High Finance & Infrastructure Development

Imagine one is a part of some entity involved with finance, such as investment firms, private equity, etc.

Should not such entities be concerned with the horrific lack of regard for some rather serious planning?

And I do not mean the "Regional Plan Association".  Sure it has presented some well needed thoughts, though severely inadequately developed.  Such as its proposals for underground versions of the highly needed east west links, as the Lower Manhattan Expressway, and the Cross Brooklyn Expressway- both indisputably required, yet lacking in a fuller outlook, as well as refinement.  Just look at the way they were planned, to provide vital connections, WITHOUT the REQUIRED new capacity for what they would connect.  Everyone knows both the VZN Bridge and the Holland Tunnel & Williamsburg Bridge are at capacity if not over.   Yet neither the CBE nor the LME would have simply connected to these crossings, with at best, a single added two lane outbound tube alongside the Holland Tunnel.  And worse, the LME was to accept traffic from both the BQE/LIE, as well as a Bushwick Expressway, carried upon the antiquated Williamsburg Bridge, plus an expressway spur connecting to the Manhattan Bridge!  Talk about a westbound traffic trap!!!!  And of course these underground roads lacked full encasement, with open air ventilation and echoing noise.  QUITE BAD!   Disagree with the outright "de-mapping" as that would fail to protect the corridors from stupidly placed development while refusing to purchase needed space over the long term (granting residents time to continue their lives before having to vacate).  But it was indeed a wise thing to have not gone ahead with these vital highways as then being planned.  Especially when one considers such RPA foolishness of showing renderings of new decks/tunnel caps in Williamsburg atop the BQE WITHOUT shoulders.  NOT GOOD!

So, where are any efforts, publicly accessible for developing a better designed expressway network for the NYC Metro Region?

The Regional Plan Association made the news way back in 1997 with a panel at their weirdly too short annual conference in Manhattan, held in the morning but not extending far afterwards.  That panel highlighted the efforts of area community activists in promoting the idea of a new expressway TUNNEL along the axis of the Gowanus Expressway.  And simultaneously there was the proposal for a straight line tunnel extension northward - the Cross Downtown Brooklyn Tunnel - to bypass the BQE segment to the west with the cantilever with the connections with the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, and the bridges.  Accordingly this western segment would be reduced from 3 to 2 lanes in each direction, with the new straight lane tunnel with 2 lanes in each direction.  Yet there appears to be no plan on what happens at the northern end, let alone anywhere else, like the Prospect Expressway.  Obviously we need a broader plan.

So where are any such efforts?

Regional Plan Association could have followed up with subsequent panels at its annual half a single day conference.  Yet in the past 20+ years, nothing (unless I missed something more recently).

And where is high finance?

Well, of course funding anti highway nonsensical propaganda.

https://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2023/08/the-pseudo-progressive-crusade-to.html

 

Where are the likes of City Journal?

https://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2016/02/manhattan-institute-panders-to-princess.html


And how about the local "activism" to essentially preserve an elevated expressway in order to create new waterfront development that is less of an extension of existing neighborhoods, and way more just another new urban enclave like BPC?!


https://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-conversation-with-shill-for.html


Should not the world of high finance be instead supporting MAJOR EFFORTS to develop and construct a more modern and comprehensive transport network?  Would not Wall Street "investors" be favoring a massive upsurge in infrastructure development encompassing tens upon tens of billions of construction efforts?


Speaking from experience, I myself created the "Takoma Park Highway Design Studio" idea to further such efforts, to present new plans to the general public regarding Washington, D.C.'s atrociously incomplete and inadequate expressway system (which I address in my blog "A Trip Within the Beltway").  I contacted one of that area's supposedly public oriented private planning groups, and was visited by a pair pf their representatives.  The younger of these two appeared interested, but the older one abruptly ended the meeting taking the other guy with him.


https://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2013/03/ending-defeatism-in-lower-new-york.html

The High Finance CONTEMPT could not be any more obvious:


https://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2023/10/how-battery-park-city-authority.html

I-684/NYWB Central Corridor Tunnel at Heathcote, Scarlsdale, and Northern New Rochelle

 I-684 Tunnel, with restored NYWB RR, in the north end of New Rochelle (in my own neighborhood), from the Stratton Road HISTORIC/LANDMARK "Quaker Ridge" Station to the Heathcote Bypass.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

N.Y. REQUIRES Constructing Revived Westchester Central Corridor Expressway, as multi model tunnel highway with restored NYWB RR

WESTCHESTER/UPSTATE CENTRAL ARTERY PROJECT

 

(appended January 20, 2024- since changed, eliminating the California Road and South White Plains "Ridgeway" alignments, and replacing the west of the land-marked station at 556 Stratton Road, with a Hilary Circle routing to allow restoration of the demolished in 2012 Marks Estate Mansion with appropriate complimentary Military School Scale residences with *minimum* 3750 foot square footage, prioritized for existing communities.)

Just consider the ramifications of some emergency requiring evacuating Long Island.

