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?

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.

 

Jesuitical Psuedo Environmentalism - 'Fighting Westway' William Buzbee Georgetown University Law Center

to stop a tunneled highway that would have had portal pollution hot spots highlighting the need for cleaner automobile technoligies

I was one of the lawyers who represented the New York State DOT in this case. Mr. Buzbee reached out to our team a grand total of once while researching and writing this tome. His bias in favor of the plaintiffs is obvious, as is his lack of understanding of all of the issues. In short, the book is neither honest nor accurate, and I reject it as the sort of drivel that only encourages pseudo-environmentalists to litigate in order to block progress. - Bruce Margolius

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mp2iJxA5PO8

totally misrepresents the cost issues regarding the relative complexities of the Boston CAT project and Westway.

brushes aside considerations of engineering

feeds the myth of highways vs transit rather than transportation infrastructure versus things as the ruinous and wasteful drug war.

http://www.law.georgetown.edu/news/press-releases/professor-buzbee-authors-new-book.cfm

In his new book Fighting Westway: Environmental Law, Citizen Activism and the Regulatory War that Transformed New York City (Cornell University Press, 2014), Georgetown University Law Center Professor William W. Buzbee provides a history of one of environmental law’s most epic and renowned battles.

Buzbee uses archival documents and interviews with stakeholders to dissect the legal, environmental and political battles over Westway, the most expensive federally financed highway of its day and a project that would have involved massive landfilling in the Hudson River. It was a struggle that lasted 14 years, involving direct citizen protests and activism, Congress, presidents, agencies and several court trials. It pitted senators, mayors and the editorial boards of the New York Times and Daily News against scientists, federal agency staff and citizen activists and their lawyers. Buzbee uses the Westway battles to illuminate the strategies and elements of high stakes regulatory wars. Although many books have been written about the law, few illuminate the strategies and choices at play in common but complex high stakes regulatory conflicts that often involve society’s most fundamental political choices.

“Westway’s defeat remains shocking to its champions, especially considering the power of its supporters,” Buzbee writes. Although Westway’s defeat has often been described as an anti-democratic outcome over a mere procedural snafu, or lacking merit under the law, Buzbee reveals that Westway’s battles were over high stakes. The project’s defeat was not due to “some antidemocratic fluke,” he says, but to an effective combination of citizen activism, a highway versus mass transit choice, scientific input by expert regulators, environmentally protective choices in the law and judicial impartiality. While Buzbee surveys the entire history of the project, he focuses most of his attention on the legal and regulatory battles at its endgame, from 1982 to 1985.

“The dramatic story of the battle over Westway serves as a masterful case study of how today’s regulatory wars are waged across the United States,” says Richard Briffault, Joseph P. Chamberlain Professor of Legislation at Columbia University Law School.

And John H. Adams, founding director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, says: “Finally! The first thorough, truthful account of one of the great environmental battles of the twentieth century!”

Oh really?

The book spouts anti Westway ideas - doing so with full acceptance and utterly uncricticaly.


pp43-44

cites Lower Manhattan Expressway as precedent, yet disegards major differences between projects namely Westway's absence of the problems that politically plauged LOMAX.

- the former would have displaced numerous buildings
- would have been largely elevated or an open trench

Westway would have displaced non, asides from some piers that would be demolished anyway
Westway was primarily in a tunnel encasing noise and pollution

DEVELOPMENT

cites Westway opponents scoffing at Westway benefits regarding development

- ignored reality of greater property values when major road corridor is buried ig 96th street where the rr goes underground

- ignored the extra development of the landfill new development

- ignored added neighborhoods and property taxes- perpetual benefits

- ignored reconnecting Manhattan to waterfront via placing main stream of vehicular traffic in tunnel.

- ignored reality that Westway would replace existing freeway link with antiquated design connecting existing freeway segments


 LANDFILL- STRIPPED BASS

- ignored context of historically expanding landfill and that the concentration owed to a sewer outlet

- thus Westway would merely pushed fish a few hundred feet

- ignored efforts elsewhere to mitigate via providing alternative hatcheries in area.

