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| Re: Just only $1.4 Billion to build Staten Island North Shore & West Shore Lines (648524) | |||
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Re: Just only $1.4 Billion to build Staten Island North Shore & West Shore Lines |
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Posted by trainsarefun on Sun Jul 13 15:31:15 2008, in response to Re: Just only $1.4 Billion to build Staten Island North Shore & West Shore Lines, posted by Olog-hai on Sun Jul 13 14:58:25 2008. The "replacement" Bayonne Bridge is a mistake. The only reason for that project is to bring in those super-container ships with imports (imports we are increasingly finding it difficult to afford since the jobs that used to be on our soil are gone, which is a long-term cause of our present recession). We shouldn't even have a container port in Newark Bay; it costs way too much to dredge that bay to unnatural depths.To my knowledge, that's the PANYNJ plan. They could have done this years ago. No argument there. Even have NJT running a diesel service to Cranford and/or West Trenton. West Trenton Line is a quite useful project, but I don't think that SI would sign up for it. Their big interest now is to link to the Jersey City-Hoboken-Bayonne areas, at least from what I've been reading and hearing. So that project would be, from the SI perspective, literally headed in the wrong direction. But no; they want to do it the hard way (and we gotta be one of the few countries that blows up the costs of LRT on an existing right of way to figures well above the most expensive mountainous segments of high-speed rail alignment). I have no doubt that it will be very expensive, judging by the HBLR costs in the past, although if they choose not to do the same operating arrangement as HBLR, the start-up capital cost will be far cheaper, at least if I'm reading these past numbers correctly. If I'm not mistaken, a good sized - I'm forgetting roughly what fraction, exactly - chunk of HBLR costs are operating, not capital. But judging by the fact that they want to connect to Bayonne-Jersey City-Hoboken, they are consigned to choose a mode that is compatible with HBLR. That doesn't mean that they must choose the same mode, but it does imply that they would be constrained to use a mode which is capable of operating using the HBLR clearances, catenary, and signals, etc. If THE project included a station in Jersey City, that might have left open another option for commuter rail, but that has been foreclosed. |
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