Second Ave. Sagas

LaHood: ARC overruns range from $1-$4 billion

Written by

Benjamin Kabak

in

The deep cavern in Manhattan is one of Governor Christie’s gripes with the ARC Tunnel. (Via ARCTunnel.com)

It might yet be the ARC Tunnel’s day of reckoning. According to unsourced reports out of New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie will at least take the weekend to ponder the fate of this vital rail project.

Meanwhile, although I reported this morning that the feds’ estimates featured cost overruns of just $1 billion, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood has broken his silence to explain the government’s cost projections for the tunnel. In his statement, he explains the upper and lower bounds of the FTA projects. He said:

In response to press reports, I want to clarify the range of numbers regarding the ARC tunnel project.

The Department of Transportation has estimated the low-range cost of the project at $9.775 billion. The mid-range estimate is $10.909 billion and the high-end range is $12.708 billion. For complex projects, we do a range of estimates in the interests of accuracy. However, DOT is committed to working together through the life of the project to keep costs down to the lowest estimate.

In addition, we’ve been discussing with New Jersey officials the simultaneous construction of the $775 million South span of the Portal Bridge project.

We are committed to continuing the constructive dialogue we have had for the last two weeks with New Jersey officials to find a way to move forward on the ARC tunnel project, which will double commuter train capacity between New Jersey and New York.

This statement by LaHood reminds me of the FTA’s approach to the Second Ave. Subway. Last year, the feds released their own cost estimates for Phase 1 of the SAS, and they include a completion date as late as 2018 and a budget as high as $5.7 billion. (See this chart for more.) The MTA has maintained that the project will wrap on time in late 2016 or early 2017 and will cost under $5 billion. It’s important to remember that the federal are just that. They’re trying to keep the costs low, and the final price could range from $9.7-$12.7 billion.

It’s clear that Christie is facing a budget crisis of sorts with this project, but it’s too important to scrap now. We’ll find out next week if he and LaHood can reach an agreement to keep the ARC Tunnel on track.

Comments

21 responses to “LaHood: ARC overruns range from $1-$4 billion”

  1. Marc Shepherd

    I am no Chris Christie fan, but it seems the governor’s facts are substantially correct: the project is unlikely to come in at the previous $8.7 billion estimate, which was itself inflated from various previous estimates.

    So when he says the project is over-budget, and that NJ will be on the hook for it, you cannot blame him: he is absolutely right. Those who say he was relying on false data are barking up the wrong tree.

    You can criticize him for his unwillingness to raise taxes and/or tolls for such an obviously worthy project. You can criticize him for being friendly to roads and unfriendly to transit. But you cannot criticize him for complaining about something absolutely true: that the project probably cannot be done for the current estimate.

    Reply
  2. Aaron

    Out of curiosity, why was the deep cavern chosen? Is the ground around there otherwise unsuitable? Did they believe there was too much in the way of surrounding infrastructure?

    Reply
    1. Alon Levy

      The official excuses including the following:

      1. Penn Station is at capacity, so new trackage is needed.

      2. The tunnels have to be deep underground anyway to avoid running into wood pile foundations with historic status.

      3. Alt G would interfere with Metro-North, and DEP didn’t like it because of Water Tunnel 1.

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      1. Aaron

        1) Isn’t NYP at or near capacity? By capacity I mean both trackage as well as space for commuters that more convenient transit in NJ would inevitably draw. I can’t speak for trackage but when I’ve been at NYP I find it to be vastly overcrowded, to the point that in a wheelchair I at times feel unsafe at rush hour conditions.
        2) Do they? That’s kind of what I was asking, if there was underground infrastructure that would make building at a shallower depth unacceptably risky.
        3) Would it have interfered with MNR? What entities were willing to bear the costs to prevent MNR from suffering harm if it did? Would it have interfered with the water tunnels? My understanding is that there’s some present work going on concerning water as well.

        Not trying to be argumentative, I just came late to the “game” and would like to better understand – I kind of see three points of view here “ARC needs to happen,” “ARC as it is designed is inappropriate because there’s a much better way to design it” and “ARC sucks because government spending is evil.” I discount the third but asides from lofty comparisons to other cities, I haven’t seen a clear explanation for the second yet.

        Reply
        1. Alon Levy

          1. As currently used, NYP has serious capacity problems, yes – but it’s still far from the crowding levels common at some key transfer points in East Asia, such as People’s Square in Shanghai and Shinjuku in Tokyo.