The Westway Opponents were even more wrong than we thought

The Village Voice was wrong about Westway- totally wrong

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2010/10/westway_the_hig.php

The Saw Mill, the Bronx River, and parts of the FDR were closed due to flooding this morning thanks to the monsoon that kicked in before dawn. But the West Side Highway, a.k.a. the Joe DiMaggio? Traffic is flowing fine there, thanks in large part because we never built Westway, the crazed multi-billion-dollar-city-in-the-river landfill project that Presidents, governors, and mayors desperately fought to build back in the 1980s. You don't remember this? Count your lucky stars. It was one of the last great attempted public arm-twistings by the Permanent Government -- a bid to give the ever-campaign-generous real estate industry its most coveted desire: More Manhattan land on which to build. ....

Marcy Benstock, the upper West Sider whose anger at the thick soot that piled up on her window sill every day turned her into one of the city's earliest and most able environmental activists, says that the decision to dump Westway looks smarter all the time. "With climate change and more severe storms hitting the Westway area of the Hudson River," says Benstock, the director of the Clean Air Campaign, "the decision not to build a development site at that damage-prone location now looks wiser than ever."Marcy Benstock, the upper West Sider whose anger at the thick soot that piled up on her window sill every day turned her into one of the city's earliest and most able environmental activists, says that the decision to dump Westway looks smarter all the time. "With climate change and more severe storms hitting the Westway area of the Hudson River," says Benstock, the director of the Clean Air Campaign, "the decision not to build a development site at that damage-prone location now looks wiser than ever."

Such was the Village Voice congratulating itself for its mindless opposition to the Westway highway project.

Now, flash forward to 2014.

http://observer.com/2014/02/rockys-last-laugh-the-westway-controversy-comes-full-circle/

At a recent holiday gathering, one of the things that came up over cocktails was Superstorm Sandy and two of the proposals to protect us from the next such storm. Both call for adding landfill in the East River near the South Street Seaport. One plan—called “Seaport City”—proposes building housing and new parks. The other—known as “The Big U”—involves digging a tunnel beneath the landfill and sending a portion of the FDR Drive underground.

The proposals come from serious planners and post-Sandy studies. Seaport City emerged from Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s post-hurricane revision of his PlaNYC long-term sustainability plan. The Big U was a winner of a design competition—sponsored by the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development called Rebuild by Design—seeking proposals to protect the region. Both studies noted that one of the areas least affected by Hurricane Sandy was Battery Park City, largely because it is built on landfill that helped keep back the surging waters. ...

So did the Big U, one of the winning design solutions in the HUD competition. The Big U would create a barrier system that would be combined with new buildings, bike paths and parkland that would hold or hold back water.  It would wrap around Manhattan from West 57th Street down to the Battery and up to East 42nd Street, and include a series of berms, seawalls and barriers. A key element of the design is to landfill some of the East River along the lower part of Manhattan, build parks on top of it, and tunnel a new FDR Drive beneath.

And that just may bring the Westway debate full-circle. Landfill—the very thing Westway critics warned would destroy Manhattan—now appears to be vital to the island’s survival.

Read more at http://observer.com/2014/02/rockys-last-laugh-the-westway-controversy-comes-full-circle/#ixzz3bI1RsKn6
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Old and New: Elevated and Box Tunnel with Minimal Excavation

NYC Manhattan West Side Highway- Old & New

new box tunnel beneath Riverside Drive boulevard extension

Old= Elevated Viaduct

New= Submerged Tunnel Box

Least expensive when done with no or minimal excavation, as respectively with a tunnel box atop the existing SE Freeway segment between 11th Street and Barney Circle- Pennsylvania Avenue SE, and with an extension of that freeway to RFK Stadium.

Washington, D.C. Barney Circle

Existing SE Freeway and immediate unbuilt extension involving no heavy excavation

Tunnel Box atop existing SE Freeway segment between 11th Street and Barney Circle

http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2013/11/wasting-eastern-seeast-leg-freeway.html

http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2014/09/a-se-freeway-plan-benifiting-greatest.html

Westway's Real Conflict

 

Titanic's intended port- torn down anyway in 1989 despite the cancellation of Westway - so much for cancelling highway projects as neccessarily and openly being for historic preservation...

 

To me this was the sole really interesting building to be displaced by Westway.