 

Consider the traffic via the Throggs Neck Bridge.  Yes, long term, twin it & reconstruct and widen the Clearview Expressway primarily as cut and cover tunnel, that extends south/southeasterly (212St/Pl, & Hempstead Avenue), fully encased with exhaust filtration to the vicinity of Belmont Park, and continuing south along the Belt as park covered tunnel.  Ask the locals in the Hempstead Avenue area their assistance in  setting the exact alignment for a pair of 4 lane with full outer shoulder cut and cover tunnels.  Seek their assistance in what to do atop.  Full restoration of existing neighborhood configuration (with the older more architecturally important houses moved/shored up), with or without a new linear park to connect the Belt Park to the Clearview, and with or without some new higher rise residential apartments/condos that would establish a precedent pf providing more generous livable square footage.  Of course we could also include new tunnel caps atop portions of the Belt Parkway, establishing a more capacious park corridor atop that and our new mixed use expressway tunnels southward to the Sunrise Highway (which must get a series of new cut and cover tunnels along the RR corridor to make a full continuous expressway corridor to Amityville (I-78).  And do likewise with the Belt's northern extension, the Cross Island Parkway along the shore to restore local waterfront access.

 

We all know that the northbound Throggs Neck link would be massively jammed - particularly along the I-95 Cross Bronx Expressway/George Washington Bridge to I-80.  And, in the case of a tsumani, or radiation incident, it does not help that the I-95 New England Thruway runs closely along the Long Island Sound's mainland shore.

 

So, let's consider an all new link, extending northerly from I-95/Throggs Neck Expressway, past Co Op City and into Westchester County, to carry traffic to and from Long Island to both I-684 AND a new Hastings on the Hudson Bridge to New Jersey's Palisades Parkway.

From the north, this I-684 TUNNEL would extend from a completely reconstructed I-287/I-684 interchange, enter a tunnel alongside Bryant Avenue, before turning south into the NY, Westchester & 'Boston RR corridor - its Westchester County portion dismantled early 1940s  - but still in use in the Bronx as the Dyre Avenue IRT, and connect with I-95 from the south.

This I-684 TUNNEL PROJECT would be designed to include full eventual restoration of the 1912-1937 N.Y., Westchester & Boston RR.

 

It would start with the initial, southernmost portion, from the IRT Dyre Avenue line, to a connection with the Metro North New Haven line, with expressway completely submerged/enclosed for effective sound containment and exhaust filtration, and with RR initially as a high viaduct (bridge), before descending into a trench/tunnel.

 

Design would include a new set of reconstructed architecturally faithful mixed use "stations' at Sanford Street, and East 3rd Street, to a connection with the Metro North, with the initial stub of the northern continuation into the North End of New Rochelle.  Have that established as an IRT link (requiring legislation extending that authority) from the Bronx Dyre Avenue line, to MetroNorth New Haven line/AMTRAK.  The continuation north would go to a faithful replication of the Wykagil Station. This RR would enter into a tunnel with the expressway through the northern edge of Ward Acres, and continuing past the historic "Quaker Ridge" Station, continuing to a new station, accessible from the shopping center to the west, behind the historic station building at the Scarsdale 5 Corners Heathecote Junction.  Would continue as tunnel along and past the Heathecote Bypass (which would become a part of this tunnel).  Whereas the I-684 Tunnel would veer from this corridor through the lightly developed area behind Archbishop Stephinac HS & Our Lady of Sorrows Church, this RR would continue north into a new station within the enormous Westchester Mall.  It would then continue north to Westchester County Airport, giving that a DIRECT passenger rail link into downtown White Plains, to Heathecote Junction, Wykagil, and Mt. Vernon.  And we have the option of restoring 4 track service within the Bronx Dyre Avenue line.

 

This new expressway link starts at the 233rd street northbound lefthand exit.

 

This project MUST include a suitable reconstruction of I-95 from the I-95/Throggs Neck conjunction.

 

Ideally it should include reconstructing the 8 lane trench as a 14 lane cut and cover tunnel (so the Throggs Neck link gets a full 8 lane northern continuation).   Yet that could be arguably deferred.  But it is mandatory to extend the outermost northbound lane north past the Pelham Parkway/Shore Road exit.  Move the footbridge 24 feet over, to allow the space for 2 additional northbound lanes, but construct only the first, bringing that to the right-hand exit to the northbound Hutchinson River Parkway.

But would we want to simply add extra traffic to what is rightfully decried as a grotesque waste of space?

 

Yes, that's right, grotesque.  And I am not just writing about the silly lane drop/traffic choke, further exacerbated by the poor design of I-95 on the inland side of the HRP.  It is an effective wall separating Co Op City from the inland, making it more isolated, less accessible. (How about some proposals for somehow restoring/recreating a portion of the 1960-1964 "Freedomland U.S.A. amusement park).

 

So why not explore the idea of replacing the I-95 segment from the area of its interchange with the HRP northward alongside Co Op City, to the vicinity of its 233rd Street exit, with a new cut and cover enclosed expressway tunnel, removing the I-95 overpass over Barlow Avenue.  Explore ideas for the surface, new parkland, new recreational facilities, new commercial development, perhaps in the spirit of Freedomland?

 

We must improve I-95 between the Throggs Neck Expressway (easily widened to 4 lanes in each direction) and 222nd Street (spot of the northbound lefthand exit that veers inland onto Baychester Avenue.  BEST OPTION: a UNIFIED PLAN, addressing the entire stretch, including replacing the 8 lane trench with a 14 lane set of rectangular box expressway tunnels,equipped with exhaust filtration.  Widen it away from neighborhoods, and replace expand the adjacent parkland atop.

WIDEN the 222nd Street ramps to a minimum of 3 LANES PER DIRECTION.

