With the MTA’s capital budget funded only through the end of the year, New York’s Senators down in D.C. are growing worried that key infrastructure (and job-creation) projects are going to run out of dollars when the calendar flips to 2012. To that end, Sen. Chuck Schumer has called upon the U.S. Department of Transportation to shift $2.2 billion in what would have been ARC Tunnel money over to the East Side Access project as a low-interest loan. This would guarantee completion of the project and avoid a slowdown should the state fail to act on the MTA capital budget this fall.
“While we have collectively committed billions of dollars to this project, it’s vital that the MTA has the resources it needs to finish this critical mass transit project that has the potential to alleviate congestion for tens of thousands of commuters who use the Long Island Rail Road every day,” he said in a letter to FRA officials. “Though the USDOT has never approved a financing package of this size under the RRIF program … the USDOT was willing to approve a loan of similar size for New Jersey to fund the ARC tunnel.”
DOT did not comment to Transportation Nation, but the MTA confirmed it had applied for a grant for the project. An authority spokesman said the MTA is “in discussions with the U.S. DOT as part of the application process but we don’t have an estimate on when we’ll hear back.” It would be money well spent.
11 comments
I think it’s fair and fitting to do this. If they would then continue the tunnel down to Penn A la Alternative G in reverse, that’d be even better.
Rather fitting. Since “West Side Access” (from NJ) was cancelled, East Side Access should get the money.
Do it! Albany can’t be counted on to do the job on their own and sometimes you have to force their hand. Let them know that the loan is in place and that Albany has to pay it back. Simple!
DO IT, FRA. DO IT. New Jersey doesn’t want it? We’ll take it.
Specifically, I believe this was a $2.2B loan offered to New Jersey as a last-ditch measure to sweeten the deal right before Christie canceled the project for the last time.
Do it, but make it contingent on getting costs under control.
I think you made a mistake in the first sentence. You wrote: “New York’s Senators down in D.C. are growing worried that key infrastructure (and job-creation) projects are going to run out of dollars,” but I’m pretty sure you meant: “New York’s Senators down in D.C. are growing worried that key job-creation (and infrastructure) projects are going to run out of dollars.”
Not one more dime. ESA is needlessly a deep-level cavern – Grand Central has plenty of capacity, but in New York it’s easier to spend billions on concrete than to get around agency turf wars – and is by a large margin the most expensive project in the world per kilometer, at about $4 billion per km of tunnel. In Europe, projects that cost one tenth of that are routinely denounced as cost-ineffective and threatened with cancellation.
ESA can’t even be extended to Penn Station without pushing the ruling grade to the limit. At any rate since the LIRR can already go to Penn it’s more important to tunnel from the existing Grand Central to Penn.
I’m sorry but I fully disagree. If ESA were just a tunnel to connect to existing tunnels and platforms then we would turn the Grand Central approach during the morning rush into Penn Station 2. Building it’s own platforms was the highly intelligent thing to do.
Grand Central has twice as many platform tracks as Penn, much more better-utilized space for passenger circulation, and half the ridership. It wouldn’t be turned into Penn; it would be turned into Grand Central with somewhat more traffic.
Weren’t the major issues with taking the lower level the shoring up of the numerous expensive office towers and the disrupting Metro North service?