Inadequate Barriars

Video from Canada underscores the inadequacy of freeway center median dividers for heavy trucks



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8BSK6DE2PM&feature=player_embedded

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

Continuing Political Neglect of Infrastructure

Just more of the same from politicians who act as if dealing with infrastructure was somehow beneath them.