 

Connect these ramps into an underground link turning to run along the east side of the conveniently situated Dyre Avenue IRT segment of the 1911-1937/43 New York, Westchester & Boston RR, that had its Westchester County segments foolishly demolished during a horrifically caustic scrap medal drive costing way more in demolished assets.

 

RECONSTRUCT the NY, Westchester & Boston main corridor to White Plains, and eventually a further continuation northward, exploring different ideas of such use, including Westchester Airport, all doable incrementally.

RECONSTRUCT architecturally faithful replicas of the original Sandford Boulevard, East 3rd Street, and Metro North transfers in Mt. Vernon, and the Wykagyl in New Rochelle, and 5 Corners in Scarsdale.  Have the expressway tunnel veer to the left, away from the historic "Quaker Ridge" Station at Stratton Road, officially recognized landmark, which would be PRESERVED!  Have the area of the removed houses made into an expanded Carpenters Pond area preserve.  Have the expressway tunnel then veer right of Weaver Street, avoiding the commercial properties, before turning back onto the Heathecote Bypass alignment.  Purchase the required houses for removal, and create a linear green park atop the railway/expressway tunnel.  Use electronic tolling to offset expenses and restrict use.

BUT MAKE IT MORE UNDERGROUND.  A revived NY,W&B makes perfect economic sense with contained development density, and future extensions northward.  And it is going to introduce significant rail car traffic, especially if ever adopted by AMTRAK.

 

Ask Eastchester Heights their preference regarding a NYW&B station, as well as expressway access ramps. 

 

Have it as a cut and cover expressway tunnel alongside the Dyre Avenue IRT line to the Bronx-Westchester County line, and along and or beneath it, northward into the City of White Plains, turning to follow Bryant Avenue to a reconstructed interchange with I-287 and I-684.  Our I-684 Tunnel!  It can take heavy northbound traffic from the Throggs Neck Bridge from Queens/Long Island, effectively upstate to I-84.  

Let's include a new water spillway to alleviate flooding on the lower Hutchinson River.

 

It MUST include, or at least be designed to include, a western split from Eastchester Heights.  This would run through Eastchester in a tunnel following California Road and crossing under Route 22 (with access ramps to the retail area).

 

From there, it could emerge upon a high arched bridge crossing over the Bronx River valley, remaining elevated, to alongside the former Alexanders, crossing over Central Avenue and entering a cut and cover tunnel under Jackson Avenue and emerging again (displacing the nursing home near the Sprain Parkway), and continue to a new interchange with I-87.  This would allow traffic from Long Island the options of transferring to these local arterial.  I would call this segment I-687.

But rather than simply connecting with I-87, have it continue west into Hastings on the Hudson to a new bridge crossing the Hudson River, to connect with the Palisades Parkway New Jersey.  

 

From I-95 by Co Op City, it would be a 10 lane expressway tunnel (accepting 4 northbound lanes from I-95 and 2 northbound lanes from a subsequently constructed Route 1 separate electronically tolled traffic tunnel to Hunts Point favoring trucks).   Of these, 2 lanes would veer off into the tunnel connections for an I-80 Tunnel along 2nd Street in Mt Vernon heading west.  I-684 expressway tunnel would be 4 lanes northbound, and 5 lanes southbound (for a southbound I-684 Tunnel connection to the I-80 Tunnel), continuing underground into Chester Heights, to an underground split to a pair of this tunnel's extensions, 3 lanes northbound, and 2 lanes southbound- to I-684, and 3 lanes each direction towards the new trans Hudson span to the Palisades Parkway.  This overall "Y" Route arrangement establishes an invaluable vital traffic artery between Queens/Long Island, northward to I-684, and westerly to the Palisades Parkway.  

 

UNCORK the northbound Throggs Neck traffic, ported northward to I-684 AND the west via a Hastings on the Hudson Bridge to the Palisades Parkway- considerably superior to porting said traffic all through Brooklyn and Staten Island to a NJTK and I-78.

 

 It is ABSOLUTELY VITAL/REQUIRED/NECESSARY for evacuation from Long Island.

 

 

Buffalo, N.Y. Expressway Tunnel/Humboldt Parkway Subjected to Disinformation & Distraction Campaign

See my 2010 article on this project:

 

https://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2010/09/cap-buffalo-nys-kensington-expressway.html

 

 

The current N.Y.S. Kensington Expressway Tunnel project represents the only sensible alternative configuration, of converting the existing trench expressway into a complete corridor tunnel, with a small extension northward (due to the high excavation requirements of removing rock).  

 

And it should at the very least be practical as an initial stage for restoring Humboldt Parkway to Delaware Park, with some revisions: perhaps lower it another 10-18 inches for more substantial tree root area, and most certainly extend the project's excavation northward by at least 350 feet, to facilitate a subsequent project to extend the expressway tunnel & restored Humboldt Parkway to Delavan Avenue, and continue the Humboldt Parkway restoration to Delaware Park/Agassiz Circle atop a likewise buried 198 tunnel.

 

 

 

 

 

Nonetheless, it has come under attack of large numbers of comments favoring the absurd idea of filling in the existing Kensington Expressway open trench.  That is, to instead place the vehicular traffic upon the surface, necessitating wider roadways and a drastically narrowed green-way median, let alone the significantly steeper ascent grade, for northbound traffic by the Science Museum.

