics. A congress critter can buy more votes per million in Georgia than New York. Thus, wealthy areas trade political power for money. Arguably, most people agree with this by caring less about a subway stop than healthcare reform or whatever. Also from an economic standpoint shrinking NYC is a good idea. We are better off spreading investment to other areas than trying to build ever taller buildings and ever deeper subways. People look at the 'big dig' as horribly wasteful, but large projects in huge old city's are simply vastly more complex.
  - mikeyouse 11y ago
    Which leads to my next platform, quadruple the size of congress.. We're at something like 750,000 citizens per Rep right now, it was fewer than 200,000 in the early 1900's. It would become much more expensive to buy a sizable chunk of congress and would become untenable for many companies to set up operations in every district to corrupt politics.
    - PaulHoule 11y ago
      Keep elections for president but draft people for Congress; keep pay and benefits the same as they are. You could certainly corrupt some people randomly sampled from the American population, but you would also get the cops called on you, your face punched, sent to the ER with a cap in their ass, etc. In the current system, you have to be the kind of person who can see the "clothes that belong to the Emperor" that are also "clothes that are invisible". If you pick out random people you will get some who call a spade a spade.
      - kej 11y ago
        This was a fundamental part of Athenian democracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition We trust it for juries, it's not too outlandish to think it could work for policy-making, too.
    - kej 11y ago
      Especially interesting when you consider that the founders thought 1:30,000 was an appropriate ratio. This was the only issue of the Constitutional Convention where Washington expressed an opinion (lowering it from 1:40,000).
    - protomyth 11y ago
      The size of Congress isn't the main problem with funding infrastructure, the Senate is. Your Senators aren't directly accountable to the people in your state making the budget. I get people stopped trusting their state legislator in picking their Senator, but that has caused a lot of conflict. I would suggest a better fix, given transportation and communication advances, to have the sitting Governor of each state act as the only Senator (thus saving the taxpayers about 1/2 on staff costs).
      - Retric 11y ago
        I think the granularity between executive and legislative power is useful. Mix them and the temptation for corruption skyrockets. I would much rather change congress to be statewide elections to cut down on gerrymandering and make them proportional representation to put more states in play.
        protomyth 11y ago
        > I think the granularity between executive and legislative power is useful. Mix them and the temptation for corruption skyrockets. I don't think mixing across levels is a bad thing. I want the Senate to be answerable to the people in the state doing the budget. > I would much rather change congress to be statewide elections to cut down on gerrymandering and make them proportional representation to put more states in play. I strongly disagree with this one. You basically make sure no rural area has any representation again. Its like basing a Presidential election on popular vote, you get campaigns that run in 20 cities and tell many demographics to pound sand.
        nickv 11y ago
        As opposed to now where presidential elections are decided by three-four fairly unimportant states?
        protomyth 11y ago
        Which states do you feel are "unimportant"?
    - pnut 11y ago
      That will quadruple the uselessness of Congress. I feel fairly confident that the political industry would scale nicely to accommodate all those new puppets.
    - clarkmoody 11y ago
      Why not increase the number of states? That way there is more political autonomy for smaller groups. There already exists a large political divide between, say, West and East Washington; upstate New York and NYC; Bay Area and other parts of California. Instead of those population centers exerting their will upon the rest of the state, it would be better to have more & smaller political units that better represent their people.
      - Grishnakh 11y ago
        I'll tell you why: Congress would be too big. I know this movie was absolutely horrible in several ways, but remember the Galactic Senate in The Phantom Menace? That's basically what you're proposing: it'll be so ridiculously huge that nothing would get done. You can't have a legislature with thousands and thousands of members. What's needed is first to redraw the state borders. I have a post a little above this point outlining my plan for redrawing the borders in the northeast, which would effectively deal with the NYS-vs-NYC problem. Other state borders should also be redrawn. Metro areas should not span multiple states, ever. For a good thought experiment on this idea, go read about "The 38 States" (google it). Some college kids in the 70s came up with this idea to redraw the borders more sensibly so that state borders reflected the local cultures better, and also to reduce the number of overall states for better administrative efficiency. It's only gotten worse since then, with metro areas getting so large and more urbanization of the population. However, one big problem that would still remain is the urban vs. rural conflict. If we redraw borders so more city-dwellers are concentrated in their own city-states, this will give them less power in the Senate (their power in the House should stay the same as the number of Reps is assigned by population). Honestly, I don't know if that's good or bad. Sometimes I really wonder if we shouldn't just scrap our tricameral Presidential Republic form of government and switch to a Westminster parliament like every other advanced nation has. Those don't have the problem where the executive branch is at odds with the legislative branch resulting in a long government shutdown.
