PRESS RELEASE
Solution for New York Transportation Collapse: World Land-Bridge
June 4, 2017 (EIRNS)—The rail transportation network of America’s number-one urban region, the New York Metropolitan Area, is near collapse.
Only months ago, when California’s Oroville Dam—the highest in the nation—began to suffer catastrophic damage which threatened disastrous flooding, the Homeland Security Department and other agencies mobilized with round-the-clock, well-equipped workforces to repair the dam.
But in New York, an entire public transportation system, a century old and completely overloaded, may simply break down, threatening great harm to the American economy and the people of the region.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is forming a Task Force to attack the metropolitan area transportation breakdown, whose 14 members (below) include two current and one former Congressmen.
Cuomo’s own proposals center on changes of management of Penn Station (state takeover and design-build-repair); a private contractor to manage Amtrak operations at Penn Station; combining Penn Station with the adjacent Farley Train Hall for Long Island Railroad traffic; and eventually, the building of a new freight-rail tunnel under the Hudson River, the Gateway Project which is considered a national priority.
Also, "Governor Cuomo is proposing The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) Genius Transit Challenge, a competition to reimagine the solutions to the systemic challenges with the subway system."
Rail transport expert Hal Cooper, who has created designs for many of the projects of the Schiller Institute’s "World Land-Bridge" and now China’s "Belt and Road Initiative," has already mapped out a New York area solution in detail. Cuomo’s proposal for this massive heart failure is to concentrate solely on the heart—Penn Station. But Cooper’s plan is like a skilled surgeon’s "quintuple arterial bypass" to make all the New York area’s main rail networks open and continuous with each other; and to lead out potentially into high-speed rail networks going north to New England and New York, south toward Washington, and west to the Midwest—and to network the region’s three major airports.
But whether this precise plan, and/or others being reviewed by EIR, this will have to be a national priority crash program for the New York area. It will take many billions in Federal credit—a national bank—along with state funds. And it must be done quickly, using the most advanced rapid transit technologies whereever possible across the system.
That means doing this crash rebuilding program jointly with the national "champion" companies in building high-speed and metro transit systems. It should be a Belt and Road Initiative project with China.
Governor Cuomo’s task force members are: Matthew J. Driscoll, commissioner, New York State Department of Transportation; Rep. Peter King; Kevin Law, president, Long Island Association; real estate magnate Richard LeFrak; Joe Lhota, senior vice president of NYU Langone Medical Center; Rep. Jerrold Nadler; former Congressman Charles Rangel; Steve Roth, CEO of Vornado Realty Trust; John Samuelsen, president, TWU Local 100; Tom Wright, president, Regional Plan Assocation; Carl Weisbrod, senior advisor, HR&A; and members to be nominated by New York City, Nassau and Suffolk Counties.
