Tunneling Below Second Avenue (for New Subway)
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Not only do these time scales lengthen the amortization period of these projects, but they dramatically influence peoples' choices. You can't just base your decision to build a subway line on present commuting patterns. People will adjust their lifestyle to take advantage of the new infrastructure, especially over the century-long timescales involved.
The part that rail proponents miss is that very little of the world is NYC/London/Japan.
Rail, like freeways, can be a "tipping point" if other things are close. However, that isn't always true.
Also, you basically have to decide between freight rail and passenger rail, and freight rail makes a lot more sense for much of the US. (Yes, I know that you folks insist that one can have both, but how about some examples....)
High-speed rail is going to break CA financially.
You say "very little of the world is NYC/London/Japan."
Well you know what? The western US would have nearly no one living in it if it weren't for big infrastructure projects. It's naturally a very inhospitable place, too little water half the year, too spread out, etc. But we've turned it into a place millions can thrive in. High speed rail may not be as critical as water, but it's ridiculous to think we can't build a modern railroad today.
If we can't build a modern railroad today then we're already broken. And if we're already broken, what do we have to lose?
And it's also absolutely right that it's ridiculous for people out west to complain about the intractability of big infrastructure projects. Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, etc, wouldn't even exist without massive U.S. Army Corps of Engineers projects in the 19th century that made the harsh desert habitable.
There are several huge differences between then and now.
The big one is that that infrastructure exists. High speed rail can't make a 10x difference on any factor. That infrastructure did, usually on multiple factors.
Another is that that infrastructure was relatively cheap. We didn't "bet the economy" on it. CA's high-speed rail is betting CA's economy. (Govt then was roughly 3% of GDP. If it had failed, no big deal. That's not true now.)
A related factor is that we didn't have as much govt debt then as now.
> High speed rail may not be as critical as water, but it's ridiculous to think we can't build a modern railroad today.
High speed rail isn't at all critical in CA or across the US.
> If we can't build a modern railroad today then we're already broken.
HSR is technically possible, but that doesn't imply that it's a good idea.
> And if we're already broken, what do we have to lose?
That's insane.
I note that you didn't address freight....
I worked briefly on the environmental side of this project at my last job in 2002 and something I don't hear that often is that there are completed cut-and-cover tunnel segments for the 2nd Avenue subway right now - the project initial began in the 1970's and some work was completed before the project ran out of money and it was shut down. I've been in the completed tunnel sections under 2nd Ave in the around 95th Street and under the Bowery. I think there is another section further north in Harlem but I haven't been in that one
Tunnel section under 95th street: http://twitpic.com/afuoxv
Tunnel section under the Bowery: http://twitpic.com/afupg0
The initial plan was to tie the new tunnels with the existing section, but last I heard (and this was admittedly 8 or 8 years ago) they abandoned the plan to tie into the Bowery section (they want to go under it) since the route has changed somewhat to tie in with other lines.
The scale of the project still amazes me, I'm glad to see that it's proceeding.
New York Magazine has an article that fills in some more of the historical and political context: http://nymag.com/print/?/nymetro/news/features/n_10109/
Slightly related: As a transport geek, I'm a fan of subways everywhere. I recommend London's excellent Transport Museum in Covent Garden for a great historical perspective on how tunnels and public transportation gets built.
http://transportationnation.org/2012/06/14/ny-mta-chief-says...
Also interesting: "The Regional Plan Association, which held the conference at which Lhota spoke, and other advocacy groups have expressed support for through-running—at least until Gateway Tunnel gets built."
I.e., they want to be more efficient, but only as a stopgap measure until the tunnel is built.
(Also check out Market Urbanism's blog post on the topic: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ycccmpt... )
So while this might get us a few percent increase in the number of trains for now, at the cost of a few hundred million to build out third rails in NJ (or catenaries in LIRR areas where NJ transit trains might be routed), it doesn't change the fundamental infrastructure issue given the growth of mass transit in the NYC metro area.
Even if a family has another kid on the way, they still need to make sure they have budgeted properly before building an expansion on the house.
There are millions of children in New Jersey that need their parents to be employed. Counter-cyclical spending helps to accomplish that, and if done wisely, it also acts as an investment from which those children will reap the benefits.
Discourse about government spending these days is sadly devoid of numbers that indicate the right choice one way or the other. We don't run our businesses this way.
Maybe, but that's not how "the great stimulus" money was spent. (And, as Obama learned, there are no shovel-ready projects.)
At this point, your argument is basically "yes, we pissed away the last $1-2T, but this time, we'll get it right."
Assuming that the activity you're financing will return future positive captureable value (farebox revenues, increased taxable business activity), then borrowing money now to pay for current activities ensuring ability to pay back the loan makes perfect sense.
Note that that assumption of future benefit may not hold out, but if it does, failing to undertake the financing is cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Ideally there would just be a train every hour from Penn Station and Grand Central directly to JFK and LaGuardia but I don't see that happening in the next 20-50 years.
My understanding is that a new link to the airport was in play when they chose the 2nd Av. line. The 2nd Av. will obviously benefit many more people and is a good choise. I hope it won't take decades to sort out the airport connection. The cab ride to and from JFK is one of the most disheartening parts of living in NYC.
The real annoyance is how hard it is to get to LGA and that you're reliant on buses. It's a shame that they ran out of money building the N/R and it stops at Ditmars instead of continuing on to the airport.
