To the problems with freight movement in Downstate New York laid out in my prior post, New York’s politicians and planners have either had no solution or just one solution – a cross harbor rail freight tunnel from New Jersey to Brooklyn, linking into the Bay Ridge Branch of the Long Island Railroad between the Sunset Park and Bay Ridge neighborhoods. First proposed in the 1920s but repeatedly found to be impractical since, this proposal has been kept alive by a few die-hards and one politician – Congressman Jerry Nadler.
To Nadler and the die-hards, the reason manufacturing left New York City cannot be wages, benefits, work rules, taxes, and the desire for large horizontally arranged plants. And the reason the port moved over to New Jersey can’t be because it doesn’t make sense to unload freight from a ship onto an island (Long Island, on which Brooklyn sits), and then try to get it off the island to the rest of the country. Those ideas conflict with New York City as they would like it to be, which is what it was, unionized and blue collar, with thousands of dock workers and tens of thousands of workers in low-skill, low-wage manufacturing industries such as garments and electronics, all earning rising wages. If, however, the goal is to improve freight distribution, not to bring back the port to Brooklyn or manufacturing for national markets to New York City on a large scale, then alternatives other than the New Jersey to Brooklyn crossing could be thought of. This post contains two of them.
Thanks to Congressman Nadler, there was an extensive study of cross-harbor freight transportation by the Port Authority and a proposal that was initially backed by the New York City Economic Development Corporation.
Once the details were considered, it became clear to just about everyone that locating a major container port in Brooklyn, to trans-ship goods throughout the United States, made no sense. Even if there was a direct rail connection to Brooklyn, such container ports require acres and acres of land. Not only the entire Sunset Park industrial district, but also much of its residential neighborhood, would have to be torn down to make way for it. No one was going to pay for or propose demolition and displacement on such a large scale.
The next part of the plan found to make no sense was having much of the freight bound for Downstate New York delivered by rail to Brooklyn and then put on trucks for delivery to warehouses all over Long Island and in the Lower Hudson Valley. Even if a new tunnel allowed the trains to get in, there is not enough highway capacity for the trucks to get out. They would all have to take local streets from a rail yard, to be located somewhere in the borough, to the BQE. With all the traffic those trucks would be stuck in, they might as well unload from the trains in New Jersey, and at least have more than one highway option.
So the freight tunnel planners took the next logical step, and imagined the trains unloading truck trailers and containers at the next rail yard on the route from a rail tunnel to Brooklyn. That is the Fresh Pond Yard, located between the Middle Village, Ridgewood, Glendale and Maspeth neighborhoods in Queens. There, according to the proposal that was actually made, the trains would be unloaded, and trucks would deliver the trailers or containers to their East of Hudson destinations. But there are two problems with this.
First, the Bay Ridge Division of the LIRR was built when most non-bulk freight traveled in box cars as individual items. Today, almost nothing does. Instead, it moves from warehouse to warehouse and warehouse in truck trailers or in large containers. A flatcar with a trailer on it is taller than a box car, and a flat car with containers double stacked on top is taller still. They won’t fit under the street bridges or in the East New York tunnel on the LIRR Bay Ridge division. So the cost of the Brooklyn freight tunnel also included the cost of rebuilding all those street bridges and the East New York tunnel as far as the Fresh Pond Yard. And from there the double-stack trains would have been able to go no further.
Second, the Fresh Pond Yard, like the Sunset Park area of Brooklyn, is only near one congested highway, in this case the LIE. And it isn’t that near it. Trucks picking up trailers and containers there would have to take local streets through Glendale, Ridgewood, Middle Village to get to the highway, and those streets are not wide.
