Amtrak is estimating it will take 10 years and $13.5 billion dollars to complete the New Jersey to New York tunnel it has just proposed, along with improvements between Newark and the tunnel entrance. This project would replace ARC, another tunnel originally expected to cost around $9 billion but with escalating costs due to expected overruns.

But according to Wikipedia, the Pennsylvania Railroad built the existing two track tunnel under the Hudson from New Jersey to New York City, plus the four tracks under the East River from the Sunnyside Yard to New York City, electrified the whole system, and built the original Penn Station from 1903 to 1910 for a fraction of the cost. “The total project cost to the Pennsylvania Railroad for the station and associated tunnels was $114 million (approximately $2.5 billion in 2007 dollars), according to an Interstate Commerce Commission report. (John A. Droege, Passenger Terminals and Trains. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1916) Without tunnel boring machines or any of the construction equipment that has been developed in the past 100 years. THAT IS THE PROBLEM. And by the way, I checked the inflation adjustment, and it is correct. Just $2.5 billion.

With its CEO now the Veep's Chief of Staff, and the administration being slammed all over the left for Clintonesque triangulating, can the implosion of the Democratic Leadership Council really be seen as a defeat, when they now seem to be running the town?

Why are municipalities that have higher median incomes, lower poverty rates or both proposed to get AIM aid from the State of New York, while the City of New York gets none? No, the excuse in the Cuomo budget presentation, that New York City doesn’t need AIM because it has lots of taxes, doesn’t cut it. Other places could have personal income taxes too. Yonkers, for one, has had such taxes. Is it because local governments in the rest of the state have added employees over 20 years, while New York City has reduced employees?

And given that the State of New York is broke, why can’t Mayor Bloomberg ask that municipalities that do not have median incomes that are lower than New York City, or poverty rates that are higher, have their AIM aid eliminated too, to save money and reduce other cuts? Wouldn’t that also be equitable, and not make the state’s budget problems worse?

I haven't published a column on Room Eight New York Politics for about six weeks now. Truth be told, I am politically depressed: that's all. Hopefully I'll be back in swing soon enough; since I am still intent on regularly contributing to this political-writers colony. At least that's where my head is in general, but my heart's in a different place right now, so I am reading poetry and literature to cover up the disappointment that is today's political landscape (local, national and international).

I know that a lot of my readers have expressed an interest in seeing me do more pieces about New York political history, as well as more of my own personal political war stories.

I will try to accommodate these requests when appropriate, but meanwhile, here's the first few parts of a series on the post-war reform movement as lived and experienced by the co-author of the sensational new book, “Tales From the Sausage Factory.“