Almost Halloween!

1st Place between Henry and Clinton

I've always enjoyed this season, but having a Halloween-obsessed three year old really brings it to another level.  It's awesome.  Thank you, neighbors, for delighting the kids.

A Gateway Out Chris Christie's Hell

The Amtrak Gateway project that is currently not being rushed into place before disaster strikes the NJ-NY commuting populace.

NYC and NJ could both be in for a world of hurt if we don't invest in some Hudson River rail crossing redundancy, immediately.

New York’s dependence on its rail system is why Amtrak’s announcement last week that damage from 2012’s Hurricane Sandy would require the eventual renovation of the North River (Hudson River) tunnels, which connect New Jersey and New York, is such devastating news. The $700 million expected cost of the renovation, which includes improvements to tunnels under the East River, isn’t the problem, for once, as the price is expected to be covered by insurance. Rather, the problem is that Amtrak noted that the renovation of the North River tunnels would require shutting down one track at a time (there are two), reducing peak capacity from 24 trains an hour to just 6 (there are four tracks under the East River so there is far less of a concern there).**

It’s unclear how this problem will be handled. Passengers could switch to the already-crowded PATH subway into New York from Newark or Hoboken. Or one of the automobile tunnels could be converted to bus service, which isn’t likely to make many drivers happy. Amtrak through-service from Washington to Boston will be dealt a severe blow. Either way, there are no happy outcomes to a tunnel renovation program other than a safer infrastructure.

Amtrak head Joseph Boardman noted that, because of the storm damage, the 104-year-old tunnels likely only have 20 years left of life in them. The public rail company’s solution is to immediately begin construction of the Gateway Program, whose primary component is a new double-track rail tunnel under the Hudson. Once those new tunnels are ready for use, rehabilitation of the North River tunnels could commence by 2025 or so.

Amtrak’s report could be seen as little more than a thinly-veiled threat; give us money to build a new tunnel, the argument goes, or you’ll suffer from complete evisceration of your rail services. Indeed, the press release notes that “the report underscores the urgency to advance the Gateway Program,” including the new Hudson tunnels. Who knows whether to believe Mr. Boardman’s proclamation about the tunnel’s life expectancy.

Yet it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that, even had the storm not happened, a new Hudson River rail tunnel would have been necessary. Traffic along the rail corridor is expanding. New York City is expected to continue to grow in the coming decades. And resiliency is always a good idea (had Sandy been bad enough to destroy the tunnels, what would have happened?).

It absolutely blew my mind when Hudson rail crossing redundancy was not an immediate, hair-on-fire priority after 9/11.  I mean, lots of good policy that should have been implemented after 9/11 was ignored in favor of tax cuts for the rich, invading Iraq, and lavishing funds on Bush and Cheney cronies.  And while that was tragic, and will hurt us all for decades to come, it was not entirely unexpected.  But new tunnels under the Hudson?  That for sure I thought would be a priority.  Wrong!  And then, even the slow progress of the Access to the Region's Core project (which admittedly had problems beyond its awful title*) was utterly derailed by NJ Governor Chris Christie, who siphoned off the funds for slosh around the state on highway projects.

And now?  We are on the verge of a potential bi-state transportation nightmare.  And if one thing goes wrong, a lot of people are going to be very miserable for a long time.

* Yonah's post neatly lays out the problems with the ARC project, and I am forced to footnote my criticism of Christie with odd fact that if Gateway gets built before we have a catastrophe, we will be better off.  Christie was only focused on redeploying the money from transit to highways.   However, Gateway is unquestionably a superior project to ARC, and it was only Christie's cynical, selfish act that made Gateway a practical possibility.   But if catastrophe strikes first, Christie's name will be mud forever.

American Exceptionalism!

Our conservatives are exceptionally ignorant and stupid.

So this is what they mean by "voluntary"

"Apparently, this woman doesn't know that one of the most exceptional historical facts about America was that we were last Western nation to outlaw slavery by a long shot. And I'd guess she missed class the day they discussed that little dust-up from 1860 to 1865. (Of course, it's always possible that like so many wingnuts she has thinks the civil war wasn't about slavery at all. It's just a coincidence that the country "voluntarily ended it" after over half a million people died over the most important moral cause humankind has ever known: states' rights.

