“Tunnel to Nowhere” will now be built,
connecting LIRR with Grand Central Station

QUEENS, NY, JUNE 11 -- A giant earth-eating machine, which will open the long-awaited path for the Long Island Railroad to connect directly with eastern Manhattan, arrived in New York in pieces on June 12, 2007, ready to be assembled.

The equipment, known as a TBM, or Tunnel Boring Machine, was built and tested in Rome, Italy, before being shipped by sea to New York in May and trucked to the installation site in Queens.

A May 22^nd press release by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) reported that the 200 ton TBM was tested outside of Rome, Italy, in April and then disassembled. The cutter head and largest components were shipped by boat in pieces. Its trailing gear and the smaller components were shipped separately to arrive at the end of the month. The largest components arrived at Red Hook, N.Y. on Saturday, May 19. Once the shipment had cleared customs, the pieces were taken by truckload to Long Island City, Queens.

With the shipments completed, urban miners, known as “sandhogs,” waited to lower the 32 pieces into the excavation site where they will be assembled, a task that alone will take about two months, said Mysore Nagaraja, the head of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s construction arm. “This is a big milestone in the East Side Access project,” said Nagaraja, comparing the device’s arrival to that of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree.

A portion of this tunnel was built in two levels in 1969, but wasn’t used for service until 1989. The top level was for the subway trains, which only ran a short distance into Queens until 2001 when the tube was connected with subway lines running along Queens Boulevard. The tunnel’s lower deck, built to carry Long Island Rail Road trains to the East Side of Manhattan, was never finished and was mockingly dubbed “tunnel to nowhere.” Even today, it goes nowhere, “a testament to high aspirations and low finances,” comments New York Times writer William Neuman.

Getting the huge components to the section of the tunnel where the machine will be assembled is a major task in itself, described below by Neuman:

“Crews report for work in Sunnyside, Queens, where an elevator carries them eight stories under the ground. There, a rickety set of track runs into the tunnel mouth.

“A low-slung train designed for use in mining operations runs on the track. The workers call it a “man-trip.” It has two cars with two rows of bare wooden benches facing one another. Inside there is room only to sit, not stand, during the 10-minute trip to the Manhattan end of the tunnel.

“Horn blaring, the man-trip catapults through the tunnel with the noise of 500 garbage cans being dragged through an alley. Small mesh-covered windows give glimpses of a hidden realm bathed in tangerine light: a pile of gray rocks, a stream of water pouring from something that looks like a tap in the tunnel roof. Even at the dead end of the tunnel in Manhattan there is graffiti, something familiar in a distant place.

“At its Manhattan terminus, the tunnel is made up of two concrete tubes side-by-side in the earth, each one 19 and a half feet across. A sludge of powdered rock is underfoot. At the end, a rough face of black Manhattan schist glints with bits of mica.

“Already there is a 65-foot-long cavern on one side, where the first machine will be assembled -- a 200-ton robot that eats rock.”

By late summer, the giant drill will start punching through solid rock from Second Avenue to Park Avenue, where it will turn south for 27 blocks -- a little over a mile – to Grand Central, said MTA spokeswoman Mercedes Padilla.

Next year a second tunnel-boring machine will be put in place and will begin cutting a parallel channel under Manhattan. When the $6.3 billion project is completed, one tunnel will carry Manhattan-bound trains and the other will carry trains going to Long Island.

The completed tunnel, scheduled to open in 2013, will carry an estimated 160,000 commuters daily between suburbs in Long Island and Grand Central.

The new connection is expected to reduce a typical LIRR commute by 40 minutes and increase Long Island rail service to Manhattan by 41 percent.

The LIRR tunnel project is one element of a larger plan to expand public transit connections on the city’s East Side. A separate project is the Second Avenue Subway running north and south through the East Side, taking pressure off the century-old Lexington line, New York’s busiest subway.

This 8.5-mile plan has been plagued by false starts and budget shortfalls for over 80 years, but this time, supported by city and state officials, it is finally expected to go forward. It, too, involves the use of giant boring machines.

The transit agency said this project will also provide a connection from Manhattan’s East Side to the AirTrain which goes from Jamaica, Queens, to John F. Kennedy International Airport

The subway project is slated to be completed by 2020.

Massachusetts Lt. Gov Tim Murray Headlines Six-State
Summit On Transportation, Cooperation

SPRINGFIELD, MA ---Senior elected leaders, as well as representatives of the transportation and environmental advocacy and professional communities from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine, Vermont, New York State, and Connecticut, will gather in Springfield June 22 at Springfield City Hall to hear Massachusetts Lt. Gov. Tim Murray, and other leaders address the region’s growing transportation crisis, and how the New England states must work more closely together to solve it.

