Build a Cross Sound Tunnel

across New York's Long Island Sound
connecting I-287 with Route 135

Suggested Tunnel Configuration for I-287 Cross Sound Tunnel connecting Westchester County and Long Island, N.Y.


This would connect existing I-287 with Route 135 in Long Island.



It would be drilled over 100 feet beneath the underwater surface.

Is being proposed by Polimeri International, a family owned Garden City, LI based development company.

It would be built with private funds, and charge a toll of $25 for passenger automobiles and an upwards of $100 for trucks.

It would be a useful evacuation route- a concept that the government has paid lip service.

N.Y. State Senator Carl Marcellino (R- Syosset) has announced hearings to be held on this proposal.


Daily News article
The Cross Sound Link Project

Build a Cross Brooklyn Tunnel

From NYCROADS
by Steve Anderson

Of all the boroughs in New York City, Brooklyn is the least served in limited-access highway mileage vis-à-vis population. Sometime in the future, the Cross Brooklyn Expressway proposal may be resurrected as an Interstate corridor for use by passenger cars and commercial traffic. The new Cross Brooklyn Expressway should utilize the right-of-way along Conduit Boulevard, Linden Boulevard and the LIRR Bay Ridge branch to the Gowanus Expressway (I-278). This project should be done in conjunction with the conversion (and completion) of the Nassau Expressway into a controlled-access facility, and possibly be integrated with the long-proposed plan for a rail tunnel between Bay Ridge, Brooklyn and Bayonne, New Jersey. Strong consideration should be given to its construction as a tunnel facility. (The Saunders-Herrenknecht proposal for the Tappan Zee and Oyster Bay-Rye tunnels, which calls for dual-level tunnels for vehicular and rail traffic, may serve as a model.)

Adopted from misc.transport.road

If New York City planning were more comprehensive with pursuing environmentally advanced designs for projects combining highways and rail, the discussion for this much needed Cross Bay Rail Tunnel to Brooklyn would include a vehicular link to New Jersey, with an eastern extension across Brooklyn to Kennedy Airport.

Like the Cross Brooklyn Expressway proposals of the 1960's, this would employ the right of way of the LIRR freight tracks. Unlike these earlier proposals, this new highway would be designed to not tower over neighborhoods, nor take lengthy swaths from existing neighborhoods, nor increase localized air pollution, nor even be something that could accurately be said as dividing Brooklyn locally. Rather than building a high viaduct over the railroad, or a below ground roadway lined with new buildings (at the expense of homes), build this Cross Brooklyn Expressway as an encased, multi-level, multi-model road tunnel with electrostatic precipitator filtration technology, built beneath a new linear park for much of its length.

This railroad corridor is wide at its western segment, approximately 250 feet wide with a single rail track, and its eastern segment traverses vast industrial areas. In contrast, the middle segment is only about 80 feet wide, and is immediately abutted by residential areas that may not permit widening. Indeed, this width is too narrow for a conventional expressway layout, thus requiring a multi-level underground facility. This would perhaps entail three separate decks, one deck for expanded passenger and freight rail service, and two decks for each expressway carriageway.

A full underground segment for this narrow middle segment, and the area along Linden Boulevard would be required for noise abatement.

The project should connect directly to a new Cross Harbor Railway/Highway Tunnel to I-78 in New Jersey, with new parallel roadways to at least the New Jersey Turnpike. Such a tunnel is currently planned, inexplicitly only with rail.

It would be perhaps the nation's most needed new evacuation route from a major metropolitan area, with the greatest re-use of existing industrialized right of way.

Cross Brooklyn Expressway right of way tour- Old NYC
Cross Harbor - Cross Brooklyn Tunnel (non-multi-model rail only version)

A Beholden Doctrine

From Urban Transport.org

Unfortunately, about 1975, politicians and planners began to embrace the idea that we were in an "era of limits" - the notion that there were "smarter solutions," that "we can't just keep on building more roads," that "transportation demand management" could help wean Californians off their irrational "love affair with the automobile" and into "modern, efficient, high-capacity mass transit."

