Upstate Gateway/Hastings On Hudson Span with New RR Further Elaborated

My previous article about this idea:

https://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2024/02/i-684i-687-nyw-plus-upstate-gateway.html

In developing this I-684/I-687 Upstate Gateway Project, I had initially included the "NYWB" as a logical accompanying mode.  Just look at that I-95 233rd Street ramp set immediately west of Co Op City, pointing right at the Dyre Avenue IRT.  Indisputably needed for uncorking what would be an insane traffic bottleneck coming up from Long Island. (Which begs the question, why was the Central Corridor Expressway not pursued?  After all, much of the route in Westchester, indeed about everything past Mt Vernon, was NOT yet built up in the years immediately following WW2.  And wtf?  Why did they removed the NYWB, specifically the mainline to White Plains?  And if they did, why not some sort of vehicular road, even if only a single lane in each direction while leaving space for future capacity addition?  All we would get in that regard is the Heathecote Bypass, with no apparent talk of at least extending that south into New Rochelle to Pine Brook Boulevard, or north into White Plains to the 4 lane Mamaroneck Avenue, getting it past Archbishop Stepinac HS and Our Lady of Sorrows Church.

 

But how about this- wtf about the NYC metro regional area developing a more suitable new railroad link to the west?  We know that Manhattan's RR tunnels are in sorry shape.  And we can not deny the utter sheer stupidity of NO heavy RR suitable for FREIGHT rail anywhere along the Hudson River, until 140 miles to the north at Selkirk, by Albany.  WTF?  And don't get me started on the situation with how the planning for the I-287 corridor from Sufferan to White Plains was undermined, particularly with the weird planning swap in 2011-2012 with the illegal sacking of the replacement Tappan Zee Bridges lower deck suspiciously omitted from the EIS with not a peep from the cacophony of phony liberal progressive transportation and environmentalist activist advocacy groups, such as this and this.

 

 

We blew it on the replacement TPZ, even abandoning a pair of nice designs with well shaped artfully sculpted supports in favor of a pair of ordinary skinny legs with towers suggestive of a devils hand-sign, outward canted, perhaps even to disallow more than a single RR track for double stacked rail cars.  WTF?

So we cant do anything about the TPZ for a while.

But how about to the south?

Well, a Yonkers Bridge is a bit problematic, due to that huge bridge, which no one is going to allow having it cut away like I-68 in western Maryland, and which would be challenging at best to drill multiple moled tunnels along each other.

But look at Hastings on the Hudson.  Yes, that other new Hudson River Bridge crossing between the TPZ and the GWB.

No ridge blocking that as in Yonkers.

And consider that 1979 television show SUPERTRAIN.  Yes it was corny with that extra wide gauge track, and a travel intenary that made little sense- e.g. why not show it going anywhere in New Jersey or Pennsylvania?  Let along upstate New York, not even Buffalo.  Nor how about Detroit, or, Chicago?

But do recall what it suggested.  A train that leaves NYC Manhattan's Grand Central Station, emerging from it tunnel at about 96th Street (on a single track. wtf).

But then what?

A train leaving Grand central heading north and the swinging west.

 

SUPERTRAIN failed to show just how.

 

But clearly there is only one really good option, the Hastings on the Hudson Cross Hudson Bridge to Alpine New Jersey (at the very northeaster corner of that state).

 

This I-684/I-687 proposed project includes such a RR link, essentially as a YY configuration of both RR and expressway.

 

Now it does not go to Grand central, but rather the eastern Bronx down to alongside the Bruckner Expressway, tying into the RR proposal made by the group RETHINK NYC, which does a great deal of excellent work.

 

But it could so connect with Grand central, via the RR along the Westchester County western side, of the eastern shore of the Hudson River, with a set of underground loop RR ramps to make the grade change up to our new I-687 with RR in the new river crossing spans lower deck.  With a 6 or 8 lane span, lets include a minimum of 5 RR lanes within its lower deck, with that RR continuing to the west of the Palisades Parkway, to connect with New Jersey's Northern RR.

Given this idea;s intrinsic logic, what studies have the authorities ever conducted upon such a RR link?

I-684/I-687 "NYW&B" plus Upstate Gateway- further developed

My earlier article:

https://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2023/12/ny-requires-constructing-revived.html

 

The need for a modern expressway extending northward from the Co Op City area 233rd Street ramps is indisputable. The route would of course follow the old "NY, Westchester & Boston" RR corridor, and it would definitely INCLUDE the entire segment from the northern end of the "Dyre Avenue" IRT, into downtown White Plains within a a reconstructed Westchester Mall, with an extension to Westchester County Airport. The restored RR would include architecturally faithful "NY&B" stations at Sanford Street, East 3rd Street, and Columbus Avenue for a transfer to the Metro North in Mt Vernon, and at Wykagil in New Rochelle, with a new underground Heathecote Junction station in Scarsdale, likely with some new mixed use buildings in the style of downtown Scarsdale.  Having lived nearby, I can see the idea of a restoration of the Marx Estate Mansion, as an integral part of a redevelopment featuring military campus scale residential condominiums - with a first right of refusal for existing residents displaced, with sufficient units to offer as well to newcomers - akin to the Marx Mansion architecture.  And my intuition tells me that others already have this vision.  I can NOT be the only person seeing that potential.

 

It would exclude the branch through Pelham.

 

It would be an exact restoration of the original alignment, EXCEPT for the segment from near Pine Brook Boulevard, in Scarsdale, and in White Plains except for a few hundred feet south of the Westchester Mall. And it would exclude the "Quaker Ridge" station at 556 Stratton Rd- a historic landmark in a marshy low lying wetter area. 

 

The expressway would start at I-95, with connections to Route 1. 

 

It would be underground, encased and filtered cut and cover along the western side of the IRT, with a elevated, styled northbound segment to the east that enters the aforementioned tunnel, remaining fully underground to the vicinity of East 3rd Street, and either going under or over the Metro North (depending upon feasibility), before transitioning to an aerial tunnel extending northerly, alongside the restored "NYW&B" within a enclosure mimicking the style of the old elevated stations that were demolished by the 1950s. 

 

Both expressway and RR would enter an enclosed underground segment just south of Wykagil, where we would have an underground station and concourse, with a lower level for a transfer to the start of an all new RR line that branches off with I-687. This would be fully underground, passing in a cut and cover tunnel alongside Morrison and beneath the Hutchinson River Parkway "hump" where the Wilmont Avenue ramps join that, and continue as cut and cover beneath the front portion of Iona Prep, and continue as tunnel into Eastchester principally through cut and cover within a golf course, to a new train station west of Route 22. 

 

From there, the expressway would emerge upon a new bridge crossing over the Bronx River Valley, with the RR carried in its lower deck, before landing near Central Avenue with a new station in the former Alexanders site. This would continue west, with a tunnel segment along/beneath Jackson Avenue, continuing to a new trans Hudson River Bridge to Alpine, N.J., connecting to the Palisades Parkway corridor to and from the northwest, and with the RR connecting into the existing RR network with improvements. 

 

These pair of expressways together with these accompanying pair of railroads would serve a vital national security need for evacuation from NYC and Long Island, open up the Catskills for significantly greater economic development, while serving as an initial leg of a new transcontinental railroad.