Massachusetts Lt. Gov. Tim Murray

The second in a series of regional summit conferences assembled by the National Corridors Initiative (www.nationalcorridors.org) at the request of the Connecticut state legislature’s leadership, the unprecedented six-state transportation summit (CT, R, MA, VT, and NY) is being hosted by Springfield Mayor Charles V. Ryan, and will focus on interstate projects to boost economic development in the region. The conference opens to the public at 10:30 a.m., Room 220 City Hall, with RSVP to NCI at: jprepass@nationalcorridors.org. The conference grew out of an NCI White Paper calling for a permanent regional New England/New York multistate entity to tackle infrastructure needs on a permanent basis. “Once upon a time, when a day’s horseback ride defined the concept of ‘region,’ the small New England states could get away with silo-based decision-making. Those days are long gone, and we need to work with one another to plan, design, fund, build and operate large infrastructure projects, especially those involving transportation and energy,” stated NCI President James RePass. “We define ‘infrastructure’ as anything that moves people, goods, energy, or ideas,” said RePass, “and New England and upstate New York, as well as the Eastern Canadian provinces, are challenged because of long-term demographic changes, accompanied by a failure to study and invest in infrastructure in a way that benefits the region as a whole. It’s not about roads, or trains, or air. It’s about systems. There are a lot of brainy people in the region. We need to put them to work, but that work needs to be organized, and it has to survive the changes in the governors’ mansions and legislatures as time goes by. New England, upstate New York, and the Maritimes, are profoundly beautiful places. There is no reason why we should through dereliction allow the Northeast to decline.” In addition to Mayor Ryan and Lt. Gov. Tim Murray, the conference, open to the public starting at 10:30 a.m., includes: Rhode Island Lt Gov Elizabeth Roberts, NCI President & CEO Jim RePass, Lyle Wray, Executive Director Capitol Region Council of Governments (Hartford), CT House Speaker Jim Amann, Office of VT LG Brian Dubie, Bombardier Vice President Robert Furniss, CT Deputy Commissioner for Rail Al Martin, Massachusetts Undersecretary of Transportation Wendy Stern, Pioneer Valley Planning Commission Executive Director Tim Brennan, Patricia Quinn Executive Director, NNE Passenger Rail Authority, Kip Bergstrom Executive Director, RI Economic Policy Council, Office of NY Lt. Gov David Patterson, Peter Picknelly, President, Peter Pan Bus Lines, and John Businger, Vice President for the North-South Rail Link, NCI.

Connecticut’s unfinished business

HARTFORD, CT -- Connecticut will head into special session possibly this week to resolve unfinished matters of the budget. Several transit issues, mostly affecting Fairfield County which has the worst congestion and the worst air quality in the state, will be on the agenda, reported the Greenwich Times in an article by Mark Ginocchio.

Initiatives such as a revenue-generating alternative for a $1-per-ride surcharge on all New Haven Line trains, funding for projects like a new Stamford train station parking garage ($35 million) and sound barriers on Interstate 95 ($10 million) are expected to be addressed as part of the legislature’s budget talks. Another matter likely to be examined is a $4.5 million study of congestion-pricing tolls on state highways -- tolls that charge motorists different rates based on peak and off-peak hours.

The package stressed a “fix-it-first” approach to repairing roads and bridges before building new ones, the article states.

An alternative to the $1 surcharge on trains, which some feel is more equitable, is a 1 percent annual increase in fares starting in 2011 and continuing for a period of seven years. Many commuters are worried that this surcharge will not be overturned, but Sen. William Nickerson, R-Greenwich, said he was confident that the bill would pass in a special session. He helped design the alternative plan.

Also included in the transportation package: $43 million to improve bus service, $20 million to establish a transit-oriented development grant program, and free transit for senior citizens on buses and trains during off-peak hours.

Unlike the state budget, the initiatives approved by the legislature’s Transportation Committee earlier this year appear to have bipartisan support, with only a few minor quibbles, said committee member Sen. Andrew McDonald, D-Stamford.

Floyd Lapp, Executive Director of the South Western Regional Planning Agency, said the state can’t wait much longer to pass legislation pertaining to congestion pricing and transit-oriented development. “We are already behind many other parts of the country there,” Lapp said. “If we fail to (pass) it again, it will be one more year we’ve written off.”

NJ Transit:

It’s not cheaper to keep aging cars

NEWARK, JUNE 14 -- New Jersey Transit’s board of directors has decided it is more cost effective to buy new rail cars rather than overhauling the old single level Comet III cars that have been in service since 1990.

A story in the Star Ledger by Tom Feeney reports that New Jersey Transit will buy 45 new multilevel rail cars from Bombardier Transportation at a cost of $67.3 million.

The order brings to 279 the number of multilevel cars Bombardier will deliver to New Jersey by 2009.

NJ Transit Executive Director Richard Sarles said that the overhaul of the 49 old cars would cost $1 million each and that, with the favorable price Bombardier offered, it made sense financially to invest in the new multi-level cars.

The multilevels are also more comfortable and have proven popular with riders, he said.

In March, a routine inspection revealed marks on the brake discs. The cars were out of service for three days while the discs were replaced, and there have been no further problems since, said Sarles. The brakes were sent back to Bombardier for inspection.

Bombardier has delivered 23 of the cars, which are being used on the Northeast Corridor.

It has been in planning for several months and now it is formal. Segments of the MBTA’s “D” branch of the Green Line trolley service will close most of the summer for major repairs.