        sammydavis 11y ago
        Love your ideas. I also had the same idea that a single elected body would serve us better. The existing parties would never go for it. What we need is to break down our existing parties into reasonable pieces, have one house, and have that house elect the president. Another idea, Western oregon, Western Washington, and British Columnia should be combined into one state, or maybe their own country. We are pretty similar.
  - Grishnakh 11y ago
    >Also from an economic standpoint shrinking NYC is a good idea. We are better off spreading investment to other areas than trying to build ever taller buildings and ever deeper subways. People look at the 'big dig' as horribly wasteful, but large projects in huge old city's are simply vastly more complex. This is mostly wrong, but partly right. In theory, larger cities are better: they have a lower carbon footprint, they're more efficient overall (people spend less time commuting when they're closer together), quality of life can be better (not spending all your time in a car, walking around a lot makes you healthier), plus economically you get big network effects from having everyone concentrated on one area. It's why Silicon Valley is so successful: all the companies are there, all the workers are there, creating a feedback loop. Also, you can't just "spread investment" elsewhere. If you somehow convince one big finance firm to relocate out of NYC to Omaha, guess what? They're probably going to fail, hard. They need to be in that location because of those network effects I mentioned above. It's the same reason so many tech companies insist on staying in Silicon Valley: leaving causes them to miss out on the talent pool available there. For some, it's worth it: they're not doing anything all that cutting-edge, and the significantly lower salaries make it work. For others, it just isn't: they need the talent, no matter the cost. However, you do have a point about "huge old cities". It's definitely much, much harder to build stuff in a densely-packed old city than just going somewhere unspoiled and building there. You have to secure rights to the land somehow (like eminent domain), you have to not mess up other stuff that's already there, etc. Unfortunately, though, "build it and they will come" doesn't work in real life most of the time. Sometimes it does, like in Oak Ridge TN with the Manhattan Project, but a normal city isn't like that where it's built solely to support some giant government project. Cities are organic in nature, and get that way mainly by historical reasons. There's no real reason so much of the finance industry needs to be in NYC, as opposed to Fargo ND. However, it's already there: all the buildings are there, all the people are there, all the computer systems are there, all the rest of the city needed to support all those people is there, all the infrastructure needed to support those people is there. Moving it all would be a monumental task. Even moving it to another large city that has more of the infrastructure in place would be a huge task, and would probably end up breaking things because so much of our economy is reliant on that industry and it can't handle being shut down for a year while we get everything moved. Anyway, NYC is actually a pretty decent place to build taller buildings and deeper subways: geologically it's extremely stable and sits on a lot of bedrock, so you can build extremely tall, and dig very deep. Lots of places aren't like that; the ground isn't solid enough to do those kinds of projects. The main problem with NYC is that its elevation is very low and it easily floods in places. That could be fixed with some sea walls, plus maybe improving transit links to other places (like Brooklyn and Queens and Jersey City) so that more building moves over there where it's safer.
- JumpCrisscross 11y ago
  As a New Yorker, I agree, but this is some Chris Christie-level B.S. Not enough for a crucial infrastructure project, but enough for this $2bn glorified bus line? http://m.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/1-7b-streetcar-route-desired-brooklyn-queens-waterfront-article-1.2486682 http://m.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/1-7b-streetcar-ro...
  - PaulHoule 11y ago
    A general issue too is that infrastructure spending seems to cost almost an order of magnitude more in the U.S. than other places. There are many theories of this, but I can tell you that if you had to page prevailing wage to build McMansions and you could pay a market wage to build optic fiber networks and roads you would find there would be a lot more fiber and better roads and that people would find they don't need a master bathroom that is 2/3 the size of the master bedroom.
