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FormerKarmaKing t1_j5yf24q wrote

> Why did the MTA build a train station at the midway point between the Earth’s core and 42nd Street? Bureaucratic infighting. The LIRR and Metro North, which until today ran all trains to and from Grand Central, are both within the MTA. In theory, they should cooperate as part of the same organization.

How much power does the MTA President (CEO?) have over these agencies? Trying to understand whether the MTA head(s) have been weak or if they never had the power they needed to prevent this nonsense.

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pixel_of_moral_decay t1_j5yul8z wrote

All of this is dumb. They went deep to not disturb existing infrastructure since that would add to cost. It’s not like it’s simple to tunnel 6 feet under existing track. It’s not like this was planned for. It’s literally under train platforms supporting fucking trains. Which is under a building/street. They needed to support everything on top. Going deep into bedrock naturally solves these problems.

Not to mention stations need to be level and strait, something that’s not easy with existing infrastructure and NYC’s sometimes slightly unstable sandy ground. This isn’t that far from the east river where they already had to be deep. Coming up doesn’t reduce complexity. It just adds new complexities.

If there had been a failure they’d just write the article “they could have simply gone deeper to avoid this tragedy”. That’s how lazy journalism has become.

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kent2441 t1_j5zn9ur wrote

None of it is simple. But instead of dealing with infrastructure to support a shallower station during construction, we’ll be dealing with a station that takes ten minutes to get out of for centuries.

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pixel_of_moral_decay t1_j5zsay9 wrote

You’d have that anyway. It’s either going to be a long tunnel or an escalator. The amount of underground land off limits there do to various train lines and platforms is insane.

It would be like the passageway between 42nd street. A long crowded walk.

You’d also have to deal with modern safety standards. There’s not nearly enough exists on that thing by today’s standards. So you’d need to find ways for at least some emergency exists, build and buy some land for all that.

Still complicated, still expensive, not making things faster.

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[deleted] t1_j5yvubz wrote

[deleted]

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metafunf t1_j5z34v8 wrote

No one will care about the price tag after a few years. The Boston big dig cost over $10billion in the 90s and now nobody cares about the cost anymore and only see how big of an improvement it was for the community and the city.

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anonyuser415 t1_j5zingm wrote

That project was an enormous boondoggle and had so many issues that I would hope that there's a better takeaway than "no will care about the price eventually." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig#Problems

I guarantee you that the planning departments in Boston do not only see the positives of this project.

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Shawn_NYC t1_j5zmqhk wrote

A very modern dialogue

"Why did nobody think of this! everyone is so stupid!!!"

Actually they did think about it and made the trade off to increase the cost of the project to not disturb street life

"Oh sure yeah that makes sense IDIOTS 🙄🙄🙄"

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