The Deteriorating Tunnel That Could Break New York City - Cheddar Explains

820 000 people and 450 trains pass 2.5 miles under new york's hudson river every day through the north river tunnels the two tunnels are critical for the transportation of commuters from new jersey and the west but they're 120 years old their concrete walls are eroded from contaminated flood water and their electronics often short-circuit and melt down but 20 percent of the nation's gross domestic product relies on this one tunnel a recent study showed that if just one of the two tracks in the tunnel went down it would cost the regional economy 16 billion dollars but projects to restore the old tunnels and even build new ones are stifled and that's worrying because this is new york city's big tunnel problem infrastructure construction was booming in new york at the turn of the 20th century commuters needed ways to get in and out of the city and there was money to be made in the train business for decades those coming in and out of manhattan from the west would take a train to the banks of the hudson river and transfer to a ferry across the river this transfer process required shipments of goods and materials to be unloaded from trains loaded onto barges and unloaded yet again to trains and carriages this also dangerously clogged the hudson river with ship traffic this is jill jones historian and author of conquering gotham hudson river and the manhattan waterfront were very very busy new york was the busiest seaport in the world there were accidents and ferry boats would go down and very typically these ferry boats carried about a thousand people the hudson river is a mile wide so it's a bit of a long swim but in the late 1800s one company looked to change that alexander cassette the president of pennsylvania railroad wanted to tunnel under the hudson to bring new jersey commuters directly into a brand new station proposals for this hypothetical cross hudson connection were advanced in the late 1800s and some construction progress was made but it was halted after numerous accidents and fatalities also financial panics in the 1870s and 1890s scared off potential investors it wasn't until the early 1900s that the plans got traction and construction of the tunnels officially began the thing that cassatt could not bear was that the vanderbilts their great rivals who owned the new york central all of their passengers came in to a different grand central than we know today but very much in similar place and they came in on trains down the hudson river having crossed further above on the other side of the tunnel workers were building penn station penn station covered eight acres and was inspired by the roman baths of caracalla it had an 148-foot high coffered ceiling and was heralded as a beautiful example of bozart's architecture it was considered even more beautiful than new york central railroad's grand central which had opened in 1871. penn station was a feat of architecture and design but building a mile-long tunnel under one of the busiest waterways in the world in the early 1900s now that was simply remarkable the project consisted of building two parallel tunnels that would each start on opposing sides of the river and connect at a center point below the hudson workers used 194 ton circular metal shield that was roughly the size of the tunnel opening the shield had hatches that were left open so that when workers pushed it through the soft river mud the mud would ooze through the hatches where it would then be shoveled out by workers workers would push the shield inch by painful inch through the riverbed the tunnel was meticulously pressurized to prevent collapses and ribbed with steel ring the men who worked they were known as sand hogs were all at risk of emerging from the tunnel and being afflicted with the bends when the newly dubbed north river tunnels opened in 1904 it was a bright time for trains and their tunnels prr believed wholeheartedly that trains were the future of american travel and they owned the most beautiful station in the country but of course they were wrong and then of course after world war ii everything changed in ways that i don't think anyone in the railroad business ever imagined and obviously there was the automobile but more to the point there were planes airplanes by the 1950s train companies were facing dire financial issues penn station which had been built with the intention that ridership would increase not decrease we're falling quickly into disrepair beau's arts architecture wasn't trendy in the 50s and 60s and the station was basically only worth the land it was built on pennsylvania railroad decided to make a drastic decision they sold the air rights above penn station which meant that the station had to be torn down demolition began on october 23rd 1963 a huge granite monument to the age of elegance is falling to the wreckers there were organized movements to save this example of what architects call great american design the underground tracks will remain but the station with its famous clock will be replaced by a modern sports palace the end of a landmark after the proposal to sell the air rights above grand central fell through penn central was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1970. it was at the time the largest bankruptcy in u.s history but all of this financial and architectural drama meant that the tunnels needed some serious maintenance especially the aging north river tunnels but they didn't get it some updates were made when amtrak purchased penn station and the tunnels according to the new york times but there wasn't wide-ranging restoration then in 2012 hurricane sandy hit the category one hurricane caused vast damage to new york and new jersey and the aging tunnels were seriously unprepared for the flood waters after all most of them had been built almost a century earlier when sea levels were around a foot lower the north river tunnels were flooded and closed for days the storm damaged their electrical and lighting systems and eroded the concrete inside the tunnels the 12 000 volt copper cables