 

 

Those that chant "fill it in" claim they seek to restore Humboldt Parkway.  But with 70-80K vehicles daily, they conveniently ignore that the project remains connected to expressways at both ends, and that the original Humboldt Parkway lacked connecting expressways.  They say they want clean air.  Yet somehow repurposing a 65 mph expressway segment as a 30 mph boulevard, with a considerably loader, more polluting northbound climb past the Science Museum owing to a ridiculous edict to destroy urban expressways.

 

 

 

 

 

A perusal of the NYSDOT comments received, and of newspaper articles indicates many have so accepted dogma over rationality in favoring a step backwards by filling in the trench for creating an 8 to 10 lane (or perhaps a 6 lane) surface arterial with a considerably narrower attempted recreation of Humboldt Parkway.

 

 

 

 

Comparably little attention has been given to the planning feasibility.  

 

Obviously, we don't [yet] have a project extending the tunnel under a linear park to Agassiz Circle because of the costs- am guessing perhaps $4 1/2 billion rather than $0.9 billion, owing to the sheer amount of required excavation.  Alas the 198 connection only has a brief trench passing under only two street crossings, with the rest surface level.

 

 

But what about the feasibility of the current project being followed by a second project to extend the Kensington Expressway Tunnel & Humboldt Parkway further north?

 

 

For the expressway tunnel to continue north, it must cross a buried 24 ft wide, 14 ft deep concrete waterway conduit for Scajaquado Creek, extending about 19 feet underground.  If this conduit is unaltered, the expressway tunnel would therefore descend from about 25ish to 40 below ground level to pass beneath, increasing excavation amounts.

 

This 25 to 40 descent would be eliminated if the conduit were replaced and replaced with a new conduit that drops down to pass beneath the underground expressway, and feeds into perhaps an 1/4 to 1/3 mile  of new receiving downstream connector to maintain a gravity flow waterway.

 

This 25 to 40 descent would alternately be significantly reduced if the conduit replacement  instead remained over the expressway tunnel, with replacing the 24ft x 14ft conduit perhaps with a pair of 48ft x 4ft conduits, or perhaps an array of pipes- shaving about 10 feet from the conduit's depth, therefore allowing the expressway at 30 - 32 feet below ground level, without any lengthy replacement downstream connector.

If the expressway tunnel were only as low as 30 feet underground, that would be more than sufficient than the 27 or 28 feet that activists seek for establishing a more ample space for the roots of the trees

 

see page 75 https://kensingtonexpressway.dot.ny.gov/Content/files/DraftDesignReport/Draft%20Design%20Report_Environmental%20Assesment.pdf

 

But where is any official or otherwise plan for this required underground waterway/expressway crossing?   The official draft design report (see pp 24-25) can only say:

 

Extending the transportation corridor to the north beyond Sidney Street was investigated. Scajaquada Creek, carried in a 24.5-foot-wide by 14-foot-high concrete arch culvert located five feet below the expressway, crosses NYS Route 33 approximately 650 feet north of Sidney Street. Extending a potential tunnel north of Sidney Street would result in a major conflict with this sizable, buried structure, which extends both upstream and downstream of the expressway. Engineering solutions to resolve this conflict are complex and would result in substantial impact and cost. A second constraint with extending the Project to the north is the NYS Route 33/NYS Route 198 interchange. This complex interchange has roadways and high-volume ramps crossing one another at three different vertical levels (NYS Route 33 mainline, the ramp from NYS Route 198 eastbound to NYS Route 33 eastbound, and the ramp from NYS Route 33 eastbound to NYS Route 198 westbound). Accounting for the differences in ramp elevations while accommodating a tunnel system would require reconfiguring the interchange and would likely require property acquisition

The buried Scajaquado Creek is beneath the overhead pedestrian bridge.

 

 

 

p 47 of 190 https://kensingtonexpressway.dot.ny.gov/Content/files/DraftDesignReport/Appendix%20A1%20Draft%20Design%20Plans.pdf

 

Extending the tunnel in a separate project requires re-excavating the transition.  Hence to better facilitate this, the current project must be revised to extend the expressway tunnel excavation about another 650 feet to meet the conduit.  This gets the "hard" more time consuming excavation done, so the successive project could instead simply remove comparably soft fill material used for the interim tunnel to surface transition.  This also provides a potential staging area for the successive project to more cost effectively extend the tunnel by small tunnel boring machines (TBM) used in underground utilities, perhaps 5 or 6 feet as the initial stage of excavating the extension towards Delavan Avenue. 

This project is to be an initial stage project.

 

For it to be so, it must facilitate rather than hinder the multi stage process.

 

Yet as it now is, it falls markedly short with its limiting its excavation to simply the new tunnel to surface transition between Sidney Avenue and Hamlin Road.  This means that the successive future project to extend this tunnel must perform the entire excavation between Sidney Street and Delavan Avenue excavation, including having to dig out the initial project's tunnel to surface transition, where traffic must be maintained throughout the construction project.

 

Considerably more suitable is to extend the project to include the anticipatory subsequent tunnel extension's initial 650 feet of hard excavation to meet the buried Scajaquado Creek conduit, and have the interim ascent/descent transition supported by fill that would be considerably easier to remove.

 

 

Cosmobile Cosmopolitan Transport suggested area of extending the Kensington Expressway Tunnel hard excavation up to 650 feet to the buried Scajaquado Creek concrete box conduit, with use of fill supported interim ascent-descent transition, to ease subsequent project to extend the tunnel north with an underground staging area of small TBMs for the successive project's excavation..

