Blame Neglect For The East River Tunnel Saga

By Jim Mathews / President & CEO

Everything is tougher in New York. The current wrangling over plans now moving ahead to fix – finally! – the East River Tunnels damaged in 2012 by Superstorm Sandy is a perfect case study about why waiting to solve infrastructure problems only makes fixing them that much worse.

This week, everyone from New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D) to Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman (R), the Metropolitan Transit Authority, and even members of Congress told Amtrak that they needed to change their current three-year project plan to restore two of the four “tubes” that make up the East River Tunnel complex. Hochul bluntly demanded that Amtrak do more of the work at night and on weekends.

Trouble is, Amtrak kicked off the procurement for this work two years ago, awarded the construction contract last summer, and major construction is set to begin next Friday. From Amtrak’s point of view, it’s too late now to make radical changes to the plan or the carefully orchestrated schedule and nobody should be surprised by the current plans.

“Amtrak has coordinated with – and obtained approval from – MTA and NJ TRANSIT for East River Tunnel (ERT) rehab service plan several months ago,” Amtrak President Roger Harris said this week in a prepared statement. “In addition, MTA has approved the construction plans, designs, and supported the application for funding for this project – which has already been obligated by USDOT. The contractor is ready to start, as they were given Notice to Proceed a year ago and is already committed to a work schedule.”

Nobody would look at this situation, objectively, and argue that everything is fine. It is not. Many trains will be affected, and hundreds of thousands of riders will be inconvenienced. Whether on Amtrak, New Jersey Transit, or the Long Island Rail Road, passengers are going to feel the disruption for the next few years.

Unsurprisingly, everyone whose own ox has been gored is angry about the outcome. Hochul has heard from New Yorkers livid about the reduction in state-supported Empire Service trains between New York City and Albany (for the record, I'm a regularly affected rider. And I've heard from others, too.). LIRR is angry, too. Speaking as a native New Yorker myself, I agree it’s going to be a big mess. So do two of my adult children, who live and work in New York City. The problem is real.

But here’s the ugly truth – there was no outcome for this situation that was going to work well and make everyone happy, or make even a majority of people happy. None. Zero. Because when you wait 115 years to work on tunnels that are, together, effectively the carotid artery of the U.S. economy, the work is going to take a long time and prove to be too complex to manage in a way that keeps everyone moving seamlessly without any disruption.

The rancid nut of our problem: Other countries treat infrastructure maintenance as a core function of government and public safety. In the U.S., we wait until something breaks or becomes politically untenable, then scramble for funding and accept massive service disruptions as the cost of inaction.

Shortly after I arrived here at the Association in 2014, we published a nationwide map called “The United States of Underinvestment,” and distributed it widely on Capitol Hill. Eleven years on, and only four years after President Biden signed a far-reaching infrastructure law to begin to tackle this problem, we’re still unwilling to recognize that it took us more than half a century of neglect to get here, so it’s going to be painful to put things right, no matter what.

Storm surge from Sandy on October 29 and 30 of 2012 flooded much of the New York City Subway system, plus the ERT complex and many other tunnels as well. Saltwater intrusion accelerated corrosion and worsened safety concerns in the damaged tubes. While emergency patchwork has kept trains moving, the core electrical, drainage, and structural systems have continued to degrade. Full repairs are long, long overdue. But as aggravating as it might be, the fix requires closing parts of the system for extended periods — something that might have been avoided if maintenance had been steady and proactive all along.

We’re hardly the only country with old infrastructure. We are, however, nearly unique in our disregard for maintaining what we build. Contrast our neglect with how other countries deal with century-old railway tunnels.

In the UK, the 1841 Summit Tunnel remains in active use thanks to regular upgrades. In 2021, engineers refurbished the tunnel with new drainage systems and track work—planned in advance and executed with minimal disruption.

Or how about the Frejus Rail Tunnel linking France and Italy. That got built in 1871. But since it was built, it has undergone bore widening and modern safety upgrades while still serving both passenger trains and freight trains.

The 1884 Arlberg Tunnel was refitted during the 2010s with new emergency systems and escape passages. Work was phased in over time with coordinated closures.

Maybe the Arlberg approach is one we might all have arrived at here...if as a country we were serious about steady maintenance and regular refurbishment. Now, the tunnels are close to crisis and we face a truly unappetizing choice.

Could the East River Tunnel planning process and schedule changes been handled differently? Maybe. I don’t really know. I’ve spoken to a lot of earnest people who worked very hard at Amtrak and elsewhere to do the best they could to minimize the problems. They showed me their work. I was impressed by how thorough they were. Maybe they could have done better. Or maybe not. Everyone thinks they personally have the best answer...and clearly a lot of other people, including elected officials and transit managers, think those answers aren't good enough.

For my money, the real failure happened years ago, when we didn’t treat this 119-year-old structure like the backbone of a regional economy. If we had, this might just be another routine repair window—instead of a transit crisis.