 

The "Westway Rule" a constant stream of articles demanding attention

http://books.google.com/books?id=YouwITlDATkC&pg=PA182&dq=westway+village+voice&hl=en&sa=X&ei=G3x7T8fPFYPt0gGh7LC2Bg&ved=0CEMQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=westway%20village%20voice&f=false at page 182

As a source for and reader of the alternative press, I have found one principle that stands ut: to assist social change activism, an alternative weekly must run repeated stories on the same issue. I refer to this principle as the “Westway Rule”, named for the long proposed highway for New York’s West Side. During much of the 1980s, you could not pick up an issue of the Village Voice without reading about the horrors of Westway.

As a Voice subscriber living 3,000 miles away from the project, I might easily ignore articles about the latest deficiency in the Westway environmental impact report. Yet the constant stream of stories demanded my attention. I eventually took a strong rooting interest in the defeat of Westway and looked forward to reading prominent opponent Marcy Benstock’s latest salvo against it. If the Voices’s ongoing Westway stories won over someone totally unfamiliar with Manhattan’s West Side, I could only imagine their impact on area residents. The defeat of Westway in the 1980s surely resulted from many factors, but the Voice’s ongoing coverage had to be one of them.

Ed Koch Interview About Westway

http://youtu.be/dgYkjhIw4ME

Interesting 2011 video interview of former N.Y. City Mayor Ed Koch about the aborted Westway highway project.

Koch did NOT oppose Westway on philosophical grounds, and wanted something for the people of New York City that they wanted -- freezing MTA fares for 4 years. Koch extracted that as a promise from New York Governor Hugh Carey, who reneged on it nonetheless in 1979, helping undermine support for Westway.

Trump on U.S. Decline

Interview with Donald Trump
Our Infrastructure Paralysis- Portender of Our Ultimate Defeat By China

The U.S. is vital to the Western World, yet is being seriously undermined by its Infrastructure Paralysis

Vital to the U.S. are its major cities, particularly Washington D.C. and New York.

The New York Metropolitan Region is vital.

We need to recognize it- improve the infrastructure particularly the roads.

Yes roads, including railroads and not excluding roads- that is not excluding grade separated highways. We need both. Screw this adversarial shit.

We need to improve the northeastern railroad corridor between Boston and Washington D.C., increasing speeds at least by an additional 75 to 100 mph for 150-220 mph train service better connecting the Boston-New York-Philadelphia-Baltimore-Washington, D.C. super-region, relieving our airports of much of the super shuttle New York to Washington, D.C. flights, and freeing up space for longer flights, while reducing the emissions of higher altitude CO2 emissions to lower level emissions from whatever we burn to generate the electricity, assuming we don’t use some form of nuclear, hydro-power or a better value bio-fuel as Hemp or Algae.

We need to fix the Washington, D.C. interstate highway system- shit if they object, make ‘em a state to justify calling these ‘interstate’ highways- done in a more updated, environmentally friendly way with the maximum use of existing cleared corridors and a heavy use of tunnels or ‘cover-ways’. Just look at my prototype alongside my towers beneath the recently under construction Riverside Drive southern extension. That proves the lie that freeways don’t belong in cities; rather we need more, done in this fashion, as tunnel beneath surface roads. Forcing all of the vehicular traffic upon a single grade is so suburban – thing of ranch houses – and how the now trendy doctrinaire stance against urban freeways pushed through such Jesuitical entities as the “Congress on New Urbanism” which can’t even describe the semi-underground Route 34 Freeway stub in New haven, CT correctly, was applied frequently against urban railroads particularly prior to the project constructing the current Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan, N.Y. and covering over its yards to the rear with new development that ranks amongst the city’s most prestigious area. We can smoothly glide I-95 inside the Beltway as God intended by the conveniently located electrical power transmission line corridor some 250 feet already in width to a cut and cover reconstruction of the Washington D.C. Red Line Northern Railroad, into the proposed Grand Arc as proposed in that feisty Washington, D.C. freeways blog, “A Trip Within The Beltway”, silently alongside Catholic University of America, just as the future West Side Highway Tunnel shall pass quietly beneath Riverside Drive next to my towers, protecting their property values as any such spectacular area must mandate. A Washington, D.C. “Big Dig” -- really no more a discredited *concept* than anything else constructed under shoddy, good old boys’ club (fraternity order) no bid contracting! --  is imperative. Are the new urbainist types who pretend that highway don’t matter, and that an otherwise multilayered urban environment can not possibly extend to grade separation for vehicles (and don’t give a sh*t about road design such as that blinders-wearing 'guru' Jane Jacobs who would rather that highways be environmentally invasive) , would all be okay with such shoody contracting and constructing for light rail and transit oriented real estate development. Jeez.

