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by JumpCrisscross 53 days ago
> haven't done the math, but I wouldn't be surprised if cost/passenger over useful lifetime still shakes out better for the trains

In Manhattan? I honestly would. If it were a nation, it would be the 22nd-largest economy. Any disruption to that system is massively expensive.

I'm not saying we shouldn't do the math. But we also shouldn't be reaching conclusions without attempting it.
1 comments
timcobb 53 days ago
People disrupt Manhattan for novelty (eg. marathon) and civic/political (eg. no car zones) purposes all the time. Manhattan is hardly a purely reasonable place, in fact it's far from it. All kinds of nonsense takes place in nyc all the time. If nyc was driven by cold economic reason it would be boring and lame compared to what it is today.
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JumpCrisscross 53 days ago
> People disrupt Manhattan for novelty (eg. marathon) and civic/political (eg. no car zones) purposes all the time

This isn’t in the same category as burying a new train line. I lived around just the Hudson Yard water and electric expansions when those happened. It was years of increased noise, traffic and litigation.

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djeastm 53 days ago
Sure it was bothersome, but it didn't seem to cause the city to collapse into itself, either.
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JumpCrisscross 53 days ago
> it didn't seem to cause the city to collapse into itself

Straw man. Nobody claimed these were existential threats.

OP said "I wouldn't be surprised if cost/passenger over useful lifetime still shakes out better for the trains." I'm saying I wouldn't be surprised if the opposite came out–take the costs of the disruption and time value of money into account, and building a new train line anywhere in Manhattan is a worse use of resources than (a) increasing capacity on existing lines, a veritable forest of low-hanging fruit or even (b) eVTOLs.

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timcobb 52 days ago
> Nobody claimed these were existential threats.

Strawman: yes, but the point stands in its milder form that noise etc isn't substantial economic disruptive.

But yeah the reality is that no one is going to be digging in NY substantially soon/ever because if you look at precedent that's been the case for the last 100 years. And building a tunnel to JFK would be huge

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