  - martinald 11y ago
    That's pretty good value for infrastructure. Edinburgh, Scotland just paid nearly the same for 6 miles of streetcar line.
  - mortehu 11y ago
    It seems the water and sewage system is 100% funded by water and sewage rates[1], whereas MTA's budget of course comes from entirely different sources (toll revenue, sales tax, petroleum business tax, NYC real estate transfer taxes, and payroll tax)[2]. The annual transit budget is immense compared to even the total cost of NYC Water Tunnel 3. 1. http://www.nyc.gov/html/nycwaterboard/html/home/home.shtml http://www.nyc.gov/html/nycwaterboard/html/home/home.shtml 2. http://www.tstc.org/101/mta.php http://www.tstc.org/101/mta.php
- deleted 11y ago
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- bpodgursky 11y ago
  NY generates a tax surplus because every retirement fund in America flows through Wall Street. Don't over glorify it.
  - bogomipz 11y ago
    Over glorify what? What is your point?
    - bpodgursky 11y ago
      Don't give NY credit for creating all that wealth. It creates some wealth, but mostly the tax revenue is a function of being a banking industry center which serves the entire country. That invested money comes from people in all of 50 states, from personal savings accounts or retirement accounts. If NY didn't exist, the same tax revenue would appear in some other city, whichever other stock exchange became dominant. So it's perfectly fair that the tax revenue is reshuffled from NY back to the actual source of that revenue, in other states.
      - bogomipz 11y ago
        No. New York City generates revenue for the state because its an enormously important center for advertising, publishing, art, fashion, entertainment, tourism, real estate and retail. The amount of money that changes in hands in the course of day in those sectors is insane. Finance is but one other component. This city survived just fine during the banking melt down in 2008.
- bogomipz 11y ago
  I would argue that Cities like SF and NYC should get more money from State. The majority of the tax coffers for the state of New York are filled by taxes paid by the residents of NYC yet when it comes to receiving state funds NYC comes up short. We see this with MTA that runs the subway which is responsible for getting commuters to work so that they can provide a tax base for the state. The state doesn't want to contribute at all. It's similar with other infrastructure projects. Its a joke. If NYC were to somehow secede from the state, the state would be broke overnight.
  - Shivetya 11y ago
    I argue they should be charging their customers what it costs to supply them a safe system of water and sewer instead of trying to pass off the blame if not responsibility to other parts of the state. If they are worried about the burden on the poor they can certainly adjust rates to cover that need, essentially writing off usage below a threshold and then getting it from the big consumers of water. Do please note that income taxes don't necessarily fund water system improvements unless done with bonds. That imbalance of taxes between areas of NY is simply the result of concentration of wealth. The question that should be asked, is the money that is being diverted going to truly more important use from a public safety concern and was the money allocated specifically for the tunnel or just into general?
    - Jtsummers 11y ago
      Unless the state of New York is going to let the city of New York secede, they should be helping out. Otherwise, the state has accepted responsibility for everything and everyone in its domain including the city, residents, and workers of New York City.
      - Retra 11y ago
        Is the city looking to secede? Is that a valid threat that anybody should be worried about?
  - sevensor 11y ago
- r00fus 11y ago
  Perhaps this is a problem due to corporations/wealthy using tax shelters to move their funds where they won't be taxed? Imagine if Google/Apple were forced to pay even 0.1% of their profits into local cities - Cupertino/Mountain View would look like utopias.
Animats 11y ago
Stopping work on Water Tunnel #3? That's not good. Does NYC have water meters yet?
- epc 11y ago
  The primary tunnel under Manhattan is completed (this is the one used in one of the Die Hard movies). This seems to be about access shafts for splinter tunnels in Brooklyn & Queens. There's a lot of spin going on in the local press (ie, Mayoral flacks claim there were no cuts, while other reports claim that the money was shifted elsewhere). Water meters are installed in all new buildings and buildings which have been renovated. Allegedly the entire city should have had water meters by now but I think a lot of smaller residential buildings still get billed by hypothetical use, not metered.
kchoudhu 11y ago
So they're stopping construction in order to keep a lid on water and sewage prices? I wonder what his constituents will say when they have no water to pay for.
- Shivetya 11y ago