So are major improvements in and around New York City.

First and foremost (asides from the northeastern corridor high speed rail passing through the area), we NEED that tunnel, the Cross Sound Tunnel, connecting Long Island and Westchester and I-287, proposed by developer since about 2005, and providing the first new link to the island since the completion of the Throgs Neck Bridge in 1961- a fire beneath its mainland bound island onramp in 2009 attesting to the serious need for at additional crossings to and from Long Island, at least to Westchester I-287 and at least an additional crossing to Connecticut, plus one tunneled via the existing LIRR Bay Ridge railroad right of way as an encased tunnelway – existing neighborhoods must have these new highways as ‘cover-ways’ as should places like Catholic University of America and my west side towers – to a new tunnel crossing beneath New York Bay bypassing Staten Island and connecting to I-78 in New Jersey hence way better connecting Newark and JFK airports.

The Cross Sound Tunnel proposal makes perfect sense environmentally. It a deep drilled design, meaning no continuous surface disruption as drilled deep underground, with the plan being for the cut and cover approaches to be constructed with a staging of the lid or roof early during the excavation, minimizing the visible construction footprint while bringing early the benefits of the new parkland. Initially proposed as a triple tube , the center for maintenance and emergency access, it was subsequently proposed with an enlarged center tube to accommodate a potential railway. Indeed its so environmentally sensible that it wastefully diverts to the east of Oyster Bay increasing the length and hence the costs for no apparent reason other than perhaps an overly powerful entity and or interests where a drilled tunnel is insufficient. No period, just as was said in the years leading up to 1973 when Gov. Rockefellor crumbled on the Robert /Moses proposed Cross Sound Bridge.

The Cross Sound Tunnel was about to receive the public endorsement of NY Governor Elliot Spitzer with the announcement of a financing deal with Bear Sterns- read about it in the LI Real Estate Journal. It appears that this was topped by that silly sex scandal they used as the reason or lets be extra frank- excuse they used to stop the tunnel- jesus he was client number nine at an outfit called the ‘emperor’s club’ yet what did we ever get to hear about clients one through eight, and ten?!

What a scam. We need to investigate who were the – lets be extra frank again – assholes, stopping a seriously needed and environmentally friendly transportation link as this. Think about it, anywhere, people had to experience surface road construction, or if tunnel, still much surface disruption during the construction, at least in spots anyway. Here the project is virtually entirely drilled deep moled without the surface disruption. Yet these self indulgent wealthy assholes get to block that- even when weirdly routed out of the way?

Likewise with the neglect of our existing antiquated arterial net as the northern connections into and through the City, the Brooklyn Queens, Major Deegan and Bruckner-Sheridan Expressways.

If I were Governor or President I would do everything to bring these highways up to spec, with full 12 foot lanes, shoulders and some improvement design-wise with the tunnel- just look at the future West Side Highway Tunnel beneath Riverfront Drive alongside – towers. The BQE needs that tunnel recently proposed and now dropped hopefully as a political slant to attract Obama’s attention for some funds.

The Kosciezko Bridge replacement is good though is shy at least a lane or two in each direction, and greater mitigation on the form of covering the BQE is mandated in neighborhoods such as Williamsburg.

And we need to improve the roads to the north, including the lack of a “subway” line to the terminals at LaGuardia Airport; improve the approaches to the Triborough/”RFK” and in the Bronx.

Do something way more useful in this decade for the Bronx and areas within as Mott Haven- that waterfront industrial wastelands area south of Yankee Stadium has tremendous potential with the Deegan Expressway in a new Cincinnati Fort Washington Way open roof tunnel with the roof being concurrent and future real parkland and or real estate development along a waterfront that become more than a localized enclave rather than one such hemmed in by the existing inadequate and divisive 6 lane 1939 vintage spec Triborough approach/Deegan.