How Battery Park City Authority Increased Costs of West Side Highway Tunnel

  

Textbook 101 case study of the elites' disrespect for civil infrastructure planning and design.

 

People opposed Robert Moses idea of modernizing the elevated West Side Highway.

 

People demanded a tunnel expressway replacement, within new rectangular box tunnels buried along the shoreline.  The World Trade Center project created an enormous amount of excavated material.  Hence its logical use for the initial phase of a planned landfill extension of western shoreline of Manhattan Island, south of 29th Street.  The tunnel would thus use the innermost strip of this new landfill.

 

 

Here are the initial planning, from the 1966 Lower Manhattan Study, showing this new rectangular box tunnel within the innermost portion of its new WTC-BPC landfill, before turning inland to parallel the existing bulkhead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note the improved geometry for the West Side Highway link with the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel.

 

Note the space of the new landfill used for the new expressway tunnel, that bypasses West Street, avoiding a need to excavate while maintaining Brooklyn Battery Tunnel approach traffic.

 

Battery Park City Authority, established 1968 dictates ban on using any part if its landfill for expressway tunnel, mandating its relocation to within West Street- thus requiring an excavation with potential underground utility matters, while denying the improved geometry for the ramps into the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel.

 

Such an excavation, together with the issues of underground utilities, made the southernmost portion of the future underground WSH more expensive to construct.  How much?  $300 million?  $600 million? $850 million?  Strange how we saw so little attention to this.

Where was any protest movement against the plans for the World Financial Center, and the other B.P.C. buildings facing inland?  Any demands to modify the plans to shift the eastern facing building line west to preserve the underground easement for a future West Side Highway Tunnel

 The 1974-1985 Westway project would be routinely bashed by supposed "fiscal conservatives" out to block wasteful government spending.

 

So, at anytime from 1968 onwards, where were the great protests about the BPCA blocking the use of its innermost landfill, by the multitude of "fiscal conservatives" that we subsequently saw bash the Westway project?

Hartford 400 Plan

 

 

New revised plan for restructuring-reconstructing the Hartford, Connecticut  expressway system, with cut and cover tunnels for existing and for new expressway segments, the deletion of the huge array of expressway links with the establishment of a new east to west urban boulevard. 

 https://hartford400.org/

 

 Existing and proposed

https://ctmirror.org/2023/01/06/ct-hartford-400-highway-traffic-plan-transportation-department/

N.Y. Requires Brooklyn-Queens Expressway Reconstruction

 

To this very day, N.Y.'s "leaders" wallow in circles over what to do about the B.Q.E.?

 

The B.Q.E. was originally built during the 1940s.  Its recent project to replace its Kosciusko Bridge upped capacity from 6 to almost 10 lanes.  Yet nothing has yet been done to reconstruct anything to the south.  Nothing about the overloaded segment from the Long Island Expressway to the Williamsburg Bridge.  And only discussion about its two other segments to the south, namely the portion with the other bridge into Manhattan connections (that includes the architecturally magnificent triple deck cantilever.), and its southernmost segment known as the Gowanus Expressway.

 

In 1997, the once highly respectable Regional Plan Association spotlights the idea of a Gowanus Expressway Tunnel, to replace its  viaduct - with tunnel- seen as cut and cover flanking the existing expressway viaduct,, so featured at a panel at their April 1997 one day conference.

Simultaneously, an architect announce the idea of what is now called the Cross Downtown Brooklyn Tunnel: a straight line tunnel to depart and reconnect with the BQE.  This would create a perpetual benefit of a significant time savings for through traffic not destined to the bridges to Manhattan.  And it would siphon such traffic to allow re-striping from 3 to 2 through lanes per direction through the cantilever.

 

NYSDOT subsequently issued a study of  the Gowanus Expressway Tunnel, presenting a variety of route options, though without the straight line tunnel.

https://www.dot.ny.gov/regional-offices/region11/projects/project-repository/gowanus/index.html

https://www.dot.ny.gov/regional-offices/region11/projects/project-repository/gowanus/tun_alt.html

 

THB
Harbor / Bulkhead

TB
Bulkhead

T1
First Avenue 

 

 

 

T2
Second Avenue 

 

 

 T12
First and Second Avenues 

 

The Gowanus Expressway study has been supplemented with a study about its connecting BQE segment north.  

 

The Cross Downtown Brooklyn (CDB) Tunnel would supplement the existing B.Q.E., which is retained as a collector distributor system, and re-striped from 3 to 2 lanes per direction. 

 

It is the sole tunnel option that adheres to the concept of the shortest link being a straight line.  Nonetheless, this subsequent study report includes it with other alternative tunnel routes, all of which are considerably lengthier (more expensive) while not providing the time savings advantage.

 

 

 

 The tunnel route alternatives so studied are:

1. T-1 running under downtown Brooklyn by Henry Street
2. W-1, a variation of T-1 also running under downtown Brooklyn but further west by Hicks Street
3. T-2 following the existing BQE corridor alignment
4. T-3 outboard tunnel following an alignment similar to the existing BQE but further west and into the river.
5. W-2 straight line tunnel between Exit 24 of the BQE (by Prospect Expressway) and Exit 30 of the BQE to the East of Washington Avenue
6. W-3 outboard tunnel between Sunset Park and Exit 33 (only qualitative study based on length)
7. W-4, a variation of W-2 between Exits 24 and 30 that extends further south than Prospect Street where it joins a Gowanus tunnel alternative that follows the bulkhead.