Then-governor Jerry Brown's aides openly proclaimed, "Our job is to pry John Q. Public out of his car (and) to make life miserable for the single motorist."

http://www.urbantransport.org/sole.pdf

Jerry Brown, pictured above on the front cover of an April 23, 1979 issue of Newsweek magazine with the singer Linda Ronstadt, about mid way through his 1975-1983 service as Governor of the State of California; he has a long political career including service as Mayor of Oakland from 1998 to 2006, and in 2007 is California Attorney General. In 1976, 1980 and 1992 he unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nominations, and in 1982 was the unsuccessful Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate.

Jerry Brown- Wikipedia

(excerpt)

Brown was born in San Francisco, the only son of former San Francisco lawyer, District attorney and later Democratic governor Edmund G. "Pat" Brown Sr. He graduated from St. Ignatius High School and studied at Santa Clara University. In 1958, he entered Sacred Heart Novitiate, a Jesuit seminary, intending to become a Catholic priest.

A Sampling of Attitudes Towards D.C. I-95

Whatever happened to the idea of additional evacuation routes?

Shortly after the events of September 11, 2001, there was talk about constructing additional evacuation routes within the U.S. to better serve the evacuation for major metropolitan areas in a future emergency event.

Yet within all of the 100s of billions of $$ spent since on the war in Iraq and with over-sightless surveilling the general public, there is nothing for new evacuation routes- particularly from such metropolises as Washington, D.C., and New York City/Long Island.

Logical projects would include:

I-287 Long Island Sound Bridge/Tunnel, either a full tunnel, or a bridge with tunnel (cut and cover box with full lanes and shoulders to mitigate the highway at the shore areas) to a Route 135 re-signed and improved as I-287

I-78 Cross Harbor-Brooklyn Highway-Railway Tunnel towards JFK Airport , preferably with an eastern extension along the Sunrise Highway corridor

Lincoln Tunnel 4th Tube
Midtown Manhattan 3rd Tube
Holland Tunnel Parallel Tubes

Northern and Eastern Washington, D.C. radial highways, in particular, the I-95 Grand Arc Mall Tunnel

Homeland Security Goal Better Served by Reviving I-70S through NW Washington DC- Mark Robinowitz

Envirofraud - unscrupulous road haters

Posted Sat, 2007-09-15 12:42 at TollRoads

http://www.tollroad snews.com/ node/3136

Air pollution scaremongering long been used by environmental groups to block the road building needed to alleviate congestion - even though the resulting stop-&-go and idling traffic worsens emissions. In many US metro areas air quality data have been misused by environmentalists and their friends in the regulatory agencies to bar all lane additions - except for HOV lanes. And they are wastefully empty.

Their logic is that extra highway capacity will increase vehicle-miles traveled and applying average emissions/vehicle mile traveled (vmt) that means more total emissions and greater difficulty meeting air quality goals. Totally ignored in this logic are the benefits to emissions per vmt of managing traffic for free flow at moderate speed.

Anyone serious about air quality will see toll managed traffic lanes as being a contribution to cleaner air.

But most environmentalists are more stuck on fighting the car than they are on cleaning the air.

Maybe it's time the USDOT's congestion busters promoted some research to quantify the air quality results of:

(1) toll managed lanes,

(2) extra free capacity and

(3) congested constrained capacity.

[Click URL for more]

Classic Classism- Kathryn Schneider Smith

Useful traffic tunnel decried by elites over temporary construction disturbance


Kathryn Schneider Smith, wife of Washington, D.C. journalist Sam Smith, wrote the following in her 1983 book Washington at home: an illustrated history of neighborhoods in the Nation’s Capital, about the DuPont Circle underpass project:

There were other things for the residents of the neighborhood to worry about, including the proposed DuPont Circle streetcar underpass, which local officials believed was necessary to relieve the congestion on the Circle itself. From before the turn of the century, both northbound and southbound tracks of the Cabin John line had run side by side around the western rim of the Circle between Connecticut Avenue and P Street. In the mid-1930s the city considered decongesting the western side of the Circle by moving the northbound tracks to the east side. The change was not made, and thus one of Washington’s most durable legends was born.