buried in the concrete began to short-circuit and melt down and still do to this day sandy cost the city in total 19 billion dollars restoring and modernizing the tunnels post sandy cost the city 550 million dollars and included purchasing 50 000 pound steel floodgates new lights and a cashless tolling system the portal drawbridge which leads into the north river tunnels now fails to close one of every seven times it opens sometimes maintenance crews can smash it back into place with a sledgehammer if they can't it causes delays an engineering study completed after sandy found that it wasn't likely that any tunnel would entirely collapse in flood what was likely was that the tunnels would become significantly less reliable as time goes on with the eventuality that power line and signal cable fails would happen so often that at least one tunnel would always be closed for repairs it's a sobering thought but new york city is trying to do something about the 120 year old tunnels that something is called the gateway project on september 7th 2017 a meeting took place at the white house to discuss a massive project to build a brand new tunnel under the hudson river the proposed plan would cost 11 billion dollars and make a gateway tunnel between manhattan and new jersey to alleviate a choke point the nine-mile stretch between newark and new york city that every new jersey transit and amtrak train in the northeast corridor had to go through culminating at the north river tunnels the gateway project stands opposite the east side access project which has almost finished digging a tunnel for the lirr to access grand central and should be open in 2022 but while the east side access project is building a shorter access tunnel the gateway project not only wants to replace the old hudson river tunnels but also restore the portal bridge and other tunnels whenever one of the current two tunnels goes out of service train traffic decreases 75 percent and whenever the portal bridge can't close train traffic halts completely gateway's supporters say that these delays cause a loss of a hundred million dollars a day according to politico the project would also include an expansion and upgrade of penn station which handles more passengers than all three major new york city airports and has a ridership equivalent to one-third of all passengers on u.s domestic flights plus it is so ugly but like so many public works projects politics became its downfall after the white house meeting president donald trump told new york senator chuck schumer that the federal government would fund the gateway project if trump got his border wall with mexico schumer declined and ever since the trump administration has been derailing the project according to politico in march of 2018 trump threatened to veto an entire 1.2 trillion dollar government spending bill if it included anything at all about the gateway project trump's transportation department has also voided a deal that senator schumer and governor andrew cuomo made with obama where new york would pay for 50 percent of the project and the federal government would pay the other 50 percent trump's administration has also blocked federal grants and loans that gateway needs to get underway this staunch opposition to a project is seen as a personal problem by most considering that prior to the white house meeting trump had declared the gateway project the most important public infrastructure project in the nation and had it at the top of his list of infrastructure to fund during his election now trump aides call the project the hate way the gateway project does have some very legitimate issues it requires 11 billion and purchasing an entire block of riverfront manhattan property including an 150 year old church that would all have to be torn down to build a ventilation shaft it also requires a myriad of expensive cutting-edge tunneling tech that needs a lot of new equipment and a massive workforce but that hasn't stopped new york before recently the state has built a new tappan zee bridge overhauled laguardia airport built the second avenue subway and ferried the east side access project on its way experts say that governor cuomo's willingness to spend money and sheer force of will is the main factor behind his success where others have failed two sources told politico that cuomo threatened subway contractors that if they missed their deadline he would invoke the doctrine of decertification so they could never work for the state again afterward an aide told him that particular doctrine didn't exist which made cuomo furious but unfortunately even cuomo's ironclad will can't surmount the absence of federal funding and as the gateway project remains stalled the north river tunnels keep getting worse and worse the tunnel over 120 years old isn't getting any younger and as sea levels keep rising and warm waters cause worse storms things are looking bleak thankfully you don't have to worry about the tunnels collapsing on top of you the next time you take the train into penn station you and the tunnels might just have to deal with the delays what do you think of the north river tunnels and the gateway project let us know in the comments make sure you like this video click subscribe and don't forget to ring the bell for post notifications we'll see you next time

Channel: Cheddar

Views: 1,005,798

Rating: 4.642662 out of 5

Keywords: Cheddar, cheddar explains, new york city, new york, manhattan, nyc, explainer, tunnel, tunnels, trains, locomotives, train, train tunnel, infrastructure, gateway project, hurricane sandy, urban planning, city planning, transportation, transit, design, north river tunnels, north river tunnels collapse, hudson river, underwater tunnel, subways, cities, city, east river tunnel, flooding, flood, sandy, penn station, grand central station, pennsylvania station, new jersey, trump, cheddar explores

Id: 48_FHhRQdt0

Length: 14min 4sec (844 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 06 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/MoonDaddy]

cheddar

[u/alphanovember]

Does she do that voice on purpose?