New Jersey is temporarily shutting down all new work and suspending additional contract bids on an $8.7 billion railway tunnel to New York because federal officials say the project may go as much as a billion dollars over budget — money New Jersey doesn’t have.
The federal government and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey already each are putting in $3 billion for the massive public works project, with New Jersey’s share at $2.7 billion. …
But the estimated cost of the new tunnels has steadily climbed since the project was first approved. The initial projection in 2005 was $5 billion. As recently as 2008, the Federal Transit Administration had asked the state to put in as much as $1.1 billion in contingency expenses to accommodate potential increases in construction costs and interest rates, bringing the price tag from $7.6 billion up to $8.7 billion.
These sorts of cost overruns and state revenue shortfalls could never hamper Seattle’s deep-bore tunnel.
Amazing how the price of a project goes up …. the longer you wait to actually build it. /sarcasm.
You know thats a rail tunnel right? If we’re going to be all cowardly about digging tunnels then Sound Transit should probably shut down as well.
I’ve got my fingers crossed that Manhattan’s nine-mile-long Second Avenue Subway line gets built too, 75 years in the planning. In May they got their tunnel boring machine started with its navigation over and under and around utilities and cables and sewer lines, subway lines, Amtrak lines, and the Queens-Midtown tunnel through mixed and varied soils with faults and shear zones, as trembly buildings aboveground get evacuated and shored up as they go.
All part of finally getting it done, but ooh, the cost.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/0…
Damn.
You almost had me hoping for a bit.
Instead, the massive sucking of taxes at City, County, Port, and State for the Billionaires Tunnel will continue here.
#2 -dont tell Dominic that tunnels can be used for public transit. his head will explode
@5 – not the Billionaire’s Tunnel. Check the WSDOT and SDOT plans. Zero transit, zero downtown exits, half the freight capacity, and it dumps 50,000 more cars on downtown arterials BEFORE they add in fare avoidance for the $5 to $10 each way tolls …
It would help if our fatass governor would be willing to spend money on anything other then his catering budget and we’d be able to keep this thing going. Man I hate Christie.
Remember the part where we voted twice on light rail, giffy? And remember the part where people kept insisting that the mayoral election was a referendum on the tunnel, giffy? And how some like MrBaker predicted that opposition to the tunnel would stop McGinn, giffy? And how Seattle already voted against tunnels, giffy?
Of course you do.
But that’s not convenient to you because when it comes to the place where politics and transportation intersect, you are simply a dick.