The story was that highway officials had not moved the tracks because of the objections from Eleanor “Cissy” Patterson, the editor and published of the powerful Washington Times Herald. Legend has it that Patterson did not want the noisy street cars running in front of her mansion, which faced the Circle at P Street. Later she was to tell a reported that she was flattered at the suggestion that she could wield so much influence, but she denied the story, as did highway officials.

When the underpass was first proposed in the early 1940s, little opposition was expressed by neighborhood residents. The projected cost was $500,000. But by 1947 when the digging began, the cost was projected as more then $3 million. A citizens’ group protested the project, citing the cost and anticipated disruption of their neighborhood. Their fears were confirmed when a construction left the park “a morass of mud and clay, surrounded by detours and dotted with concrete mixers, steam shovels, scaffolding and piles of assorted unattractive materials” for more then three years. It also meant the destruction of numerous trees and the temporary relocation of the DuPont fountain.

Patterson, who at one time had supported the underpass in her editorial pages of her newspaper, changed her mind and called the project a “blunderpass” and commented, “If it is ever finished, it will be the worst white elephant of them all.”[*]

She was right. In 1961, 11 years after it was completed, the streetcars were phased out in favor of buses. The semicircular trolley tracks were closed, leaving the underpass as just another road for cars.

What about the folly of closing the semi-circular trolley underpass rather then maintain it for bus service?

Or the failure to cover the traffic underpass for the one block segment to the Circle’s north?

“…the worst white elephant of all.” [?!?!]



Schneider-Smith presents an outlook that generations of use and benefits to society are less important then the temporary disturbances to some of the city’s wealthiest and most influential people.

Accordingly, it's better to place all of the Connecticut Avenue traffic on the Circle in perpetuity, rather then have a newspaper editor look at a construction project directly across the street from her mansion for three years a half century ago.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cissy_Patterson_home_at_Dupont_Circle.jpg

Are we really supposed to think that a $3 million underpass that serves thousands of vehicles and the people served daily, is the “worst” “of all” denying the multiples of that spent on the military budget- namely that of the cigarette-petrochemical pharma-alcohol protectionist "war on drugs"?

This passage by Schneider-Smith is heavily borrowed (without attribution) by Joseph Passonneau in his book Washington through Two Centuries.

The parties that would battle over the future of DuPont Circle neighborhood the older mansion dwellers, what would be described as the counter culture and the city’s highway department converged at the circle itself. L ‘Enfant had not designed his neighborhood centers as future automobile traffic circles, and by the beginning of World War II, traffic congestion around DuPont Circle had become a problem. The congestion worsened after the war, and an underpass was proposed, projected at a cost of $500,000. At first there was little citizen opposition, but by 1947 when work began, residents protested, citing the price tag (which had escalated to $3 million) and neighborhood disruption. There fears were confirmed.

Construction left the park in the center of the circle a sea of mud, filled with construction equipment and littered with building materials, for more then three years.

Eleanor “Cissy” Patterson, owner and editor of the Washington Times Herald and owner of one of the mansions on the circle, at first supported the tunnel, then called it a “blunder pass”, writing that , “If it is ever finished, it will be the worst white elephant of them all.” She was right. In 1961, the streetcars were replaced by buses, and the semicircular trolley tunnel was closed. The automobile and truck underpass remained and the surface travelways widened at the expense of the park.

“She was right.” [?!]

It’s an attitude that Mr. Passonneau has bowed down to regarding Washington, D.C.’s un-built highways – taking a bizarre stance against anything underground – as he did to a question that I asked him at the National Building Museum. All traffic must remain on the surface because some exceptionally influential person does not want to even look at a construction project that’s say across a street- there need not be a direct conflict, such as that between the U.S. National Capital Planning Commission's proposed Extending the Legacy South Capitol Mall and the St. Vincent de Paul Roman Catholic Church.


Note the name of the individual who help her write this book, elitist road transport hater: Jane Freundel Levy.

Accordingly, inconveniencing the super influential for a short period of time is a no, no- damn the public interest.

*
She comes to that conclusion even as she died only a few months after the construction started, and while she lived in another mansion in suburban Maryland- facts unmentioned by Schneider-Smith.


