Today’s Headlines

Wow, someone who commits a crime can literally walk into a police station to be arrested and the NYPD still don’t care. I’ve lost count of Vision Zero fails.

Hilarious that there’s another subway kitten delaying service. Also hilarious that the Post puts a photo of a 7 train in a story about the A train.

I’m not sure you could but els between blocks without knocking down a lot of buildings that would be in the way.

omg. not sure how i missed that one, but that was hilarious.

But not MetroNorth and Amtrak. The Hudson Lines seems particularly vulnerable.

Wow, that Colbert bit is really, really good. Don’t even find it all that funny, just really good.

if we were smart, we’d implement federal carbon taxes that would be directed at building carbon dioxide-removal machines or other carbon offsets that would result in cars, trains, planes, ferries, and finished products paying for their externalities.
The country we’re in is where Trump has a nonzero chance of winning the presidency even as he hasn’t said, and will never say, anything of substance. Even as he’s obviously lying to his own supporters. Not to go all political here but I don’t take this discussion too seriously when a significant chunk of the American populace is too stupid to survive the immediate future without help, and some nerd is talking about the collective will to make Venice-on-the-Hudson in 2100.

I’d argue that a simple solution is to build gates-storm barriers at the Verrazano Narrows and Hell’s Gate. This is the solution implemented by The Dutch at the mouth of the Rhine – relatively inexpensive and effective

The Dutch built equivilant barriers at mouth of Rhine with minimum of fuss. Cost less than a billion; simple is correct description

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maeslantkering

we could Hire ths Dutch :)!

only Need a Barrier As wide As The Rhine Channel entrance which Happens to Be busiest harbor on Earth

As ugly as they are, we might be better off in the long run with els. If we were smart about it, they could run in between blocks instead of over major streets (think something like 6½ Avenue).

Between blocks where there are buildings?

You don’t think there would be complaints from the property owners who don’t want a loud train rumbling overhead every couple minutes in the morning and at least a few times an hour all night long? It would be like putting in a highway, you’d have to buy up tons of property and displace a lot of people. There would be some of that running over a street, but not nearly as much. And given the wide roads the city has in areas not served by subways, and the smaller footprint that modern Els are capable of, it would be much less disruptive than running it a half block over.. The highline is different. The buildings you see it run through developed around it. The rail line wasn’t rammed through them.

I think you’re overestimating how high buildings are or need to be in most of the city. You raise several valid objections to the idea, but I’d say height isn’t one of them. Consider that most of NYC with very tall buildings already has subways, so no need to build an el there. Granted these subways are and will be prone to flooding, but I can’t envision any scenario where it would be more cost effective to build els rather than to make the existing subways flood resistant.

That leaves the outer boroughs. Thankfully, most of the subways which exist in the outer boroughs aren’t in flood plains. However, there will eventually be a need for subway expansion. In fact, we probably should have expanded the system decades ago. So the only open question is do we expand it with subways or els? Els offer immunity from floods in low-lying areas. They offer system expansion at lower cost elsewhere. Their obvious downside is that they’re eyesores. That’s where the building them midblock idea comes from. In most of where we might build new subways building height isn’t an issue now, nor would we ever conceivably want to build higher than perhaps 80 or 100 feet.

On the other issues, they apply whether or not an el is built midblock or over a street. Obviously there are going to be some limits to how high we can go just as there are limits to how deep subways can be. In both cases the limits are about 100 feet. It’s easy enough to roof over platforms so they remain clear of ice or snow. In fact, in theory if you have platform edge doors you can have elevated platforms totally enclosed and even heated or cooled. That also prevents litter from dropping on the street below. And if snow accumulating on tracks is an issue, you could probably roof over the entire structure, perhaps even use a concrete tube where the trains run inside.

I’m not sure noise would be a major issue with new elevated structures, especially in you enclose them as I described.

Of course, we could also opt to build subways, which I personally prefer anyway. The downsides are cost, construction time, and if building in low lying areas potential to flood.

In the end, this discussion is probably moot anyway. The reality is that NYC not only won’t expand the subway, but will let it deteriorate to the points of uselessness, much as was the case in the 1970s. We’re already seeing a decrease in MDBF. Trains are frequently late. Stations are overcrowded. Eventually we’ll just perform triage on the system, shutting down the lesser used portions first so we have money to keep the rest going. When the next Sandy hits, we won’t even have that.

There are railway viaducts up to several hundred feet high. Grades are not necessarily steep. Not sure why they would be in NYC, either, given that such a thing would remain high, not go up or down. Also, subway trains have all wheels powered. They can climb much steeper gradients than locomotive-hauled stock.

The Smith 9th Street station is 87 feet above street level. This is roughly how high I imagine you might need to go with a hypothetical el running above typical buildings in the outer boroughs. We’re not talking about megastructures hundreds of feet high although that would certainly be fascinating if we had a good reason to building that high. I could envision some sort of Manhattan “skyway” running perhaps 1500 feet above the street in some alternate reality where such a thing made sense.

Of course you could run it over a road. The issue is the usual NIMBY objections. I suppose those would exist if you ran it midblock, but my guess is they might be less. I think it’s fair to say quite of bit of our existing NYC infrastructure, both elevated highways and els, probably couldn’t be built in today’s NIMBY climate.

And yes, it would look like your first picture if built above an area with short buildings. Incidentally, similar reasoning might apply to my bike viaduct concept. You might not necessarily strictly follow strict level. You might be lower where the street level is higher above sea level and vice versa, the idea being to even out the worst grades somewhat. For example, let’s say we built one on Union Turnpike. It might be 20 feet above the street at 164th Street but might be 40 feet high above Utopia Parkway simply to keep the bikeway more or less level. And you might start the long climb to Springfield Boulevard perhaps around 180 Street instead of in the low 200s. In the case of both bikes and railways, viaducts let you compensate somewhat for severe gradients at ground level.

As long as the bikeway had rails of some sort it probably wouldn’t be that frightening. Obviously something like this isn’t even remotely practical. I’m not even sure if we could build it with today’s technology. It is a nice thought experiment.

In the realm of more fantasy, my late father actually suggested building a bridge across the Atlantic Ocean. For cars no less. He didn’t get it that we couldn’t build 4 mile piers to the ocean bottom. Nor would it be practical on any level even if it could be built.

Can’t build a floating bridge?

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/transportation/article/Floating-bridges-of-the-world-2971885.php

Also, that would be a long drive.