  You end up with the same crap many other big cities ended up with. Not paying for improvements when needed results in big expenses when you are offered no choice later on. Atlanta had to spend billions and raises rates a lot because the system started to fail, other cities are finally facing the truth about their lead issues.
hackuser 11y ago
Per the story the Bloomberg administration paid for the work, a least in part, by significantly increasing water bills. It implies that's part of the reason De Blasio cut back on it. It's a bit of tangent but that's a regressive tax: It puts a greater burden on the poor than on the wealthy: $10 from someone making $8/hour and risking having their water shut off is a much larger sacrifice for the public good than $10 from someone making six figures. The trendy idea that taxes in general and progressive (not in the political sense but in the technical sense) tax systems are somehow unfair is holding up important development in the U.S. There is a cost to failing to invest; we could never invest in anything and we'd be much poorer.
- cubano 11y ago
  > The trendy idea that taxes in general and progressive (not in the political sense but in the technical sense) tax systems are somehow unfair is holding up important development in the U.S. I would disagree. The opposing trendy idea is that the eventual output of the tax systems are so filled with waste, fraud, and abuse that simply pouring more and more money, no matter the source, into politically-connected blackhole businesses contracted to perform some government sponsored task rarely if ever works and needs to much more carefully managed. There are so many real-world examples of this (healthcare.gov comes instantly to mind, and the recent TSA app but there are many others) that I won't bother to list them. A much greater level of transparency for all these deals would go a long way in helping fix these sensible concerns. [edits]
  - hackuser 11y ago
    > pouring more and more money, no matter the source, into politically-connected blackhole businesses contracted to perform some government sponsored task rarely if ever works 1) The evidence is very much to the contrary: Almost all infrastructure in the country was paid for by tax dollars and built on government contracts. The entire highway system, the military, most of the health system, almost all education including public universities, most scientific research, etc. WWII was won that way. What would the country look like if there was no public investment? It would be a poor, undeveloped nation. 2) What alternative is there? Not invest in anything until we live in a perfect world? Again, it would impoverish the country. Blocking investment is a very unwise method of saving money for any institution; imagine a business which refused to invest in anything - it would be insane. 3) I agree there is corruption, and I agree more transparency would help, but every human institution has corruption (go ahead, name a large one that doesn't). If we're going to live with humans, we have no choices other than to move forward as we are or retire to caves.
koenigdavidmj 11y ago
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/17/nyregion/new-water-tunnel-can-provide-water-for-all-of-manhattan.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/17/nyregion/new-water-tunnel-... > In one of the most significant milestones for the city’s water supply in nearly a century, the tunnel — authorized in 1954, begun in 1970 and considered the largest capital construction project ever undertaken in the five boroughs — will for the first time be equipped to provide water for all of Manhattan. Since 1917, the borough has relied on Tunnel No. 1, which was never inspected or significantly repaired after its opening. > “When I came into office,” Mr. Bloomberg said, “I asked, ‘What could literally close down this city?’ And a water tunnel failure would have really done that.” Manhattan is safe now, but eliminating the possibility of instantly plunging half of the most important city into the third world is more important than any of his other projects. This needs to cost him the election.
- deleted 11y ago
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- baldfat 11y ago
  "It has been a long road for the third tunnel. Though construction began more than 40 years ago, it had to be stopped several times because there was not enough money." It's happened before when the issue was much bigger problem. Now it is less. I am sure it will cost him next to nothing.
- Eric_WVGG 11y ago
  This whole thing is a non-story. They moved around some money in the budget and it got mis-reported. http://gothamist.com/2016/04/06/de_blasio_diggin_tunnels.php#photo-1 http://gothamist.com/2016/04/06/de_blasio_diggin_tunnels.php...
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jkot 11y ago
I dont understand this. Athens city is basically broke, but streets are clean and they build new infrastructure even today.
brooklyndude 11y ago
So in the case of an accident, Brooklyn and Queens are dead, but the South Bronx is awash in water? hmmmmmm. :-)
Tomte 11y ago
"The Works: Anatomy of a City" is an absolutely fascinating (and well-illustrated) book about urban infrastructure. It focuses too much on NYC for my taste, but that also means it can be really concrete in its examples. And the water supply, especially the tunnels, were one of the most captivating chapters in there.