 

W2 straight line tunnel to the northern end of the existing Gowanus Viaduct, and W4, a variant of W2 extending further south to a Gowanus Tunnel along the bulkhead.

 

 

W2 and W4 are to be moled tunnels via TBMs, as they must to the north to pass fully beneath the street grid.

The study enumerates several variants of TBM highway tunnels, with either 2 or 3 travel lanes per roadways with 2 foot left and 4 foot right shoulders:

 

1) Single 66 foot diameter, stacked 3 lane roadways

2) Duel 55 foot diameter, single 3 lane roadways

3) Duel 42 foot diameter single 2 lane roadways

4) Single 54 foot diameter, stacked 2 lane roadways

 

These TBM tunnels are shown with 2 foot left and 4 foot right shoulders.  This is akin to the recently constructed Seattle Route 99 Highway Tunnel.

As a heavily used interstate highway, and as all new construction, should this several mile long I-278 Cross Downtown Brooklyn Tunnel be so narrow with its lack of sufficient shoulder space?  Imagine the traffic and situations of stalled vehicles in need of service or a tow, and consider the servicemen.  Would we want that with a meagerly 4 foot right shoulder?  Or 6 or 8 feet?

At a minimum, lets provide full 12 foot wide right shoulders.

 

The authorities prefer a single tunnel bore with stacked, 2 level roadways, as more economic.  With the available 57 foot diameter TBMs as used in Seattle Route 99, this gives too little in safe shoulder space, and hence a somewhat larger bore less, but less than 66 feet..

 

With the matter of potential EV battery-pack fires, particularly larger vehicles as trucks, we should go with the costlier option of TWO tunnel bores, to avoid stacking one direction atop another.  With the already available 57 foot diameter TBMs, duel tunnel bores would each have a sufficiently wide roadway of a pair of travel lanes with a 12 foot right, and 6 foot left shoulders.

 

So far, instead of any outcry to provide adequate shoulders, we get the typical post 1963 cacaphony of budget conservatives insisting upon deflecting for the early 1980s elimination of the NYSE stock transfer tax (from a modest 0.1% to effectively 0% with NY Governor Hugh Carey's 1978 legislation to institute a "rebate" (refund) of that tax revenue.  That highways are evil.  That we must view them with disdain and hostility, and hence, that we must remain ignominiously on the matters pertaining to their DESIGN.

 

We are told to de-map the urban expressways. and change them into surface streets, screw everyone.  Eliminate a grade separated road outright, and fail to even consider the variables of where the traffic would instead, including even the measurable impacts of heavy streams of vehicular traffic.  Sure an urban expressway is going to centralize vehicular emissions due to the volumes.  But is it better to leave everything as is, or to somehow convert an expressway to a boulevard with traffic lights, or is it to modernize and enclose that traffic stream within a new urban expressway tunnel equipped with pollution filtration technologies?

 

So far the plan has not yet been set.

 

Its physical realities are that it must be constructed together to the south with the Gowanus Expressway Tunnel, as well as to the north to cut and cover reconstruction of the BQE trench segment alongside and south of the ramps with the Williamsburg Bridge.

 

Other factors to be determined include what to do about the BQE trench, as well as its elevated segment.

 

Westway & Wall Street

 

Beachway

 

 

Westway - the 1974-1985 West Side Highway Replacement Project - was to be the modern replacement for the antiquated, obsolete design elevated West Side Highway along the southern western edge of Manhattan, designed and constructed during the 1920s or early 1930s.  It was to employ a northern extension of the landfill pictured above by the WTC.  The anti Westway people, being anti park and supposedly anti development would sanction the loss of what would have been an incredible waterfront park (and potential fantastic place for political gathers), with the paving over of beachway with Batter Park City.

 

Westway reflected a dislike of elevated urban waterfront highways with its portion south of 29th Street placing the reconstructed West Side Highway within a new tunnel.  Urban waterfront elevated highways had become increasingly disfavored with San Francisco's controversial partially built Embarcadero Freeway, and a growing number of New Yorkers were not that keen on Robert Moses idea of modernizing/widening the existing WSH viaduct.  

 

So the mid-late 1960s planning envisioned for southernmost Manhattan (featuring the WTC & the landfill extension that became Battery Park City), included a new tunnel-box expressway within the new landfill at its inner edge next to the existing bulkhead.  This offered the least expensive way to make an expressway tunnel, for avoiding actual excavation under West Street/12th Avenue, and any utility conflicts, while providing better geometrical connections with the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. 

 

Nevertheless, despite the cost and geometric benefits, this was to be overruled by a dictate to instead have the southernmost portion of the future new tunnel West Side Highway within West Street, and to have it as an open trench, so extending north past the WTC, before transitioning to a tunnel swinging out into the new landfill at a diagonal beneath new park recreational facilities - nicely designed, but for that this cut across the location of Pier 34 where Titanic had been scheduled to appear, and continuing north with this tunnel beneath the new landfill's new shore line, with a pedestrian promenade, and new residential development upon the one block extensions of the streets into the Hudson.  North of 29th Street, Westway was entirely elevated, as were its connections with the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels.  Westway, which was to be an interstate highway I-487, would have simply connected with the Henry Hudson Parkway at 57-72nd Street, thereby failing to offer a continuous interstate highway to the north connecting with I-95 or I-87.