About 'Cissy' Patterson:

[excerpts]

Eleanor Josephine Medill "Cissy" Patterson (November 7, 1884 - July 24, 1948) was an American journalist and newspaper editor, publisher and owner. Patterson was one of the first women to head a major daily newspaper, the Washington Times-Herald in Washington, D.C.

Her grandfather Joseph Medill was Mayor of Chicago and owned the Chicago Tribune, which later passed into the hands of her first cousin Colonel Robert R. McCormick, Joseph Medill's grandson. Her older brother Joseph Medill Patterson was the founder of the New York Daily News.

She was educated at Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut. When her uncle Robert S. McCormick was named ambassador to Austria-Hungary, she accompanied him and his wife, Cissy's maternal aunt Kate, to Vienna. There she met Count Josef Gizycki and fell in love with him, a romance not interrupted even by her return to America, where she lived in Washington, D.C.. In Washington, she was a leading light in society, where the press labeled Alice Roosevelt (daughter of Theodore), Marguerite Cassini (daughter of the Russian ambassador), and Cissy the "Three Graces." Count Gizycki came to America and they were married in Washington on April 14, 1904 despite the objections of her family, which later proved well-founded. A daughter was born to them September 3, 1905, and was named Leonora Felicia (1905-1999). Cissy went with the Count to his home, a huge feudal manor in Russia. Their family life did not go well, but when Cissy wanted to leave, he tried to keep her there. She fled with their child, hiding her in a house near London, but the Count pursued her and kidnapped the little Countess, hiding her in an Austrian convent while demanding a million dollars in ransom. Cissy filed for divorce, which took thirteen years to obtain, and in which William Howard Taft and Czar Nicholas II were personally involved. The Czar ordered the Count to return the child to her mother.

After her experience abroad, she moved to Lake Forest, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, but she returned to Washington in 1913. In 1920, her brother Joseph finally succumbed to his sister's entreaties and allowed her to write for his New York Daily News, founded the previous year. She also worked for William Randolph Hearst. She published two novels, romans a clef, Glass Houses (1926) and Fall Flight (1928), part of her feud with former friend Alice Roosevelt Longworth. The friendship with Alice Longworth ended when at a dinner party hosted by the Longworths, Patterson was caught sleeping with Mrs. Longworth's husband. During the party, Mrs. Longworth caught Eleanor and Nicholas on the floor of a bathroom in the home, with the light on and the door unlocked. Alice then retaliated by having a lasting affair with Senator William Edgar Borah, which at its height, produced a child Paulina Longworth. Patterson also had an affair with Borah, but Alice won out reportedly because Patterson frequently gloated about their experiences unlike Alice.

Patterson tried to buy the Washington Herald and the Washington Times, then separate papers, from Hearst, who hated to sell anything, even when he needed the money. Although he had never made money from his Washington papers, he refused. However, at the urging of his editor Arthur Brisbane, Hearst agreed to make Patterson editor of the Herald. She began work on August 1, 1930. Patterson was a hands-on editor who insisted on the best of everything--writing, layout, typographic, graphics, comics, everything. She encouraged society reporting and the women's page and hired many women as reporters. In 1936, she was invited to join the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Patterson made her paper popular with all strata of Washington society and doubled its circulation.

In 1937, Hearst's finances had gotten worse and he agreed to lease the Herald and the Times to Patterson with an option to buy. Eugene Meyer, the man who had outbid Hearst and Patterson for The Washington Post in 1933, tried to buy the Herald out from under Patterson, but failed. Instead, she bought both papers from Hearst on January 28, 1939, and merged them as the Times-Herald.

Along with her brother at the New York Daily News and her cousin at the Chicago Tribune, Patterson was an ardent isolationist and opponent of the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1942, after the Battle of Midway, the Times-Herald ran a Tribune story that revealed American intelligence was reading the Japanese naval code. Roosevelt, furious, had the Tribune and the Times-Herald indicted for espionage but backed down because of the publicity, charges he was persecuting his enemies, and the likelihood of an acquittal (since the Navy's own censors had twice cleared the story before it was published). During World War II, she and her brother were accused by their enemies of being Nazi sympathizers. Representative Elmer Holland of Pennsylvania on the floor of the United States House of Representatives said Cissy and Joseph Patterson "would welcome the victory of Hitler"

She feuded with her daughter, who publicly "divorced" her in 1945, and with her former son-in-law, Drew Pearson. Alienated from her family and friends, she turned to alcohol, and died alone at her home Dower House [Mt. Airy Mansion] near Marlboro, Maryland. She left the paper to seven of her editors who within the year sold the paper to her cousin Colonel McCormick. He held onto the paper for five years, and although for several years he seemed close to returning it to profitability, it eventually proved to be too much of a financial drain. After quietly sounding out several other publishers, McCormick opted to sell the paper to the rival Post, which promptly closed it.