Likewise we should ultimately do something about the elevated Bruckner; perhaps underground its northbound direction while maintaining its monumental through the windshield vista southbound upon a prettier viaduct. Also we need a more elegant solution connecting with the Sheridan with air rights development alongside a restored Bronx Riverfront. Ultimately they should extend the Sheridan along or even under 177th Street to connect with the Bronx River Parkway with an extension as once planned to CoOp City, though with much of it encased in cover-way to protect the adjacent neighborhoods and land values. Likewise and more into the future, such an approach could be used for an expressway along and beneath the Bronx River Parkway corridor connecting to a Mt Vernon east-west arterial and ultimately I-87 with a design solution providing greater useable park-space.

But more immediately, we do that we need to uncork the I-95 bottleneck with the premature lane drop at the interchange with the Pelham Parkway by extending the 4th lane at least to the Hutchinson River Parkway with a longer merge lane, or further to Co-Op City, with some minor geometry work. Longer term should have any future work on the I-95 New England Thruway to eventually accommodate the additional lanes through New Rochelle, with the depressed segments further mitigated as cover-ways. Likewise with the Deegan, brought up to date with a minimum of 4 lanes in each direction through the Bronx, with the area around Fordham Avenue and further north particularly as cover-ways to better connect the area regionally and locally.

We need to relieve the Cross Bronx Expressway, starting with a new link connecting the Cross County Parkway via respectively short and long tunnels flanking a new Yonkers-Alpine New Jersey Bridge, with the latter long tunnel connecting to a northern extension of the New Jersey Turnpike

We likewise need to expand east-west rail connectivity- it would be criminal for NYSDOT to abide by building the replacement Tappan Zee without the lower deck featured in one of the two remaining official options under consideration.

Likewise we need additional capacity. To the north by twinning Bear Mountain Bridge with a set of drilled tunnels to supplement that hairy ride on the eastern side. To the south by the new Yonkers-Alpine Bridge, at least two new passenger railroad tunnels into midtown Manhattan, the 4th tube of the Lincoln Tunnel, at least two additional sets of parallel tubes to the Holland Tunnel, plus the new multi-model Cross Harbor I-287/I-78 Highway-Railway Tunnel connecting Brooklyn directly with New Jersey. This is all long overdue.

The political elites alas don’t give a shit, even after 911 which is exceptionally galling.

Look at how NY State officials botched and crumbled the idea of a West Side Highway Tunnel alongside the WTC which at should be designed at least to provide a seemless connection with the Brooklyn Battery and Battey Park Tunnels. Yet NYS DOT never came up with a truly such adequate proposal instead pushing these short assed shallow tunnels precluding a new downtown underground pedestrian concourse, now instead we get a “Freedom Tower” with a trade off of its 20 floors being essentially un-rented space.

Indeed, look how they folded on Westway during the 1980s.

Like it was all an excuse to distract the masses, showing the “progressives” and “environmentalists” as fools.

Likewise with “limited government”/”conservative assholes who identified the great waste of money as Westway but were okay with spending billions for that cigarette market protection racket of a drug war, prisons, courts, “treatment” and other assorted bullshit. ‘Fiscal conservative’ Lew Lerhman was such a Knights of Malta suck up assh*le.

Beware any politicians.  Whether, Knights of Malta, Opus Dei, Phi Crappa whatever college fraternity, or directly rather than indirectly Masonic, such as Al Sharpton, without understanding it as something than mere personal advancement.  It's not good to so neglect our infrastructure life-lines -- which is what roads are.


2012 - April 1 - South Mall Blogger
http://southmallblogger.blogspot.com/2012/04/2012-april-1.html

Too Much Value

Westway=Value

A few weeks ago I came home from the supermarket with a 5+ pound piece of hamburger meat at under $2.00 @ pound was significantly cheaper than the dog food that I would have otherwise bought for feeding our pair of ShihTzu.

Upon seeing this, my father has a negative outburst, simply from the size of the package of meat. I explain to him that this was actually less then half the price of what he was paying for dog food, aka Alpo or Caesars. He had some difficulty accepting this, but days later was coming home from the market with hamburger meat and not dog food, admitting to me that I was right. Dog food was an overpriced racket, pricier for food that we humans would not eat unless ordered at gunpoint or otherwise highly desperate.

Thinking about it got him to see things my way, but it was the initial sight of all of that meat that I got for the money that provoked the initial negative reaction. All of that meat- just so much and thus all of that value for the price, even though he had not known the price, and even when told, still persisted with the negative reaction. Instances as this certainly say something about how human minds work.

