Tunnel Vision
When Governor Christie decided that it was a bad idea to build a new rail tunnel underneath the Hudson River, he made it seem like the project figured to become the region’s answer to the Big Dig. That infamous federally funded highway-tunnel project in Boston was budgeted at $2.8 billion in 1982. The final cost was more than $14 billion in 2007.
Mr. Christie insisted that the so-called ARC tunnel (as in Access to the Region’s Core) would cost billions more than the federal government’s estimate of about $8.7 billion, and that New Jersey would have to pay for 70 percent of the project’s cost. So he abruptly cancelled the state’s participation and effectively killed the idea of replacing the antiquated, century-old tunnel that Amtrak and New Jersey Transit currently use.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office recently released a report that indicates that the governor’s posturing was more about politics than it was about accountability. Read More