About Drew Pearson:

[excerpts]

Drew Pearson (December 13, 1897–September 1, 1969), born "Andrew Russell Pearson" in Evanston, Illinois ^[1] was one of the most prominent American newspaper and radio journalists of his day. He was best known for his muckraking syndicated newspaper column "Washington Merry-Go-Round".

The Washington Merry-Go-Round column started as a result of the anonymous publication in 1931 of the book, Washington Merry-Go-Round (New York: Horace Liveright and Co.), co-written with Robert S. Allen. The book comprised a collection of muckraking news items concerning key figures in public life that challenged the journalistic code of the day. In 1932, it was followed by a second book, More Merry-Go-Round. Pearson and Allen were successful enough in their books to become co-authors of the syndicated column, the Washington Merry-Go-Round, that same year. Allen would later be succeeded by Jack Anderson as Pearson's junior partner.

It has been said that disclosures in Pearson's column sent four Congressmen to jail and led to the resignation of President Eisenhower's chief of staff, Sherman Adams. Pearson was the first to report the incident of General George S. Patton's slapping of a soldier. General Douglas MacArthur sued Pearson, unsuccessfully, after Pearson accused MacArthur of lobbying for a promotion. ^[2]

Drew Pearson had one daughter, Ellen, in a short marriage (1925-28) to Felicia Gizycka, daughter of the newspaper scion Cissy Patterson and Count Joseph Gizycky of Poland. Thereafter, Pearson maintained a strained relationship with his former mother-in-law, and they frequently exchanged barbed comments in print. His second wife was Luvie Moore Abell, whom he married in 1936; they had no children together.

In May of 1948, Pearson leaked news in the Washington Post that the SEC and Justice Department were talking to Preston Thomas Tucker of the Tucker Corporation, an automobile company in Detroit. Pearson stated - erroneously, as it would later turn out - that the agencies would uncover financial crimes at the company. Tucker stock dropped from $5 to $2 based on Pearson's charges. The SEC and Justice later found Tucker and his company innocent of any wrongdoing, but the damage was done. The Tucker Corporation was never able to recover and went out of business. It is widely believed that Pearson's claims cost Tucker investors and 2,000 car dealers millions of dollars, and that, as a result, America lost what was perhaps the most innovative automobile of its time.

Any Excuse to Track the Public

Why spend billions on transponders and readers?

Why not just raise the fuel tax?

I think you are going to see fairly hefty increases in subsidies for Amtrak and transit. Remember transit usage is up because of the increase in gas prices.

I am certain government will become more controlling over travel. Of course to travel we all need proper paperwork and submit to government demands. Since we already need clearance from homeland security to leave and re-enter the USA (of course those people being allowed in to flood the labor market and over burden the US taxpayer don't have to do jack, they just walk through a hole in the fence) we may see that for domestic travel as well.

What I think you are going to see eventually is a mileage based tax usage fee. Just like you have to register a vehicle, you will have a transponder that keeps track of mileage and road use, combined with readers on the road, that is the way vehicles will pay for road usage.

That's what the self proclaimed owners want and with it tracking the travel of each and everyone of us. Central planning in command.

Thinking Over the Box With Existing Right of Way

July 15, 2007
Op-Ed Contributors
Think Over the Box
By TED BALAKER and SAM STALEY

Los Angeles

AMID the debates — and the looming deadline — over Mayor
Michael Bloomberg’s congestion pricing plans for the city, one
recent traffic measure has caused little uproar: increased
fines ($115) for drivers who block the box. Indeed, many
New Yorkers support the mayor’s plan, which means that not
just regular police officers, but also the city’s more
than 2,800 traffic agents have the authority to hand out
tickets for an infraction known as blocking the box. And why
not? Few things enrage travelers more than the driver who
blocks the intersection, intensifying the already suffocating
traffic congestion.