 

 

Westway's 1974 unveiling was met with an opposition, well crafted to deny the benefits, to deflect any substantive criticisms, e.g. rescind the dictate against using the new landfill for the buried expressway south of Vesey Street, reconfigure it to preserve Pier 34, and even extend the tunnel further north.

 

Central to this anti Westway movement was that it was somehow too expensive, with unsubstantiated claims that it would have enormous cost overruns. that defy any credibility. 

 

"The initial conception was estimated to cost between and $1 and $2 billion, with 90 percent paid for by federal dollars once it was added to the interstate system.  Soon the project's official estimate solidified at slightly over $2 billion.  Even at these quite conservative cost estimates, supporters, detractors, and reporters all agreed with one basic reality about Westway: it would be the most expensive highway ever built in the United States.  Its actual cost would likely have reached in the $4-7 billion range but could have soared far higher.  Looking back and comparing Westway and other large scale mega projects such as Boston's "Big Dig", which involved only two miles of tunnel, and escalated in cost from $4 billion to approximately $15 billion, a prominent Westway advocate  (speaking not for attribution) estimated that Westway would have cost in the tens of billions, perhaps as much as $30 billion when completed.  Others, like Craig Whitaker, think Westway's plan avoided engineering complexities that would have caused such skyrocketing costs." p 16 Fighting Westway- Envirnmental Law, Citizen Activism, and the Regulatory War that Transformed New York City, William W. Buzbee

 

Indeed, as the Boston Big Dig was an incredibly more complicated construction project.  It involved constructing a new 10 lane (5/5) tunnel beneath the existing 6 lane I-93 viaduct (while maintaining traffic), while constructing a tunnel extension of east-west I-90 via jacked box tunnel through  molasses soil condition.  Westway in sharp contrast was constructing a rectangular box tunnel cut and cover tunnel within new landfill, free of the complication of working around existing infrastructure.

 

Coupled with such fear mongering about construction costs were a pair of pretenses, A)  that the US/NY was somehow too poor to afford world class infrastructure, by obsessing that urban expressway projects must be outright cancelled to siphon the construction funds towards "transit" even without any express guarantee of a particular transit project, nor cost analysis of failing to preserve easements from ill placed costlier real estate development; and B) Westway was particularly bad for its use of tunnels, as if placing the stream of vehicular traffic underground is somehow evil. 

 

SO, we saw a law suit upon Clean Air Act allegations because of the pollution "hot spots" within a ten foot or so area of the tunnel portals (embarrassing to petroleum industry), rather the traffic should be without any tunnel (in conformity to that industry's maxim that the solution to pollution is dilution), along with the crafted outcry that N.Y. and the U.S. was somehow too poor to afford Westway.  Of course they must propagandize in favor of cheapness- that we had to cancel Westway outright, and dare not replace it with any other tunnel facility (more petroleum industry opposition).

 

The "clean air" suit failed, whereas a subsequent suit about inadequate data gathering regarding the landfills displacement of the area where they laid their eggs near a sewer outlet.  The authorities respond with a remarkable timidity- the stripped bass issue was a red herring as they could have simply gathered greater data, and used it for a hatchery relocation, e.g. sinking a few rail cars. Yet not only do they surrender, September 1985, they refuse to offer any subsequent plans for a modern under ground West Side Highway replacement.  Or even a fully continuous freeway, let alone anything enclosed in tunnel.

 

The anti Westway movement exploited popular sentiments/concerns to stop the project, but not otherwise. People opposed Westway for a variety of reasons, preserving the piers, scaling down development, or improving park pedestrian access, which the formal Westway opposition was carefully crafted.

 

Yet where was any movement to save pier 34?

 

Yet where was this opposition to development to the south with BPC, and create a grand new beach front park?

And why this sentiment that the US/NY was too poor to have a modern tunnel WSH?

The sort of opposition crafted against Westway is best summed up in this NYT op ed piece by Marcy Benstock:

https://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/30/opinion/for-a-westway-trade-in-by-marcy-benstock.html

 

Mayor Koch says he may decide by Nov. 15 whether or not to return to his pre-mayoral-election position in favor of trading in Westway for more than $1.7 billion for mass transit and an alternate road. A decision in favor of a trade-in would be the single most significant step that could be taken to reverse the terrible decline in New York City's transit service.

 

The excuse for depriving mass transit of these desperately needed funds has been that the trade-in is risky while Westway funding is certain. But with the Highway Trust Fund in the red this year for the first time ever, the risk that the Westway superhighway and landfill would take decades to build and might never be finished is greater than any uncertainties with trade-in.

 

Eighteen cities in 15 states would not have opted for trade-in if it didn't work, and they make up a national constituency for improving the trade-in program further. As soon as the Secretary of Transportation approved a Westway trade-in request - no trade-in request has ever been denied - the city would become legally entitled to the full 90 percent Federal share of the Westway cost estimate approved by Congress in 1979 ($1.5 billion plus a quarterly adjustment for inflation). Only the rate at which the funds came in would be affected by annual appropriations. Until fiscal 1979, Congress appropriated more each year than trade-in cities were ready to spend. In fiscal 1980, the $700 million trade-in appropriation plus the $250 million left over from prior years funded 80 percent of the $1.2 billion requested across the country.