This is what happens on a larger scale, a prime example of this being New York City's aborted Westway Project to replace the outdated West Side Highway with a modern interstate highway, the southern part buried in tunnelway within new landfill extending Manhattan an additional block.

It was to cost $2-3 billion, of which 90% was to be paid by the Federal government

It would have created some 93 acres of new land, much of which was to locate new real estate development with a simple extension of the street grid to a waterfront promenade rather than the cul de sac development to the south, of Battery Park City, providing a perpetual source of additional property tax revenue to the City of New York.

Nonetheless it was quickly attacked as a "boondoggle" by a political campaign behaving as if obvious to these benefits, and seeing it as a source of funds to transfer to NYC's much used, much run down, and much poorly managed MTA subway system- never-mind the idea of doing that with the new Manhattan extension development tax revenues, let alone simply reducing the wasteful corruption within the MTA which would yield way more funds than aborting Westway. By their own figures on their website, the "Straphangers' Campaign" which vigorously protested Westway, got far more funds for transit by other means than aborting Westway.

Westway came under vicious attack as "too expensive": never-mind the studies leading to it concluding that its concept of an outboard alignment tunnel via landfill -- that it, located at the outer edge of the new landfill -- was the most cost effective as there were no utilities to move, with construction bypassing the existing WSH-12th Avenue-West Street corridor, while ultimately providing all that new largely taxable land. Of what was not taxable included a new Westway State Park in an area lacking waterfront parkland between 72nd Street and Batter Park.

The legal arguments were questionable. It was attacked for attracting traffic and thus somehow increase pollution, never mind that it was simply replacing an existing 6 lane 1929 specification freeway with a 6 lane modern interstate highway with the same number of through lanes, but with shoulders and improved merge lanes. The clean air argument was finally thrown out of court as it should have particularly with the new Westway tunnel which would do much to shield the area from this road corridor's traffic. So the 'environmentalists' indoctrinated to believe that much needed transit refurbishments were best funded by cancelling highway projects irregardless, caught upon a new idea, that Westway presented an unacceptable impact to the population of Striped Bass fish that amongst other areas, lay eggs along the existing sea-wall where Westway would extend Manhattan- being attracted there by a sewer outlet! It was hardly a natural habitat-hatchery, along a mile of so of hundreds of miles of Hudson River, with the Westway tunnel and landfill probably serving to improve the Hudson River environment by better shielding it from Manhattan run-off, while maintaining a traffic light free highway for the vast bulk of the vehicular traffic reducing brake dust emissions. Despite the long term environmental benefits of the proposed Westway Highway Tunnel, the stripped bass issue would be more of an excuse than a reason, thus relatively little attention was given to simply dropping a few junked rail-cars into the water to serve as new underwater hatcheries.

September 11, 1985 shall remain an infamous date in New York with its State legislature would voting to surrender to this sort of 'environmentalist' sophistry and "trade-in" Westway.

On the surface it reflected a frustration over the officials inadequate consideration of the numbers of fish affected, a point that the legal opponents used to bludgeon the project in the courts, and an 'environmentalist' movement clearly not interested in Westway's many environmental advantages, but totally dedicated to convince people to forget the great many other better ways to fund transit -- like opening up the MTA's books, to reducing corruption, including so many other corrupt wastes of funds as the 911 induced wars and of course that cigarette-pharma market protection racket of the 'war on drugs safer than alcohol and cigarettes.

Notably, it was a mere one year after Westway's cancellation when the mainstream media used the fatal cocaine overdose of University of Maryland student and draft pick for the Boston Celtics Len Bias as the excuse to embark upon spending 100s of billions addiction on prosecuting the 'drug war' including constructing countless new prisons- with then NYS governor Mario Cuomo bragging about building more new prisons than any previous NY governor, and NY Senator Alfonse D'Amato voting to transfer some of the Wednesday funds to 'anti-narcotics' police overtime while sending the message that the only two class of human consumables safe enough to allowed for retail sale without labeling the ingredients are alcoholic beverages and Tobacco.

And to think of that great swath of people against Westway on supposed fiscal grounds who supported the drug war, such as Cuomo's failed 1982 challenger, Lew Lehrman.