I fly out of NYC biweekly, I generally fly out of JFK so I can take the E/Airtrain there (about 50 mins) and then fly back to LGA and take a towncar home, due to landing later and avoiding traffic. I'd never take a cab to JFK, it can be nearly 2 hours from midtown in traffic.
i've been somewhat documenting its progress at http://eastsideaccess.tumblr.com
Length: 13.7 km
Caltrain map: http://www.caltrain.com/stations/systemmap.html
Metra map: http://www.mrl.ucsb.edu/~yopopov/rrt/us/chicago/rr_chicago_m...
A comparable rail map for the San Francisco Bay Area: http://www.urbanrail.net/am/snfr/sf-bay-area-map.htm
That puts the Bay Area commuter rail at 472 track miles and 598,000 passengers daily. Rather closer to your Chicago numbers.
But we've got to add in Chicago's CTA 'L line (709,000 daily riders, 108 miles). Tips lead to Chicago again.
Chicago benefits greatly from having grown up around (and not torn down much of its) commuter rail lines, including significant urban and suburban growth from 1860 - 1910, pre-automobile. It's occasionally noted in both areas that commute times a century ago were comparable to, or faster than, today (dedicated rights of way, less traffic, arguably fewer safety restrictions). The Bay Area notably tore down its old Key System commute rail, and several counties (San Mateo, Marin) have fought BART extensions for a half century, and saw much of its growth in the car-friendly post-WWII era.
The Bay Area's layout is actually fairly rail-friendly, with a few major transportation corridors (Peninsula, East Bayshore, CA-24, I-580, I-80, US 101 north of SF), though overall densities are low. Chicago has experienced a great deal of sprawl in the past 30 years, as well as employer flight to the suburbs, greatly increasing suburb-to-suburb commuting, though both SF and Chicago have also seen an increased appeal of the inner urban core especially for younger professionals.
San Francisco first needs to figure out what BART is - if its future is as a rapid transit municipal system (that's tied together with other municipalities), or if it should be strictly a commuter and inter-city transport system.
The current operating model is not a bad one assuming what you want is a regional commuter rail system, it fails utterly at being municipal transport.
I'd suggest that the "failures" of BART are really the extension of the massive, completely unmitigated clusterfuck that is MUNI. Looking at the recent history of MUNI is like watching a really bad slapstick act - it'd be funny if it weren't so damned sad. MUNI is broken, its system of governance is broken, and the propensity for California/Bay Area to engage in hyper-democracy is keeping it broken (ballot measure ALL the things!)
San Francisco holds 800K people in 47 square miles of land - the argument that this is insufficient density for a proper rapid transit and municipal transport system is IMO complete bunk.
This is a woulda/shouda thing going back 60 years to the original construction of the system. Even if we gave BART billions in funding, there are certainly better uses for that money (Build a rail line into OAK, extend service on all the currently-approved-but-unfunded routes, extend to San Mateo, and deal with some expensive, lingering issues with the transbay tunnel.)
In a single-track system 24/7 operation is not possible: they need to be able to power-down the track for maintenance.
That's consistent with my recollection riding BART. Shutting down one of the two tracks for unexpected daytime maintenance ("single-tracking") is a common source of delays, since in single-track mode the system can't run nearly as many trains per hour due to the need to pass at specific points. But it can still run some trains, probably enough for a night service.
You can research this but I'm not going to do that for you. I'm comfortable that I'm correct, if you're not, well, meh. It's not personal, I'm sure you can understand.
And to your original point -- the engineer driving the train is a fraction of the cost of keeping the system running. Even if BART was dual-tracked, the salary of the engineer doesn't hardly move the needle on their costs, which include: Salaries of station agents and security, additional maintenance and wear-and-tear, janitorial (including dealing with higher janitorial costs between 2AM and 6AM than other 4-hour periods due to the nature of overnight passenger traffic), baseline power costs to keep the power rail hot at 1000+ volts over 100+ miles of track, etc.
In a single-track system 24/7 operation is not possible:
In double-tracked systems, there are crossovers (typically located near stations, but they can be anywhere) or switches to storage tracks that allow traffic to be routed along single tracks as necessary to allow track segments to be taken out of service.
That said, it's double-tracked in many (though possibly not all) sections, which might allow for running periodic service along one set of tracks, assuming switching and train control systems would allow for this. With a full circumnavigation of the Bay, it might also be possible to phase system downtime such that service might run on either eastern (Contra Costa) or western (Penninsula) lines, with service between SF and SJ. By phasing which specific track segments are down for maintenance at any one time, effective coverage of much of the system might be possible (at the cost of greater scheduling and maintenance complexity).
Triple-tracking the system could also provide for this, though at much greater infrastructure and land costs.
As it is, the 4 hour shutdown doesn't affect too many patrons, and service during operating hours is very reliable (much more so than other regional transit sywtems, or driving).
First, the city has buses running at night and there are 8xx buses that run along BART lines after BART is closed. While one's experience on BART is much better than on a bus, current options don't require that much more time.
Second, the last north-bound CalTrain leaves Palo Alto a little before 11 pm making it really difficult for people living in the city/East Bay without a car to do evening activities there. If one wants to get back, the best options are spending two hours on a SamTrans bus into the city or taking an expensive cab.
http://nymag.com/news/articles/08/06/GeographyofDisaster/map...
The most ironic part is that the bulk of the line is already complete (or mostly there) - they just don't have enough to stretch below 42nd street, IIRC, which is the tipping point for when they can open it as a useable line.
Also, last I heard, it was to be a single-track line (like the L). So after all those years, we'll still be stuck in the case of any breakdowns or delays - picture the L at rush hour, except worse, because of the passenger volume. And no chance of any express train.
That is, if it ever even opens. A good rule of thumb for the MTA's estimates seems to be 'Time.now() + 5.years'.
All that said, I love NYC's transit system - it couldn't be the city is without it. I just wish we had more than one single line on the east side!