 

But severe new problems with highway funding are slowing the rate at which new interstate highways can be financed. Westway's exorbitant $2.3 billion cost (of which Congress has agreed to pay only $1.5 billion) and its complex design, and the history of projects such as the much-delayed Bruckner Expressway, make it unlikely that Westway could be finished in this century.

 

The Highway Trust Fund is in trouble because inflation is adding greatly to highway construction costs at the very time when Fund revenues, based largely on the 4-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax, are declining. Congressional efforts to raise the tax this year failed; pressure is already being exerted to allocate any gas tax increase to such other underfunded programs as Social Security, mass transit, solar energy, and rehabilitation of existing roads.

 

''Interstate completion, in dollar terms, is an unattainable goal,'' according to a June 1980 Federal Highway Administration report. ''Assuming 7 percent annual inflation, current Interstate authorizations through 1990, including the unobligated (Trust Fund) balance as of December 31, 1979, could meet only $30.1 billion of the remaining ($50.75 billion) costs.''

 

New York State's share of that $30.1 billion national total for the next 10 years is unlikely to be more than 5 percent. (Its share of the $3.5 billion interstate apportionment for fiscal 1981 is 4.3 percent.) But 5 percent of $30.1 billion is only $1.5 billion for the entire state for the next 10 years - not enough to finish building Westway, even if the state's entire interstate apportionment were used for that purpose and not a penny went to other interstate projects elsewhere in the the state.

 

If, as seems more realistic, Westway received an average of $100 million a year of the state's average $150 million apportionment, it would take nearly 21 years to cover the 90 percent Federal share of Westway's $2.329 billion cost. Any cost overruns would drag out the construction period still longer.

 

However, in an era of shrinking budgets and growing energy shortages, Congress may have no choice before then but to halt the funding of unneeded highways. In that case, all the city would have to show for years of disruption would be a partly completed landfill in the Hudson River oozing sewage sludge dredged from the bottom, and a transit system in ruins.

 

How much better it would be if Mayor Koch brought the longstanding Westway controversy to a swift resolution with all-out support for a trade-in. An alternate road could then be finished in three years for 5 percent of Westway's cost. The revitalized waterfront that has already begun to emerge despite the inhibiting effect of Westway could be enjoyed by New Yorkers for their lifetimes. Development could go forward on the largely empty 91-acre Battery Park City landfill.

 

Jobs in mass transit and West Side industries would be saved, and new ones created in transit rehabilitation. The one-shot $100 million Westway right-of-way payment the city might have gotten in return for ceding its priceless waterfront to the state would be more than compensated by the recurring revenues and savings that a tradein would generate in mass transit, pier leases, payroll and property taxes, and city services. Most important, the largest, surest untapped source of transportation capital in sight could begin to be used where it is needed most: to prevent the physical and financial collapse of the transit system and make it fit for human beings again. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Marcy Benstock is director of the New York City Clean Air Campaign.

Marcy Benstock makes zero mention of the effective elimination of the NYSE stock transfer tax!

 

Whereas retail sales tax is 7%, the NYSE sales /transfer) tax was a mere 0.1%.  That is until the late 1970s/early 1980s, with 1978 NYS legislation to "rebate" - e.g. refund - the 0.1% tax funds 100% by the early 1980s.  As this was done just prior to the NYSE trading becoming computerized, making feasible the practice of HIGH FREQUENCY TRADING.  I am sure that anyone who is a Harvard educated graduate can see the potential ramifications fiscally.

 

Yet where were you, or any of the other participants of the anti Westway/anti any world class underground replacement for the antiquated West Side Highway viaduct, on this impending change in the tax codes to facilitate HIGH FREQUENCY TRADING, while touting the line that Westway was somehow "too expensive"?

 

The Westway tunnel in fact is the cheapest way to construct a highway tunnel, for being within new landfill (instead of an excavation of 12th Avenue/West Street with the matters of underground utilities).

 

The Westway landfill was also good in the fashion of that which was created with the excavation material from the WTC construction, insofar as providing new land.

 

Yet the Westway landfill was bad insofar as displacing southwestern Manhattan's historic pier district, but where were any protests about that landfill further south.

 

Westway's development would be viewed negatively, never-mind that its new residential establishment would be more of an extension of Manhattan, rather than an urban enclave as BPC- which contrary to the negativity against Westway related development, gets the free pass endorsement of Ms. Benstock in the NY Times.  Why would not Benstock have instead, started a new campaign after Westway's September 1985 defeat, to block construction of Battery Park City (or at least scale it back), to create a new park?  A park that would have been the best site for public gatherings, indeed even potentially a camp out for such a group as Occupy Wall Street!  And how about the matter of Pier 34- Titanic's scheduled berth?  Surely people wanted to see it saved, yet where was Benstock or any of the other figures of the Westway opposition with preserving Titanic's scheduled arrival pier?

 

As did the Village Voice supposed "avant gard" approbation against Westway, as if placing an established expressway corridor traffic stream all upon the surface with traffic light were better than an expressway tunnel, with a surface boulevard more suited to local traffic/pedestrians. 

 

The NYSE got its 100% rebate of its minuscule rate 0.1% stock sales/transfer tax, at the cusp of its computerization, surrendering the economy to High Frequency Trading, while people in general fell for the con that Westway was somehow unaffordable, while saying nothing about the impeding NYSE trading transfer/sales tax exemption, nor its combination with trading computerization.