The Tunnel That's Failing New York City

if you've ever traveled through penn station in new york city chances are you might have run into something like this this 110 year old two-track tunnel beneath the hudson river carries 200 000 people a day and it's crumbling between 2014 and 2018 major failures caused 65 000 minutes of train delays that's roughly 45 days of this or this or this [Music] fixing this relatively humble tunnel between new york and new jersey has been dubbed one of the most important infrastructure projects in america that's because these delays don't just impact new yorkers the tunnel is a bottleneck for america's busiest passenger railroad from boston to washington dc when it fails 20 of the nation's gdp gets put on hold if just one track were to close it could cost the country 16 billion dollars building a new tunnel therefore sounds like a no-brainer but first engineers need the money and political will to get it done the north river tunnel was built by the pennsylvania railroad in the early 1900s at the time working underground at such intense atmospheric pressure took a physical toll on the workers and digging through soft flowing mud made it difficult to establish a secure foundation for the tunnels long before tunnel boring machines engineers used tunnel shields and compressed air to dig out a set of twin tunnels under the hudson river the giant metal shields had a diameter of roughly 15 feet with holes designed to let silt clay sand and gravel pass through as it was pushed through the soft ground the air in the tunnel was pressurized the walls were lined with concrete and they were reinforced by steel rods now use of that commuter tunnel grew substantially over the years and natural wear and tear set in and then in 2012 hurricane sandy here lower manhattan remains eerily dark and partially underwater subway stations right across new york city flooded and the north river tunnel is still reeling from the damage caused by the saltwater this is an example of the corroded wiring that is part of gateway if we let it continue this tunnel will not last look it's a it's a 110 year old system you know it has done its job like we can't ask any more of it what we need to do and should have done long ago frankly is modernized ideas to modernize the tunnel have been around since the 1990s but none have actually been constructed the latest idea is called the hudson tunnel project which is part of the gateway program essentially there's a whole group of projects aimed upgrading rail infrastructure in the northeast corridor and the north river tunnel is one of them there's a lot that needs to be done tunneling under an active waterway in the middle of the nation's busiest passenger railroad is a challenge in itself the catenary system of wires doesn't electrify properly wet ballast can send false signals to train operators and the concrete lining inside the tunnels is crumbling you know there's just a very significant amount of things that go wrong there's ice that forms in the winter that has to get knocked off by hand the power cables in the bench walls you know occasionally snap because they're old uh you know i i could go on and on [Music] there are three main elements to the hudson tunnel project the first is to build an entirely new tunnel south of the current tunnel next is to fix up the existing north river tunnel and then finally construct a new stretch of concrete casing under hudson yards at its deepest point the new tunnel will be 175 to 250 feet below ground and it's expected to take seven years to build once that's done rehabilitating the existing north river tunnel is set to take another three years the idea is that two of the four tracks will always be operational so repairs can be done to the old tunnels without having to cut the existing service in half eventually the hope is that all four tracks can run at once it's a frighteningly complex project but pretty representative of the challenges that construction teams across the country are now facing as they work to rebuild america's infrastructure those teams depend on effective communication and having the right information to hand to succeed because mistakes cost both time and money to sort out it's key on a building site but for an infrastructure scheme like this where the site team might be physically spread out over several miles it's critical autodesk build gives teams an easy to use project management field collaboration and cost control tool in a single platform they can track what's going on and be sure they're always building to the latest information because everyone's looking at the same document in the cloud it's a single source of truth whether they're in the office with their desktop computer or down a new york tunnel with their smartphone teams can share markups track changes flag issues in real time manage payments and change control orders keep on top of that all important and much scrutinized project timeline and generate reports from all the data the biggest benefit of all that is efficiency and when you're dealing with a crumbling tunnel at a crucial transit bottleneck and new yorkers on their commutes efficiency is critical [Music] of course the project rate of progress comes down to more than just the efficiency of its engineers and designers it takes money and political will something that's been particularly hard to come by back in 2010 ground broke on a similar project called access to the region's core or arc it was supposed to establish a new commuter rail tunnel across the hudson but just months into construction the project was over budget by 2.3 billion dollars and was ultimately cancelled by new jersey governor chris christie today the gateway program estimates it'll cost 12.3 billion dollars to complete the hudson tunnel project that's up six percent from estimates in 2020. amtrak says that's because development's been stalled for the last several years due to bureaucracy but now officials are hopeful that president biden also known as amtrak joe could grant the approvals they need to finally get the product underway once we get the funding done which i feel very confident that we're going to get done you know that's only step one no one's done this in 110 years and no one's dug a tunnel under the hudson in 80 years so this is going to be an experience and it's going to be an experience for everybody but it'll be an experience that's worth it once we get it done building a new tunnel between new york and new jersey is going to take years even once the funding is approved but for the hundreds of thousands of people who pass through this bottleneck that day can't come soon enough it's a potent example of the power of infrastructure fixing something as simple as a tunnel can have a knock-on effect for millions of people and a nation's economy [Music] this video is made possible by autodesk construction cloud you can learn more about autodesk build at the link below and as always if you enjoyed this video and you want to get more from the definitive video channel for construction make sure you subscribe to the b1m [Music] you

Channel: The B1M

Views: 1,781,269

Keywords: B1M, TheB1M, Construction, architecture, engineering, The B1M, Fred Mills, building, new york city, hudson tunnel, new jersey, PATh, amtrak, hudson river, tunnel boring, tunnel construction, underwater tunnel, rail, trains, hudson tunnel project, gateway program, subway, northeast corridor, infrastructure, NYC, US infrastructure, east side access, grand central terminal

Id: BYVMxVcsRZM

Length: 8min 22sec (502 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 03 2021