          However, there are relatively cheap ways of making Penn less crowded, which NJT has either brushed off with nonsense excuses or ignored.

          1a. The passenger concourses are more crowded than they need to be. Only about half of the lower concourse’s floor area is used for circulation; the rest consists of concessions and back offices. The back offices should be moved elsewhere, and if there’s still no space, the concessions should be kicked out. NJT seems to completely ignore this possibility in its response.

          1b. One problem unique to the NJT platforms is the lack of staircases: there are only two per platform. The LIRR remodeled its segment of the station in the 1990s to have five per platform, allowing higher throughput. NJT claims adding staircases is impossible because Penn is old, but doesn’t address the fact that LIRR did the same.

          1c. Penn has more tracks than justified based on traffic, so some could paved over to widen the platforms. One possibility is to pave over pairs of tracks, joining together pairs of platforms, which would become very wide. Another is to pave over every other track, which would allow each train to be served by two platforms, doubling the number of effective doors per car. This is more speculative and proposed more rarely, so NJT’s lack of a response to it is justified.

          2. The woodpile foundations are the primary argument used by NJT today. Even with the foundations, a connection to Penn, with a grade that’s fine for EMUs if slightly more than heavy loco-hauled trains like, is possible. But its cost is nontrivial, and NJT claims that the cavern is more important because of point 1.

          3. The water tunnel issue received a negative comment from the DEP, but was not by itself a veto point. Water Tunnel 1 is very deep, and Alt G would involve a fairly shallow tunnel. The 7 line, which is slightly deeper, was built above the water tunnel in the 1920s without incident. The present work is the construction of Water Tunnel 3, which is not a problem for any alternative.

          Metro-North doesn’t really have capacity problems at Grand Central. Grand Central has more than 40 platform tracks, all with adequate connection to the concourses, and less peak train traffic than Penn Station. This really is a case of agency turf: Metro-North prefers full control of the station for convenience reasons.

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          1. ant6n

            One could consider the Spanish Solution for a station layout. It’s a part of the way the commuter tunnel through downtown Munich gets 30 tph – that, plus an advanced train control, and having several stops in a small downtown area distributing the downtown crunch across a couple of stations, rather than one (which in turn reduces dwell times).

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          2. jim

            The cost of a connection to Penn is non-trivial only if the new station is built. The big cost is not the tunnel from the end-point of the Hudson tunnel into Penn, it’s the cost of creating a cavern under Hudson River Park and 12th Ave down to a level below the bottom of the bulkheads to hold the interlocking between the trans-Hudson tracks, the tracks that run into Penn and the tracks that run into the new station.

            Reply
  3. Adirondacker

    After planning it for 30 years or so and after extended analysis and public comment periods – your experiences confirming what the studies found… armchair civil engineers know better.

    The documents are available on the ARC website.

    http://www.arctunnel.com/

    Reply
    1. Bolwerk

      You don’t need to be a civil engineer to know something ain’t right. Look at us, look at comparable projects projects in comparably wealthy countries, scratch your head, and admit something ain’t right.

      Reply
    2. jim

      Actually, 30 years of planning is much too long. Plans become path dependent. One section changes, but the constraints its old version imposed on other sections continue to be honoured. It may well be the case that the deep station is still deep because it was originally deep, not because it needs to be deep where it is now.

      Originally the new station was to be sited under the existing Penn Station. Since, because of the position of the 7 line extension, approaches to the station had to be either deep or shallow (in between would cross too close to the 7 line tubes) and because a shallow station under the existing Penn Station was “obviously” unworkable, the station had to be deep and so its approaches had to be deep. This suited the Manhattan tunnel planners, since a deep approach would all be bored (while a shallow one would be partly bored and partly cut and cover) and a deep approach would be essentially flat, while a shallow one would have a considerable grade, well above 2% (the existing North River tunnels maximum grade is a fraction under 2%). So everyone was happy. At some point between 2003 and 2007, the station was moved from under Penn Station to under 34th St. But the approaches remained deep, so the station remained deep. I’m not sure whether anyone even questioned whether in its new location the station could be shallow, but even if someone had, the Manhattan tunnel planners would have liked to keep the approach deep. Preservation of wood pilings got added to the justification.

      I don’t say that this sequence actually occurred, but things like this do happen in long changing planning processes.

      Reply
  4. jim

    New York Penn is not at capacity. There was a simulation done as part of the analysis of Alt G. Combined NJT/Amtrak peak direction flow of 36 tph was sustainable vs 23 tph for the no-build option. The new station, though, permits peak direction flow of 48 tph which is one of the reasons it was preferred over Alt G (only one: the choice of Alt P over Alt G was over-determined).