To attract political support, the die-hards had sold the rail freight tunnel as a way to take trucks off the street. But it could do no such thing, unless goods were to be delivered to local stores via bicycle. Instead, having trains unload on Long Island rather than in New Jersey was a way to take trucks off the Verrazano Bridge, George Washington Bridge, and congested connecting highways. Once the NIBMYs of Southwest Queens realized that the tunnel plan involved spending $billions to route everybody’s trucks through their neighborhoods, the political reaction was immediate and severe. Mayor Bloomberg and New York City’s Economic Development Corporation dropped their support for the rail freight tunnel, and it died. And there it stands.
So what would I suggest as an alterative?
Instead of having a rail freight tunnel follow the approximate route of the Verrazano/Gowanus/BQE, New York could have it follow the route of the George Washington Bridge/Cross Bronx Expressway. Instead of having double-stacked containers transferred to trucks in Brooklyn or Queens for distribution throughout the East of Hudson region, it could have them transferred in the large and mostly unused rail yards of the South Bronx, which are larger, farther from residential areas, and have more highway and major street access.
The tunnel could begin west of the Palisades in the vicinity of Ridgefield New Jersey, where the CSX River Line (the former West Shore Railroad) to Upstate New York and points west and some other tracks are located. An eight-mile tunnel would descend at a grade of less than 1 percent and pass under the Hudson River at a point where bedrock is just 200 to 300 feet down in the center of the channel. Except for the very center of the river, the tunnel would pass through solid rock, which is easier and cheaper for Tunnel Boring Machines (TBM) to pass through.
As I envision it, the tunnel (or two tunnels) would not travel across Manhattan deep under, say, 132nd Street directly into the Harlem River Yards in the South Bronx. Instead in would run northeast under the Palisades and river and pass deep under Manhattan and the South Bronx somewhere between 155th Street and 160th Street. It would emerge to make a right turn onto the old New Haven Line yards near Longwood Avenue and the Bruckner Expressway, allowing trains to head for the South Bronx rail yards from the east. While adding length to the tunnel, this route would also allow trains through the tunnel to get Brooklyn, Queens and the rest of Long Island via the Hell Gate Bridge without stopping and turning around. And it would also allow trains to get to New England via the Oak Point Link, the freight track on the Metro North Hudson Line, and Housatonic Railroad from Beacon, also without turning around. It would be a straight shot to all those destinations.
In theory, a rail tunnel pointing in that direction could also allow a small number of dual mode (electric and diesel) commuter trains from west of the Hudson to pass through, go over the Hell Gate Bridge into Queens, and then on to Grand Central or Penn Station.
As deep as the tunnel would pass below Manhattan and the West Bronx, there would be no infrastructure anywhere close to deal with, other than perhaps the major water tunnels, which could be avoided. The only hard parts of the project would be building the part of the tunnel that rises to the surface on each side, and building a series of three or four ventilation towers down from the surface in between to remove diesel fumes and pump in fresh air.
With such a tunnel in place, trains with double-stacked containers would arrive in the South Bronx railyards for delivery by truck to warehouses throughout the East of Hudson area. Those trucks could access Long Island via three bridges, the Triboro, Whitestone, and Throggs Neck, that they are probably already using today after first having to get across the George Washington Bridge and the Cross Bronx Expressway. The South Bronx yards are much smaller than the huge railports being built in the rest of the country, which often have warehouses available right at the site. But land is scarce and valuable in New York, and if such a tunnel were built the railroads would have to figure out ways to innovate and use the South Bronx yards intensively. Just as New Yorkers have to use their small and expensive apartments intensively.
Produce heading for the Hunts Point markets from the south would also be able to get there more quickly by rail, saving a day.
It is apparently impossible to modify the Hell Gate Bridge to allow trains with double-stacked containers to move onto Long Island, and even it if were not, those trains would run into the same clearance problems that trains coming in through a tunnel to Brooklyn would have. But at a modest cost, I have been told, the Hell Gate Bride could be modified to allow truck trailers on flat cars into Queens, where they could be picked up in the Sunnyside Yards by trucks heading to destinations via the LIE. Like the South Bronx rail yards, there are portions of the Sunnyside Yard and related yards near Review Avenue that are far from residences and close to the LIE. And for some more money, trailers on flat cars could perhaps be able to travel by rail as far as Eastern Brooklyn, for travel by truck via Linden Boulevard and Sunrise Highway. So some freight trains could unload in Brooklyn and Queens if the suggested rail tunnel was built, in addition to those unloading in the South Bronx.