In hindsight, the great disproportionate (think of word published per amount of funds involved) media campaign against Westway was a conditioning to get people to acquiesce to spending far greater sums on the drug war and other such wars, particularly post 911. A recent Village Voice front page claiming that the west African Iboga plant root bark alkaloid Ibogaine may be a miracle drug 'if they survive the trip' as if it were especially dangerous, reinforces my perception of these mainstream "muckrackers" (of which the Village Voice was a major editorialist against Westway) as pseudo-progressive lock-step campaigns of disinformation and distraction.

Such forms of journalism, IMHO work to no small degree to shape popular opinion bringing this phenomenon of 'fiscal conservatives against Westway, but so little else.

With the flip side of disproportionately too little reporting on other things that government spend upon, people on the "left", as those on the "right", are being less educated than trained.

"... if they can survive the trip"

The Spin Against Westway and Fiscal - Social Responsibility

Killing the goose that would lay the golden egg of a modern underground highway better controlling pollution, new parkland and development providing perpetual added property tax revenues, for the sake of subsidizing the questionable book keeping of the NY transit agencies (along with distracting from the far, far greater expenditures upon the growing prison state/cigarette phama protectionist rackett known as the 'drug war')

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gene-russianoff/25th-anniversary-of-westw_b_743377.html

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2010/10/westway_the_hig.php

Westway Project (1974-1985)

Russianoff writes in Huff Post:

In New York City's long tradition of fighting City Hall, one of the most spectacular examples happened a quarter century ago this week.

It was 1985, when local elected representatives, community members,transportation and environmental advocates, fiscal conservatives and the U.S. Congress forced State and City officials to "trade-in" a planned Interstate highway and river development project known as Westway. The highway would have been built off of Manhattan's West Side and been partly constructed through landfill poured in the Hudson River.

The federal share of Westway's pricetag - $1.725 billion - was reallocated to fix our crumbling subways and buses (more than $1 billion) and to a more modest rehabilitation of West Street (several hundred million.)

Westway's supporters saw the project as a way to gain money from Washington and provide development opportunities off of the West Side of Manhattan. The highway's failure to move forward was another sign of how hard it was to advance construction projects in New York, they claimed.

Opponents saw the project as a misguided allocation of precious federal dollars at a time when our transit network was staggering under decades of inadequate funding. In the early 1980's, riders were plagued by derailments, track fires, crime, breakdowns, slow and unreliable service, boarding vehicles with non-working doors, inadequate lighting and graffiti.

For us, winning more than a billion dollars for transit was the right priority, as was keeping landfill out of the Hudson River.

That would be a rather expensive transfer:

The project received formal approval in 1976. At the time, its estimated cost was $1.2 billio. Not one penny was to come from he City of New York. The project actually generated cash for the city. Ninety percent of the project's cost (aquisition, demolition of the abandoned piers, landfill, parks, new streets, ect.) was to come from the Federal Highway Trust Fund. The rest would be paid by New York State. Westway would assume responsibility fort he City's Hudson River piers and pay for demolishing them. It would pay for building a new municipal incinerator and bus garage. Better yet, the city would recieve cash for its property. In 1981, President Reagan even arrived with a giant sized reproduction of the $85 million.

The American city: what works, what doesn't By Alexander Garvin p 459

The Huff Post- Russianoff piece months later shows 1 comment (comments closed)

jl4141 04:56 PM on 9/29/2010 187 Fans

Nonsense. The defeat of Westway was the result of one of the most ill-consid­ered and misguided political campaigns in New York City history. There would have been long stretches of undergroun­d highway atop which would have been built plenty of new parkland. Instead we have had never-endi­ng traffic congestion and far, far more automotive pollution, which has surely brought about serious health problems for residents, visitors, and commuters, than we would have had had the project succeeded. Westway was unfairly tarnished as a boondoggle and environmen­tal nightmare, but that's what we (ironicall­y) achieved by defeating it.

The Village Voice article meanwhile, as of this writing months afterwards, show zero comments- an astonishing amount for what Russianoff and the Village Voice present as such a great example of citizen activism.