77 points by jstreebin 11y ago

Cities like SF and NYC should receive far more Federal money than they currently do for infrastructure projects. For decades, they've pumped billions of dollars out of their areas in Federal taxes that could dramatically improve quality of life. Invest in services for your most prosperous areas and magnify the impact of that investment -- Much of it will come back in the form of future taxes guaranteeing a decent multiplier on the spending.

Retric 11y ago
In this case it's BS, but NYC has plenty of budget for this project they are just spending it on other things. In the wider context it comes down to politics. A congress critter can buy more votes per million in Georgia than New York. Thus, wealthy areas trade political power for money. Arguably, most people agree with this by caring less about a subway stop than healthcare reform or whatever. Also from an economic standpoint shrinking NYC is a good idea. We are better off spreading investment to other areas than trying to build ever taller buildings and ever deeper subways. People look at the 'big dig' as horribly wasteful, but large projects in huge old city's are simply vastly more complex.
- mikeyouse 11y ago
  Which leads to my next platform, quadruple the size of congress.. We're at something like 750,000 citizens per Rep right now, it was fewer than 200,000 in the early 1900's. It would become much more expensive to buy a sizable chunk of congress and would become untenable for many companies to set up operations in every district to corrupt politics.
  - PaulHoule 11y ago
    Keep elections for president but draft people for Congress; keep pay and benefits the same as they are. You could certainly corrupt some people randomly sampled from the American population, but you would also get the cops called on you, your face punched, sent to the ER with a cap in their ass, etc. In the current system, you have to be the kind of person who can see the "clothes that belong to the Emperor" that are also "clothes that are invisible". If you pick out random people you will get some who call a spade a spade.
    - kej 11y ago
      This was a fundamental part of Athenian democracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition We trust it for juries, it's not too outlandish to think it could work for policy-making, too.
  - kej 11y ago
    Especially interesting when you consider that the founders thought 1:30,000 was an appropriate ratio. This was the only issue of the Constitutional Convention where Washington expressed an opinion (lowering it from 1:40,000).
  - protomyth 11y ago
    The size of Congress isn't the main problem with funding infrastructure, the Senate is. Your Senators aren't directly accountable to the people in your state making the budget. I get people stopped trusting their state legislator in picking their Senator, but that has caused a lot of conflict. I would suggest a better fix, given transportation and communication advances, to have the sitting Governor of each state act as the only Senator (thus saving the taxpayers about 1/2 on staff costs).
    - Retric 11y ago
      I think the granularity between executive and legislative power is useful. Mix them and the temptation for corruption skyrockets. I would much rather change congress to be statewide elections to cut down on gerrymandering and make them proportional representation to put more states in play.
      - protomyth 11y ago
        > I think the granularity between executive and legislative power is useful. Mix them and the temptation for corruption skyrockets. I don't think mixing across levels is a bad thing. I want the Senate to be answerable to the people in the state doing the budget. > I would much rather change congress to be statewide elections to cut down on gerrymandering and make them proportional representation to put more states in play. I strongly disagree with this one. You basically make sure no rural area has any representation again. Its like basing a Presidential election on popular vote, you get campaigns that run in 20 cities and tell many demographics to pound sand.
        nickv 11y ago
        As opposed to now where presidential elections are decided by three-four fairly unimportant states?
        protomyth 11y ago
        Which states do you feel are "unimportant"?
  - pnut 11y ago
    That will quadruple the uselessness of Congress. I feel fairly confident that the political industry would scale nicely to accommodate all those new puppets.
  - clarkmoody 11y ago
    Why not increase the number of states? That way there is more political autonomy for smaller groups. There already exists a large political divide between, say, West and East Washington; upstate New York and NYC; Bay Area and other parts of California. Instead of those population centers exerting their will upon the rest of the state, it would be better to have more & smaller political units that better represent their people.
    - Grishnakh 11y ago