One possible market for rail freight across the river and on to Long Island could be drive-on drive-off rolling truck stop service. Rather than battle New York’s congested roads, and pay the heavy tolls on the George Washington and Verrazano Narrows bridges, truckers could drive their vehicles onto trains and take their required three hour breaks while being hauled across the river. Putting their truck in a train in Binghamton, near Albany, or in eastern Pennsylvania, they could then take a three hour dinner break and drive off on Long Island.
The reason this is a railroad pipedream, and not a railroad mental illness episode, is the possibility of bypassing New York’s rapacious construction contactors, consultants, and unions. Today anytime any government in the New York area tries to build something, the reaction is like ringing a dinner bell in a tank of piranhas. The prices paid for projects such as East Side Access and the Fulton Transit Center, and proposed for such projects such as the ARC Tunnel, a Flushing Line Subway extension to New Jersey, and a Tappan Zee Bridge replacement, are absurd. One can only imagine that one-third the money is going to consultants and excess profits for contractors, one third to retired workers (as the construction industry looks for some sucker to pay for their underfunded pension funds), and one third to those actually working. And even among those actually “working,” many aren’t because of featherbedding work rules.
At those prices, there is no way a rail freight tunnel – or any other major infrastructure investment – could be justified and afforded. There is no point in even discussing it.
If the freight railroads serving metropolitan New York wanted the tunnel, however, an arrangement could be made similar to the “dual contracts” under which two-thirds of the New York City subway was built. The state would pay the railroads a fixed fee to dig the tunnel, which the railroads would then turn into a railroad with tracks and equipment. The private railroads get a long-term lease to operate the tunnel as part of the deal. They even have an organizational vehicle to manage the project: Conrail still exists to operate the facilities that the eastern freight railroads share.
As under the dual contracts between New York City and the private subway companies, Conrail would have no incentive to inflate costs because New York State’s contribution would be fixed. But it would have no incentive to do a half-assed job either, because it would have a long-term contract to operate the tunnel, and its deficiencies would add to their operating costs. Anything that raised long-term operating costs, caused train traffic delays, or caused maintenance problems would not be in the railroads’ interests.
New York State could pay for the tunnel without federal and Port Authority money, avoiding federal and New Jersey’s approval. The railroads have the power of eminent domain, meaning New Jersey could not block the project. The railroads could use their own workers to outfit the tunnel, avoiding New York’s rapacious construction contractors and unions. The state legislature could exempt the project from all the red tape and cost increasing laws, avoiding the consultants.
That leaves drilling the tunnel itself. As it happens, several tunneling projects will be ending soon, such as East Side Access, the Third Water Tunnel, and the three-station Broadway Line Subway Extension (AKA the Second Avenue Subway). The Sandhog’s union, which represents workers who drill tunnels in New York, could be offered the option of a reasonable cost of tunneling, or having its members find another line of work. The railroads could hire the engineers who oversaw the most efficient of the current tunneling projects directly, rather than the construction firms that oversaw the projects.
Without the cooperation of all those players – the railroads, the Sandhogs, the engineers, the state legislature – there is no way such a tunnel could be built affordably. And since such cooperation and fair dealing is not forthcoming, this is a pipedream. Any cost estimate for the tunnel would probably come in at something like $20 billion, and after five years and $10 billion sunk in they would demand $20 billion more. It’s just hopeless.