But the truth is that while this plan may satisfy revenge
fantasies and increase city coffers, it won’t loosen gridlock’s
grip. It may even tighten it.

Blocking the box isn’t a law enforcement issue that
Mayor Bloomberg can address by simply having traffic agents
mete out punishment. It’s a traffic management issue that
represents political neglect of the road network. Drivers
aren’t letting their cars sit in the cross hairs of oncoming
traffic out of spite. They don’t relish the cursing, honking
and fist shaking aimed at them. Like everyone else in the
standstill, they’d prefer to be moving. But there’s just
nowhere to go.

Much of Manhattan’s congestion stems from vehicles passing
through the island on their way to destinations outside or
on the outskirts of the borough. These travelers would love
to bypass most or all of Manhattan, but the roadway network
won’t allow it. Instead it crams motorists together, turning
crosstown travelers into box blockers.

So, here’s the question: If straphangers can choose between
local and express service, why can’t motorists? In cities all
over the world and even in the United States, drivers can choose
to drive up and over intersections on humps called queue
jumpers, or they can duck under intersections through short
tunnels.

Queue jumpers and tunnels could make for a good fit in many
spots throughout New York because they operate within existing
rights of way. They can also be configured for many different
types of roads, from two-lanes on a one-way street (sending
one lane over the intersection) to streets with six or more
lanes.

Just take a look at how effective the Murray Hill Tunnel is
at bypassing traffic. The tunnel, which carries two lanes of
car traffic from East 33rd Street to East 41st Street, is a
great way to avoid the congestion of Park Avenue. Now imagine
more of these tunnels and some well-placed queue jumpers and
soon you’re traveling across town, dodging red lights.

Cities like Paris, Sydney, Melbourne, Tokyo and even
Tampa, Fla., have upgraded beyond queue jumpers to provide
longer under- and aboveground motorways. Granted, much of
the metropolitan region is packed with subway and train
tunnels and other utilities, but elevated facilities need
only airspace, and wide swaths of subterranean space
remain uncluttered.

Consider the western edge of Manhattan, where there are
no serious underground obstructions from the Battery to
the George Washington Bridge. Various east-west streets
are also free of subway tunnels. In the book “Street Smart,”
one contributor, Peter Samuel, makes a sensible suggestion:
construct a truck-only tunnel that would take many
lane-cloggers off surface streets. “It would feed a
north-south truckway spine along the west side of Manhattan,
with short east-west spurs,” he writes.

Gridlock hasn’t grown fiercer because drivers have become
ruder and simply no longer care if they block the box.
Rather, clogged intersections represent a symptom of
congestion’s root cause: political neglect.

For decades, officials have failed to upgrade the road network
to keep up with a swelling population. Mayor Bloomberg has said
that the city will grow by 900,000 people by 2030; if this
neglect continues, it will generate even more gridlock. Over
the next 20 years city forecasters expect automobile traffic
to grow by 10 percent and freight traffic to increase major
transportation recommendations in the city’s long-range plan,
not one would significantly increase the road system’s
capacity.

Mayor Bloomberg’s ironfisted approach to intersection blockers
not only allows an outdated roadway system to grow more
antiquated, it may also erode support for congestion pricing.
Cities like London and Stockholm have found it easier to sell
the public on congestion pricing when road projects are a part
of the deal, and New York should follow suit. After all, most
of those who would pay the $8 congestion toll — if the plan
is approved by Albany in time to meet tomorrow’s federal
deadline for a grant of about $500 million for the
program — aren’t out-of-towners, they’re the mayor’s own
constituents.

As we await news from Albany, many remain suspicious of
congestion pricing, and they won’t take kindly to additional
measures that cast drivers as scapegoats. Promising to devote
some congestion pricing money to building queue jumpers may
win over fence-sitting motorists, not to mention bus riders
who would enjoy bona fide express service.

Ted Balaker, a fellow at the Reason Foundation, and
Sam Staley, the director of the organization’ s urban and
land use policy, are the authors of “The Road More Traveled:
Why the Congestion Crisis Matters More Than You Think, and
What We Can Do About It.”