      I'll tell you why: Congress would be too big. I know this movie was absolutely horrible in several ways, but remember the Galactic Senate in The Phantom Menace? That's basically what you're proposing: it'll be so ridiculously huge that nothing would get done. You can't have a legislature with thousands and thousands of members. What's needed is first to redraw the state borders. I have a post a little above this point outlining my plan for redrawing the borders in the northeast, which would effectively deal with the NYS-vs-NYC problem. Other state borders should also be redrawn. Metro areas should not span multiple states, ever. For a good thought experiment on this idea, go read about "The 38 States" (google it). Some college kids in the 70s came up with this idea to redraw the borders more sensibly so that state borders reflected the local cultures better, and also to reduce the number of overall states for better administrative efficiency. It's only gotten worse since then, with metro areas getting so large and more urbanization of the population. However, one big problem that would still remain is the urban vs. rural conflict. If we redraw borders so more city-dwellers are concentrated in their own city-states, this will give them less power in the Senate (their power in the House should stay the same as the number of Reps is assigned by population). Honestly, I don't know if that's good or bad. Sometimes I really wonder if we shouldn't just scrap our tricameral Presidential Republic form of government and switch to a Westminster parliament like every other advanced nation has. Those don't have the problem where the executive branch is at odds with the legislative branch resulting in a long government shutdown.
      - sammydavis 11y ago
        Love your ideas. I also had the same idea that a single elected body would serve us better. The existing parties would never go for it. What we need is to break down our existing parties into reasonable pieces, have one house, and have that house elect the president. Another idea, Western oregon, Western Washington, and British Columnia should be combined into one state, or maybe their own country. We are pretty similar.
- Grishnakh 11y ago
  >Also from an economic standpoint shrinking NYC is a good idea. We are better off spreading investment to other areas than trying to build ever taller buildings and ever deeper subways. People look at the 'big dig' as horribly wasteful, but large projects in huge old city's are simply vastly more complex. This is mostly wrong, but partly right. In theory, larger cities are better: they have a lower carbon footprint, they're more efficient overall (people spend less time commuting when they're closer together), quality of life can be better (not spending all your time in a car, walking around a lot makes you healthier), plus economically you get big network effects from having everyone concentrated on one area. It's why Silicon Valley is so successful: all the companies are there, all the workers are there, creating a feedback loop. Also, you can't just "spread investment" elsewhere. If you somehow convince one big finance firm to relocate out of NYC to Omaha, guess what? They're probably going to fail, hard. They need to be in that location because of those network effects I mentioned above. It's the same reason so many tech companies insist on staying in Silicon Valley: leaving causes them to miss out on the talent pool available there. For some, it's worth it: they're not doing anything all that cutting-edge, and the significantly lower salaries make it work. For others, it just isn't: they need the talent, no matter the cost. However, you do have a point about "huge old cities". It's definitely much, much harder to build stuff in a densely-packed old city than just going somewhere unspoiled and building there. You have to secure rights to the land somehow (like eminent domain), you have to not mess up other stuff that's already there, etc. Unfortunately, though, "build it and they will come" doesn't work in real life most of the time. Sometimes it does, like in Oak Ridge TN with the Manhattan Project, but a normal city isn't like that where it's built solely to support some giant government project. Cities are organic in nature, and get that way mainly by historical reasons. There's no real reason so much of the finance industry needs to be in NYC, as opposed to Fargo ND. However, it's already there: all the buildings are there, all the people are there, all the computer systems are there, all the rest of the city needed to support all those people is there, all the infrastructure needed to support those people is there. Moving it all would be a monumental task. Even moving it to another large city that has more of the infrastructure in place would be a huge task, and would probably end up breaking things because so much of our economy is reliant on that industry and it can't handle being shut down for a year while we get everything moved. Anyway, NYC is actually a pretty decent place to build taller buildings and deeper subways: geologically it's extremely stable and sits on a lot of bedrock, so you can build extremely tall, and dig very deep. Lots of places aren't like that; the ground isn't solid enough to do those kinds of projects. The main problem with NYC is that its elevation is very low and it easily floods in places. That could be fixed with some sea walls, plus maybe improving transit links to other places (like Brooklyn and Queens and Jersey City) so that more building moves over there where it's safer.
