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How on earth can it cost 16bn for a tunnel? Or is it something more complicated like London crossrail which cost a similar amount.
by jahnu 10y ago
How on earth can it cost 16bn for a tunnel?
Or is it something more complicated like London crossrail which cost a similar amount.
- potatolicious 10y agoIt's not that complicated. Manhattan is very developed which raises construction costs substantially, but ultimately construction costs here are still dramatically out of line. The Second Avenue Subway is the most expensive metro ever constructed (on a per-mile basis), even compared to extremely dense, developed-world cities like Tokyo and Paris, both of whom have active subway construction going on for far cheaper. There is a tremendous amount of waste and corruption in this process, and there's not a lot of political will to address it, since the governors of NY and NJ are both pretty deep in it themselves. On the bright side, Christie's career has self-destructed over the course of this year, and Cuomo himself is under investigation for corruption. One can only hope that their successors would be a bit cleaner and more willing to tackle these issues.
- bogomipz 10y agoI think the astronomical price tag is for the whole Gateway Project not just the tunnel, there's the expansion as well as refurbishing of the existing tunnel that was damaged by Hurricane Sandy. This article is a good insight into how convoluted the whole project is: https://nextcity.org/features/view/gateway-tunnel-project-hudson-river-train-tunnel-amtrak-new-york-jersey https://nextcity.org/features/view/gateway-tunnel-project-hu...