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/opinion/nyregionopinions/15CIbakalar.html?ex=1185595200&en=53fe13b2c65f78f4&ei=5070

Truck (Interstate Highway design standard) Tunnel
under existing right if way
(un-built Washington, D.C. I-66 K Street Tunnel)

The N.Y.C. Manhattan West Side Highway Tunnel for trucks is a logical start as a modularly upgradeable-expendable system over time. Its connections to the various cross river tunnels needs considerable consideration, including that to the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel (and hence, included in the WTC area reconstruction in a "deep" configuration beneath an underground pedestrian concourse near to the surface).

Its' east-west spurs would logically include some variant of the underground proposals for at least a portion of the un-built Midtown Manhattan Expressway; similarly it could include an underground replacement for the un-built Lower Manhattan Expressway via a Canal Road Bypass Tunnel drilled beneath historic So Ho.

Logical additions would include a 4th tube for the Lincoln Tunnel, and at least a pair of new, modern specification 2 lane tubes paralleling the Holland Tunnel.

Regionally, it should be accompanied by the Gowanus Tunnel Project (with a tunneled extension north-easterly to bypass the Promenade), along with a Cross Harbor-Brooklyn Highway-Railway Tunnel from I-78 in New Jersey to the Conduit Avenue corridor (with Interboro spur), providing a valuable evacuation route from Long Island.

Congestion Pricing (as proposed) Stabs Poor

On 7/24/07, Michael T Packard <michaelpackard1@ peoplepc. com> wrote:

The Minetta Transportation Institute published a report in 2002 titled, "Lessons from the Most successful Transit Systems in the 1990's". At the end of that study, in a section on review of literature-( p.117 ), they quoted a European Commission Transport Research study to the effect that,

"Road pricing is potentially the most effective way to shift riders to transit."

We all know it won't be middleclass or upper class car users being forced out of their cars by these targeted road tax hikes. Low income drivers will have to make multi-transfer ride trips on transit and sacrifice much time. Or they can travel or on crowded side streets and still sacrifice their time.

The central city snots who "love all mankind" just can't stand people living in suburbs, especially the poor. The snots will make them pay one way or the other.

Mike

Nor can such people stand any sort of road project, irregardless of the environmental consequences - e.g. its utility and its use of existing corridors.

It's as if such people don't think of the environmental footprint importance of infrastructure for accommodating greater human population and activity.

To them it does not matter whether the project respects existing properties and landmarks. They may have cut their teeth opposing a cross town Lower Manhattan or Mid Town Manhattan elevated highway that would have cleared a swath of buildings. But ultimately as of this writing, they oppose any new vehicular road that lacks traffic lights.

Apparantly our political elites don't include any truck drivers.

Just think of that movie "The Day After Tomorrow" with Manhattan flooded and frozen, obviously with no food coming in, yet the people are shown dancing in the streets after being holed up for weeks in the New York Public Library, with a blissful ignorance of infrastructure matter. For instance, a pay phone in a subway that works during a flood, with not a mention of any inoperable toilets, nor regarding drinking water.

Such is our intellectually bankrupt criminal apostate shadow government.

Pushing it Away: New York Times Enshrinement

From page A18, New York Times editorial page: "Editorial Observer" by Verlyn Klinkenborg-
"Trying Times Ahead: The Prospect of 60 Million Californians"

Recently, the California Department of Finance predicted that there will be some 60 million people living in the state by 2050. At present [2007] there are 36 millions. The numbers in themselves are frightening enough, but what I find terrifying is the bland assumption that a two thirds increase in population is inevitable and that the main problem will be creating the infrastructure necessary to house, feed, educate, transport and govern all those people. To me, the main problem is how to keep them from showing up in the first place [emphasis added].

Representative aristocratic myopia, with its unspoken assumption of some sort of major disaster in order to bring about the population reduction of others that they desire.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/opinion/18wed4.html?ex=1342497600&en=7c88d647ee1ac26c&amp;ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Cosmobile Cosmopolitan Transport

For the People; Not just the Aristocrats who want to get others to stop driving