This is why you need teacher's unions and tenure. When people like this take over school boards (and this isn't the first time) they will happily fire anyone who teaches evolution and refuses to teach the kids that the US "voluntarily ended slavery.""

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2014/10/so-this-is-what-they-mean-by-voluntary.html

Emphasis added.  If it was their own ignorance, I could live with it.  But the belligerent willfulness of the ignorance, and the insistence that our youth be indoctrinated with feel-good truthiness is truly dangerous.

89 Boerum Place Back In Action

Workers were on site doing foundation work.

I am a little surprised there is no residential, but perhaps that is a function of the jail across the street.

I passed this site on Thursday and was pleasantly surprised to see that things were moving again.  This has been a hole in the ground for what, seven years now?  Pacific Street has seen a lot of building since I've been in Brooklyn.  The second wave has moved pretty fast.  The place right next to the old Pacifico is almost finished (those properties were put up for auction in January 2008).  The place behind the grocery on Court shot up quick.  And who knows, perhaps even the Chien Merde will return to life . . . but one would hope with a better design.

Don't Be Evil

The bigger issue is, how did Google get in bed with ALEC in the first place?  It's not a close call.

Google Drops Membership From Conservative ALEC

"Last week, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said in an interview with NPR's Diane Rehm that the company was dropping its membership with ALEC, a coalition of corporations and state legislators that works to create and share model legislation in statehouses around the country. Responding to a question from a listener, Schmidt attacked ALEC for helping to sponsor legislation that opposes environmental regulations and "just literally lying" about climate change."

http://www.nationaljournal.com/tech/alec-ceo-google-s-departure-was-like-getting-dumped-via-text-message-20141001

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Krugman On Our Broken Economic Discourse

Lying about the economy (among other things) pays pretty damn well. So don't expect this to change. 

What we should expect though, is more reporting like this. And for "respectable" media outlets to stop giving a platform to remorseless shills like, e.g. Bill Kristol, Dan Senor and Amity Shlaes. 

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When the going gets tough, the people losing the argument start whining about civility. I often find myself attacked as someone who believes that anyone with a different opinion is a fool or a knave; as I've tried to explain, however, that's mainly selection bias. I don't spend much time on areas where reasonable people can disagree, because there are so many important issues where one side really is completely unreasonable. Relatedly, obviously someone can disagree with my side and still be a good person. On the other hand, there are a lot of bad people engaged in economic debate — and I don't mean that they're wrong, I mean that they argue in bad faith. Which brings us to today's installment of oh-yes-they're-that-bad, courtesy of Bloomberg. You may remember the infamous open letter to Ben Bernanke warning that his efforts to boost the economy "risk currency debasement and inflation"; just in case you wondered about the political nature of the letter, among the signatories was that noted monetary expert William Kristol.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/02/knaves-fools-and-quantitative-easing/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=Opinion&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs®ion=Body

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Cuomo Out To Lunch On Vital Rail Infrastructure

This is unbelievable.  Granted, Chris Christie screwed everything up when he unilaterally scrapped decades of work on Access to the Region's Core. 

But Amtrak's Gateway proposal is vital to cross-Hudson transit.  If one of those tunnels goes, and we're getting to the point where it's not inconceivable, NY is in for a serious awakening. 

Cuomo has similarly ignored the sorry state of the BQE cantilever, canceling urgently needed planning for the inevitable rebuilding to focus on the Tappanzee. And don't get me started about LICH. 

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"The, uh, I haven't seen the Amtrak report so I can't really comment on it," said the governor. There were no follow-up questions. 

The governor's non-response on this particular topic was standard, for him. He has never made a particular priority of mass transit, and also abides by an unofficial nonaggression pact with Christie. (Cuomo wouldn't touch Bridgegate, at least publicly; Christie, who currently heads the Republican Governors Association, won't touch Cuomo's Republican opponent.) 

 Now, to properly repair the cross-Hudson tunnels, Amtrak will have to wait for federal support for a replacement tunnel project called Gateway, which as yet has no capital funding commitment attached to it and would be completed, at the earliest, in the middle of the next decade. Or it will have to take one of the two tubes out of operation, which, as an Amtrak official said yesterday, would have "draconian" consequences for rail service between New York and New Jersey.

http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/albany/2014/10/8553816/cuomo-declines-take-new-yorks-amtrak-issue

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