A Christmas Wish List: Most Needed Road Projects

A mix of needed road projects,

San Francisco:
Strictly Highway
- 19th Street Corridor Tunnel
- Central Freeway Alternative Tunnel
- 280 Embaracdero Tunnel

New York Greater Metropolitan Area:

Strictly Trains- #7 extension to Secuscus
- PA station additional tube
- Upgrade NE Corridor for higher speed to further rail as alternative to flying

MultiModel- Cross Sound Tunnel- I-287 extended to Long Island Rt 135 with extra capacity for RR
- Cross Harbor (New Jersey to Brooklyn RR and vehicular highway tunnel with tunnel extension via Brooklyn to Conduit Boulevard-JFK Airport), with Interboro (Brooklyn-Queens) Tunnel- via concrete box enclosures sunk and buried primarily via existing RR right of way. (Facebook page)
- Replacement Tappen Zee Bridge with twin duel level spans with MetroNorth

Strictly Highway- Cross County 'Parkway' Western Extension to New Jersey as mixed use to I-87
- Cross County Eastern Extension Tunnel to I-95/New Roch City
- Cross County Arterial (former NYW&'Boston' RR through New Rochelle, Pelham and Mount Vernon)
- 178th and 179th Street Recommissioned Local Relief Tunnels, with Alexander Hamilton Bridge Reconstruction Project
- I-87 Deegan Reconstruction to 4 lanes minimum per direction with full 12 foot width lanes and shoulders with waterfront Cromwell Avenue Tunnel, and full cut and cover incorporationing the adjacent right of way now partially encroached upon in the northren Bronx.
- Mid-Town Manhattan Expressway Tunnel, once proposed as alternative to above ground Mid Town Manhattan Expressway
- Mid-Town Tunnel 3rd tube
- Lincoln Tunnel 4th tube, NJ 495 approach reconstruction 4 lanes min. per dir with greater cover and shoulders
- Holland Tunnel Augmentation with Canal and Broome-Delancy Street Bypass Tunnels
- Westway/Westway variant

Baltimore:
Multi-Model:Howard Street Tunnel Alternative, with I-83/MLK 295 Connection
Suggested additions?



Washington, D.C.:
I-95 PEPCO-New Hampshire Avenue-Metropiltan Branch Grand Arc promenade covered multimodel highway-RR tunnel, with K Street-New York Avenue- East Capitol Street Bridge Underground Inner Loop, with reconstruction of SW-SE Freeway underground, with new Washington Channel Tunnel

Westway Pay Back: Billions in Wall Street CEO Executives for Revived Westway, 2nd Avenue Subway, etc

Naming Rights For Infrastructure Funders?!

$2.5 billion (1980s estimated cost) Westway Project
$38 billion (2007 alone) Wall Street executive bonuses

Shining Light in Dark Corners

Everyone agrees Wall Street is having a bad year. Why are bonuses still in over the top? Someone must be profiting from the disaster of our economy, someone beyond the invest bank brokers. Someone is making billions selling stocks and equities short. And they are making sure the brokers who help them are rewarded for a job well done. Joe Kennedy did it in the Depression. There have to be hundreds profiting now from our misfortune.

They don’t just make deals on Wall Street. They make myths. And last week Wall Street's myth-making machine was roaring at full throttle — after the news broke that America’s five biggest investment banks will this year shell out a record $38 billion in bonus pay.

These men got these bonuses at a time when their companies lost $74 billion. N.Y. has given much to attract money firms.

How about some organizing for put the public infrastructure back within the mark of architects?

Wall Street could make its mark positively by paying for a revived Westway project in some form or another of an underground park covered West Side Highway.

Some far thinking CEO could be a rightful candidate for having it named after him/her.

Westway Manhattan Prologue

Westway Manhattan

Westway Project (1974-1985)

West Side Viaduct
The Wasted Waterfront
How New York Fell- An Exchange
The Road Not Taken
West Side Highway
How The Striped Bass Stopped A Highway- Striper Wars

Marcy Benstock- How Could We Ever Tear Down A Building?

Fishes to Birds- Unknown if she ever noticed if her thoughts below were ever applied to anything else.

http://www.transalt.org/newsroom/media/500

(excerpt)

Ms. Benstock said she opposes the project because of the destruction of critical nursery habitat for striped bass and "dozens" of other species. She said approval of another waterfront project is part of a larger trend.

Found within the website of Jesuitical "Transportation Alternatives"