In a press conference held this past week, the MBTA’s general manager, Daniel A. Grabauskas outlined a plan estimated to cost in the vicinity of $8 Million dollars.

According to reports from MBTA officials, rail ties and power lines along the “D” branch are as much as 35 to 50 years old with failure on the horizon.

“This is unacceptable, and we are taking on an aggressive plan this summer to address much-needed maintenance that is contributing to the irregular service along the ‘D’ branch,” Grabauskas said.

The infrastructure project will start later this week on June 23 and will continue from 7:00 a.m. until dusk for about 10 weeks.

The “D” branch of the Green Line has incurred a 10-mile per hour speed restriction at various locations along the Boston-to-Newton corridor producing frustration for the ridership as one section glides along at 40 miles per hour only to be slowed to 10 miles per hour at another stretch of the line.

Repair crews will replace some 15,000 railroad ties during the line’s closure. About 20,000 have already been replaced over the past few years. Additional work involves brush cutting, cleaning and improving ditches and drainage, rail grinding, surfacing and aligning the track for a smoother ride, cleaning the right-of-way and re-grading the ballast. Workers will also replace 14 miles of 50-year old power cable and 6 miles of 35-year old signal cable.

The project will also allow the MBTA to introduce easy-to-board, low-floor Green Line vehicles in early 2008. The new low-floor units manufactured by Breda already ply the Green line’s other branches.

During the closure, the MBTA will take advantage of the situation and begin the reconstruction of two stations at “Longwood” and “Brookline Village” as well as begin reconstruction of the Hyde Street Bridge in Newton. The stations will remain open to revenue service throughout the construction period, which is slated for completion next summer. The Hyde Street Bridge should be complete this winter.

Post repairs, on-time-performance is expected to improve substantially and travel times of 6-8 minutes will be shaved from many riders trips as areas that were once restricted to 10 miles per hour will operate at 40 and 50 miles per hour. This will be the first time since 1993, some 14 years, that the trains will operate at these speeds.

This project will proceed in two phases during which the MBTA will provide bus replacement service. Phase I between Riverside Station in Newton and Reservoir Station in Brighton will commence on June 23 and run through August 3. Phase II between Reservoir Station and Fenway Station will run from August 4 to 31. Track work will be performed between the hours of 7 AM and dusk – Monday through Friday, however some weekend work will be required.

Sensitive to the rider’s needs, the MBTA plans on operating the “D” branch for the July 4th holiday in order to handle the tens-of-thousands of riders that attend Boston’s annual Boston Pops Concert on the Charles River Esplanade.

Additional efforts will be made to add more service on the “C” & “E” branches of the Green Line which parallel the “D” in places. For the Red Sox baseball fans that travel to and from the Fenway and Kenmore Stations, the MBTA will provide special direct service bus runs from Riverside to Fenway stations on game days. Some 27 ball games will be held in Boston during the summer months.

Mayor pushes for new LIRR,
Metro-North stations

NEW YORK CITY, JUNE 11 – Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants two new Long Island Rail Road Stations in Queens and two more Metro-North stations in the Bronx, reports Jennifer Barrios, staff writer for Newsday

“Standing outside a coffee shop in the cavernous Grand Central Terminal Sunday,” Bloomberg announced that if his congestion-pricing plan, called PlaNYC, is successful, the new stations can become a reality.

The plan is similar to London’s -- motorists who drive into parts of Manhattan during peak hours would pay a fee of $8.00 The proceeds would go to improve mass transit, including the new stations.

The new LIRR stations would be located in Elmhurst and Corona. The Metro-North stations would be built in Co-op City and Parkchester.

If PlaNYC is implemented, Bloomberg said, the four stations would begin to be built as soon as a year from now.

The plan has received several key endorsements, including that of Gov. Eliot Spitzer and Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-Elmhurst).

Suit alleges price-fixing
in railroad fuel surcharges

NEWARK --- Five of the largest U.S. railroads are the target of a class-action lawsuit filed this past week in Federal District Court, claiming that fuel surcharges added to freight bills as petroleum prices soared were imposed by collusion.

CSX, Burlington Northern Santa Fe, Kansas City Southern, Norfolk Southern, and Union Pacific were named in a suit brought by a shipper of soil additives, Dust Pro Inc., of Phoenix, AZ. The suit asks that the company be allowed to represent all alleged victims of the fuel-surcharge practice.

According to Reuters, the suit claims the alleged price fixing started in mid-2003 and allowed the railroads to curb competition in the market for unregulated rail freight transportation services.

The Wall Street Journal says the suit claims “restrained competition in the market for unregulated rail freight transportation services,” causing customers to be overcharged “billions of dollars.”

The Surface Transportation Board issued a rule in January on the way railroads calculate fuel surcharges, declaring it an “unreasonable practice for railroads to compute fuel surcharges in a manner that does not correlate with actual fuel costs for specific rail shipments.”

Dust Pro Inc. manufactures dust suppressants such as Dustac and Ligtac, used to reduce dust levels.