JumpCrisscross 11y ago
As a New Yorker, I agree, but this is some Chris Christie-level B.S. Not enough for a crucial infrastructure project, but enough for this $2bn glorified bus line? http://m.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/1-7b-streetcar-route-desired-brooklyn-queens-waterfront-article-1.2486682 http://m.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/1-7b-streetcar-ro...
- PaulHoule 11y ago
  A general issue too is that infrastructure spending seems to cost almost an order of magnitude more in the U.S. than other places. There are many theories of this, but I can tell you that if you had to page prevailing wage to build McMansions and you could pay a market wage to build optic fiber networks and roads you would find there would be a lot more fiber and better roads and that people would find they don't need a master bathroom that is 2/3 the size of the master bedroom.
- martinald 11y ago
  That's pretty good value for infrastructure. Edinburgh, Scotland just paid nearly the same for 6 miles of streetcar line.
- mortehu 11y ago
  It seems the water and sewage system is 100% funded by water and sewage rates[1], whereas MTA's budget of course comes from entirely different sources (toll revenue, sales tax, petroleum business tax, NYC real estate transfer taxes, and payroll tax)[2]. The annual transit budget is immense compared to even the total cost of NYC Water Tunnel 3. 1. http://www.nyc.gov/html/nycwaterboard/html/home/home.shtml http://www.nyc.gov/html/nycwaterboard/html/home/home.shtml 2. http://www.tstc.org/101/mta.php http://www.tstc.org/101/mta.php
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bpodgursky 11y ago
NY generates a tax surplus because every retirement fund in America flows through Wall Street. Don't over glorify it.
- bogomipz 11y ago
  Over glorify what? What is your point?
  - bpodgursky 11y ago
    Don't give NY credit for creating all that wealth. It creates some wealth, but mostly the tax revenue is a function of being a banking industry center which serves the entire country. That invested money comes from people in all of 50 states, from personal savings accounts or retirement accounts. If NY didn't exist, the same tax revenue would appear in some other city, whichever other stock exchange became dominant. So it's perfectly fair that the tax revenue is reshuffled from NY back to the actual source of that revenue, in other states.
    - bogomipz 11y ago
      No. New York City generates revenue for the state because its an enormously important center for advertising, publishing, art, fashion, entertainment, tourism, real estate and retail. The amount of money that changes in hands in the course of day in those sectors is insane. Finance is but one other component. This city survived just fine during the banking melt down in 2008.
bogomipz 11y ago
I would argue that Cities like SF and NYC should get more money from State. The majority of the tax coffers for the state of New York are filled by taxes paid by the residents of NYC yet when it comes to receiving state funds NYC comes up short. We see this with MTA that runs the subway which is responsible for getting commuters to work so that they can provide a tax base for the state. The state doesn't want to contribute at all. It's similar with other infrastructure projects. Its a joke. If NYC were to somehow secede from the state, the state would be broke overnight.
- Shivetya 11y ago
  I argue they should be charging their customers what it costs to supply them a safe system of water and sewer instead of trying to pass off the blame if not responsibility to other parts of the state. If they are worried about the burden on the poor they can certainly adjust rates to cover that need, essentially writing off usage below a threshold and then getting it from the big consumers of water. Do please note that income taxes don't necessarily fund water system improvements unless done with bonds. That imbalance of taxes between areas of NY is simply the result of concentration of wealth. The question that should be asked, is the money that is being diverted going to truly more important use from a public safety concern and was the money allocated specifically for the tunnel or just into general?
  - Jtsummers 11y ago
    Unless the state of New York is going to let the city of New York secede, they should be helping out. Otherwise, the state has accepted responsibility for everything and everyone in its domain including the city, residents, and workers of New York City.
    - Retra 11y ago
      Is the city looking to secede? Is that a valid threat that anybody should be worried about?
- sevensor 11y ago
r00fus 11y ago
Perhaps this is a problem due to corporations/wealthy using tax shelters to move their funds where they won't be taxed? Imagine if Google/Apple were forced to pay even 0.1% of their profits into local cities - Cupertino/Mountain View would look like utopias.

