Join the discussion on the following article:
Amtrak struggles to restore service in Northeast
You have to wonder, what were they thinking when putting a railroad below sea level, with no adequate method to keep the water out? Bridges would have made more sense. Boats need to get past? No problem. Build the clearance high enough. It has been done in other parts of the country But this is New York City. The city that can’t take care of itself and is clearly unable to think for itself. Now that big government is running all the railroads in that city, look for repeats in the future.
What Mr. Guse from Illinois wrote is one of the dumbest things I have ever read. If Mr. Hays from Montana will be Mitt Romney’s FEMA Director, than I nominate Mr. Guse for Secretary of Transportation.
The railroads are below sea level because they are in tunnels, that go under rivers… you know like the railroads in Detroit that are below the level of the Great Lakes when they travel through the tunnels to Canada. They have never flooded before in over a century of operation.
This was the subway’s Pearl Harbor, and like that infamous attack it should have been prevented. But what’s important is how we move forward in improving our infrastructure. Pearl Harbor while a national shame didn’t mean the United States was a nation of idiots who couldn’t take care of themselves!
Flooding is of course a problem with tunnels, which is why they have pumps, but when storm surge exceeds predictions and rushes down entrances, the pumps fail. Money should have been spent on better defenses, but perhaps too many people thought the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal where serious when they lampoon the dire warnings of climate scientists.
Tunnels however do stay clear during winter snow storms, you know like how railroads build tunnels in the mountains not just to avoid heavy grades, but like the Great Northern line in the Cascades to avoid heavy snow and avalanches. Given the number of bad blizzards in the 19th Century, subways made a lot of sense.
Subway tunnels also free up light and air for city streets, the old elevated railroads blocked off the sky and put the street in perpetual shadow. The yard for the old Grand Central Depot was huge, full of smoking steam locomotives.
Today above the sunken rail yards entire blocks of skyscrapers now grow up toward the heavens. It is very efficient land use… making lots of money for private developers. Bridges require big approaches; look at Google Maps; that is a lot of land for the ramps and viaducts leading to
Lord jeffery…you make no sense at all. Stay on illinois.
Thank you, Mr. Benjamin J Turon, for your articulate, thorough and very well thought-out response to the shallow and ubiquitous Jeffrey Guse. If what you’ve written doesn’t finally send him away from here, can’t we all agree to just ignore him, starting right now?
I suspect that, far from being any sort of railfan, Mr. Guse is what many forums refer to as a “troll,” whose only purpose here is to spread right wing propoganda in his assigned area (TRAINS Newswire Comments section). The best response to him, henceforth, would be none whatsoever. Off my stump now.
If only the rest of the country was as smart as Mr. Guse believes he is.
Point of correction: Between Long Island City and Penn Station, there are FOUR East River Tubes, NOT Three. Two are used almost exclusively by the Long Island Railroad, while the other two are jointly used by both the LIRR and AMTRAK full time, with NJT using them to reach Sunnyside Yard.
Point of Correction. The George Washington Bridge was designed for the Lower Level to be used by an extended branch from the 8th Avenue Subway at 168th Street to the New Jerside of the Bridge. The underground ramp from 168th Street that was supposed to use that lower level was completed as far as 174th Street, and exists today as tail tracks for the turning of C Trains back to Brooklyn. It was during construction that the assignment for the lower level was cancelled and the entire Lower Level deferred due to lack of funds during the 1930s. When the time came when the Lower Level could be added, it was conceded that the addition of rail service on that level was impractical for legal and operational reasons, and so it was built for cars.
Well put Mr. Turon but I doubt the facts will have any affect on the beliefs of the guy from Illinois.
I’m actually quite curious as to the numbers for running the Silver Meteor from D.C. to Florida instead of from NYC, especially if they can get some of the local NEC trains to start connecting in D.C. at some point down the line. I’d be very interested to see if more people riding the NEC trains to connect to long distance would be more profitable. Furthermore, would it allow more flexibility in the scheduling of existing long distance (Crescent [and possible connection to the Sunset], Capitol Limited, Silver Service, Palmetto, Cardinal) and could turn-around and down time be better managed to reduce costs this way?
When waters rise, boats do have trouble getting under bridges, as Mr. Guse incorrectly points out! A few years ago when waters rose high on the Missisiisppi River, bargres had trouble getting underneath bridges at St. Louis, Memphis, and the Quad cities areas. And for those who thnk roads have nothing to worry about, all the rushing water creates soil erosion underneath highways, causing roads to buckle and collapse. Until waters recede, and if Mr. Guse palns to visit these areas, I hope he knows how to row a boat, becuase there is no fuel either.
Hear, Hear! I second Mr. Kuehn’s recommendation! And thank you to Mr. Turon for such a well reasoned, articulate post. Best of luck to NYC an NJ in your recoveries from the storm