    I don’t know if anyone has run a simulation of a new tunnel just into Penn. Alt G had tracks 1-4 run through to Grand Central vice stubbed, which increased capacity. On the other hand, Metro North was assumed to be running 10 tph into tracks 1-5 from GCT, which took away some of the capacity. If we assume the two effects roughly balance each other out, it’s a reasonable guess that on the order of a dozen more trains an hour could be pushed through Penn if there were a way to get them there.

    Reply
    1. Alon Levy

      Don’t forget that those 10 tph of Metro-North can be the same as 10 tph of NJT, given through-running.

      Reply
  5. Alex

    What I find interesting is that there is no conversation in terms of what needs to be done to better integrate all the various commuter rail systems in the region. Ideally Alt-G would be chosen so that all trains could use all tunnels, thus increasing integration within the region. I have two questions: i) how much would Alt-G cost?; ii) are the major issues listed above impossible to solve?

    Reply
    1. jim

      Back from Boris. Pape was great.

      No-one costed Alt G. That’s because no-one ever drew an alignment connecting an E-W line at 31st and 7th with a N-S line at 42nd and Park (at no great depth — there’s no room for the line to descend much) and tried to figure out what properties would have to be taken (or at least easements granted) to create a right of way. The further SE the transition from E-W to N-S, the fewer the affected properties, but the tighter the curve. Since this is through the heart of midtown Manhattan, the cost in compensation would have been high in 2003 and, with the real estate bubble, much higher now.

      Reply
      1. Alon Levy

        The original alternatives analysis projected Alt G (and Alt S) to be cheaper than Alt P. It’s probably still going to be cheaper, but there’s still a question of how much it’d be over the original cost estimate.

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  6. Alex

    Quick question on the wood pilings, for what building are these pilings being preserved for? Is this for Penn Station? What is the justification for this.

    Also are there estimates regarding how inconvenient the cavern will be? Doesn’t LIRR have a similar situation with their east side access project in that they have built a very deep cavern below GCT?

    Reply
    1. Alon Levy

      If I remember correctly, the pilings are not for any building – they’re for the piers.

      The inconvenience of the cavern is a huge problem for ESA, yes (and so is the cost: per km, ESA is much more expensive than ARC despite the lack of a river crossing). For ARC it’s also a problem, but it’s partially mitigated by the fact that the cavern is one block to the east of Penn Station.

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      1. Alex

        The pilings thing is insanely stupid. Nobody even looks at those, and I”m sure they can be replaced at least visually.

        So this is where I do not understad the public criticism. It seems to me the lack of connection, and ability in the future to connect to GCT should be the main focus, and problem with the ACR, rather than the “cavern to Macy’s” or whatever it is called. That both this project and ESA are so expensive I guess is partially due to unions. It must also be the fact that because Manhattan is so dense, it probably takes time to go through that. We’ve seen those issues arise with the SAS.

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        1. Alon Levy

          The lack of connection is a problem for passengers; the use of a deep-level cavern is what’s busting the budget. Both are serious problems, and which one people talk about depends on what they perceive their audience to care about more.

          Unions and density are not New York’s unique problem. All of the European cities I’m comparing New York negatively with are heavily unionized, and some are quite dense. Paris is as dense as Manhattan, and has more intransigent unions. What’s different is that the European planners go for the alternatives with the lowest cost and highest utility instead of the other way around, and make sure to select competent contractors.

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          1. Alex

            So the argument essentially is that the individual planners rigged this whole process inorder to promote the most expensive option?

            What troubles me is that aren’t even good cost benefit analysis projections of Alt-G or some of the better plans, and even something like Alt-G does have some “legitimate” issues with it. Very frustrating.

            The other part as mentioned is how this is a necessary project, yet the windfall interms of projected ridership is limited.

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            1. Alon Levy

              I don’t know if the planners intended to do this around 2003, but they’re certainly doing it now. Community activists who have had to deal with high-impact projects call this process Decide, Announce, Defend.

              Yes, Alt G has some issues. I’d say the biggest two are the new yard west of Penn Station, and the decision to only connect the Grand Central tunnel to tracks 1-5. The first is a cost escalator; the second is a passenger inconveniencer but cost saver. Both come from the fact that Alt G doesn’t include through-routing, but would merely make it feasible.

              Reply

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