But with such cooperation, far lower costs would be possible. And in fact, in highly unionized, “socialistic” Europe big infrastructure projects are built for a fraction of the cost of those in the United States. Often by the same companies, such as Siemens and Skanska, that rape and pillage in New York.
A tunnel boring machine (TBM) that can cut through solid rock and make a big enough hole for double stacked trains might cost $10 to $15 million. It could drill through solid rock at 50 to 100 feet per day, perhaps traversing the eight miles in 520 days or less than a year and a half. With, say, 120 people working on the project (40 per shift) at $120 per hour in wages and benefits ($250,000 per year, which is a hell of a lot more than most people get and perhaps double what I do), you end up with $45 million. That’s perhaps $60 million for the tunnel, and remember that under this pipedream the railroads would be responsible for the cost of turning the pipe into a railroads. That’s all it should cost to make the hole.
Materials to line the tunnel would cost more, and so would the cost of the ventilation shafts and tunnels. Extensive engineering would be require to make sure the tunnel passed far above or below any New York City water aqueducts. But you get the idea. I don’t seen how it should cost more than $800 million to build a one-track tunnel, including the cost of the ventilation shafts and buildings to house ventilation equipment for a two track tunnel. And perhaps another $400 million to drive a second tunnel back in the other direction, to allow extensive two-way traffic. And I don’t see why it should take more than two years in each direction to build, including outfitting the tunnel for rail traffic. Then again, the Fulton Transit Center in Lower Manhattan cost $1.4 billion and is going to take more than a decade.
Remember, this tunnel would not have to pass under directly congested Manhattan Streets with extensive infrastructure, would not have stations with ADA access, and would not require the environmental remediation of past infrastructure.
As an entirely new piece of infrastructure, as opposed to just a few years of routine maintenance, it would be reasonable and responsible to finance such a tunnel as part of a state bond issue, along with perhaps a new Tappan Zee Bridge, completion of the first to phases of the Broadway Line extension (aka the Second Avenue Subway) and East Side Access, investments required to bring Metro North to Penn Station, and certain investments Upstate. Those upstate investments will be discussed in the next post.
But I mentioned TWO alternatives to improving freight movement Downstate, so what is the other one?
One might say that there already is rail access to the New York Metropolitan area, in New Jersey, and it isn’t worth the effort to build a new tunnel to shift more of the deliveries across the river to Downstate New York. Instead, more of the capacity of the existing road network could be allocated to trucks, reducing the delays moving freight from west to east. Since the New York area has so many parkways limited to private motor vehicles, why not provide commercial traffic with priority on some of the other roads? People would just have to drive less, and take alternate routes.
Imagine, for example, that the “truck lanes” on the New Jersey turnpike really were limited to trucks and buses. That the upper level of the George Washington Bridge and the Cross Bronx Expressway were similarly limited, along with the Sheridan Expressway and the portion of the Bruckner that connects the Triboro Bridge to the Sheridan. That the Staten Island Expressway was expanded to four lanes each way, but two of them were truck and bus only, along with the upper level of the Verrazano Bridge. Imagine the Gowanus Expressway/BQE combination was limited to trucks and buses, along with the Van Wyck.
That being the case, it would be much easier for large trucks to circulate around the region, and much less of a problem having all the freight moving across the Hudson by truck. You’d have a two-to-three lane (in each direction) truck and bus route around the city, a full loop free from the traffic congestion caused by one-person occupant motor vehicles, around which goods could circulate from the railyards and seaports in New Jersey to Downstate New York.
It is the equivalent of taking a little space from cars on the street for bicycles, as an adaptation because Generation Greed has bankrupted the mass transit system. It wouldn’t be ideal, but it would be a way to cope. And that may be the best that can be hoped for in the wake of Generation Greed. But that generation has generally clamored for road space to be taken from trucks and turned over to cars, their cars. So this proposal is unlikely to be adopted in the next couple of decades. It has the potential to be adopted as a panic measure in the far off future.
The next post is about railroad investments Upstate.