Animats 11y ago

Stopping work on Water Tunnel #3? That's not good. Does NYC have water meters yet?

epc 11y ago
The primary tunnel under Manhattan is completed (this is the one used in one of the Die Hard movies). This seems to be about access shafts for splinter tunnels in Brooklyn & Queens. There's a lot of spin going on in the local press (ie, Mayoral flacks claim there were no cuts, while other reports claim that the money was shifted elsewhere). Water meters are installed in all new buildings and buildings which have been renovated. Allegedly the entire city should have had water meters by now but I think a lot of smaller residential buildings still get billed by hypothetical use, not metered.

kchoudhu 11y ago

So they're stopping construction in order to keep a lid on water and sewage prices? I wonder what his constituents will say when they have no water to pay for.

Shivetya 11y ago
You end up with the same crap many other big cities ended up with. Not paying for improvements when needed results in big expenses when you are offered no choice later on. Atlanta had to spend billions and raises rates a lot because the system started to fail, other cities are finally facing the truth about their lead issues.

hackuser 11y ago

Per the story the Bloomberg administration paid for the work, a least in part, by significantly increasing water bills. It implies that's part of the reason De Blasio cut back on it. It's a bit of tangent but that's a regressive tax: It puts a greater burden on the poor than on the wealthy: $10 from someone making $8/hour and risking having their water shut off is a much larger sacrifice for the public good than $10 from someone making six figures. The trendy idea that taxes in general and progressive (not in the political sense but in the technical sense) tax systems are somehow unfair is holding up important development in the U.S. There is a cost to failing to invest; we could never invest in anything and we'd be much poorer.

cubano 11y ago
> The trendy idea that taxes in general and progressive (not in the political sense but in the technical sense) tax systems are somehow unfair is holding up important development in the U.S. I would disagree. The opposing trendy idea is that the eventual output of the tax systems are so filled with waste, fraud, and abuse that simply pouring more and more money, no matter the source, into politically-connected blackhole businesses contracted to perform some government sponsored task rarely if ever works and needs to much more carefully managed. There are so many real-world examples of this (healthcare.gov comes instantly to mind, and the recent TSA app but there are many others) that I won't bother to list them. A much greater level of transparency for all these deals would go a long way in helping fix these sensible concerns. [edits]
- hackuser 11y ago
  > pouring more and more money, no matter the source, into politically-connected blackhole businesses contracted to perform some government sponsored task rarely if ever works 1) The evidence is very much to the contrary: Almost all infrastructure in the country was paid for by tax dollars and built on government contracts. The entire highway system, the military, most of the health system, almost all education including public universities, most scientific research, etc. WWII was won that way. What would the country look like if there was no public investment? It would be a poor, undeveloped nation. 2) What alternative is there? Not invest in anything until we live in a perfect world? Again, it would impoverish the country. Blocking investment is a very unwise method of saving money for any institution; imagine a business which refused to invest in anything - it would be insane. 3) I agree there is corruption, and I agree more transparency would help, but every human institution has corruption (go ahead, name a large one that doesn't). If we're going to live with humans, we have no choices other than to move forward as we are or retire to caves.

koenigdavidmj 11y ago

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/17/nyregion/new-water-tunnel-can-provide-water-for-all-of-manhattan.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/17/nyregion/new-water-tunnel-... > In one of the most significant milestones for the city’s water supply in nearly a century, the tunnel — authorized in 1954, begun in 1970 and considered the largest capital construction project ever undertaken in the five boroughs — will for the first time be equipped to provide water for all of Manhattan. Since 1917, the borough has relied on Tunnel No. 1, which was never inspected or significantly repaired after its opening. > “When I came into office,” Mr. Bloomberg said, “I asked, ‘What could literally close down this city?’ And a water tunnel failure would have really done that.” Manhattan is safe now, but eliminating the possibility of instantly plunging half of the most important city into the third world is more important than any of his other projects. This needs to cost him the election.

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baldfat 11y ago
"It has been a long road for the third tunnel. Though construction began more than 40 years ago, it had to be stopped several times because there was not enough money." It's happened before when the issue was much bigger problem. Now it is less. I am sure it will cost him next to nothing.
Eric_WVGG 11y ago
This whole thing is a non-story. They moved around some money in the budget and it got mis-reported. http://gothamist.com/2016/04/06/de_blasio_diggin_tunnels.php#photo-1 http://gothamist.com/2016/04/06/de_blasio_diggin_tunnels.php...

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jkot 11y ago

I dont understand this. Athens city is basically broke, but streets are clean and they build new infrastructure even today.

brooklyndude 11y ago

So in the case of an accident, Brooklyn and Queens are dead, but the South Bronx is awash in water? hmmmmmm. :-)

Tomte 11y ago

"The Works: Anatomy of a City" is an absolutely fascinating (and well-illustrated) book about urban infrastructure. It focuses too much on NYC for my taste, but that also means it can be really concrete in its examples. And the water supply, especially the tunnels, were one of the most captivating chapters in there.