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A Descent Into The Tunnels Deep Under New York City
At first glance, what happens hundreds of feet below the streets of Manhattan has very little to do with finance, until one considers the depressed costs of housing along the warzone that has been the 2nd Avenue Subway line for the past five years, or the millions wasted each day due to traffic gridlock along construction zones, or the billions in overtime pay which unionized labor makes sure it gets paid by doing nothing most of the day and then working for a few hours at night.
The last is acutely relevant right now, because as we explained earlier, suddenly the fate of the December rate hike is in the hands of America's 6.4 million construction workers, tens of thousands of whom dig the countless tunnels deep under Manhattan.
Courtesy of Reuters, here is a glimpse of what is taking place right now deep under New York, and a snapshot of the people whose paycheck will determine whether Janet Yellen hikes rates by 25 bps next month.
The following photos show so-called "sandhogs" working in various tunnels in the East Side Access project, more than 15 stories beneath Midtown Manhattan where workers are building a new terminal for the Long Island Railroad, the United States' busiest commuter rail system, as seen during a media tour of the site in New York, November 4, 2015.
Two enormous caverns, each several city blocks long, will house eight tracks and platforms, serving an estimated 162,000 customers a day, officials from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said during a tour of the planned station on Wednesday. REUTERS/Mike Segar.
Source: Reuters, Mike Segar
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Dig underneath Goldman's headquarters like the Chinese dug under Saloons during the Gold Rush, maybe some loose change lying around.
looks like a perfect map for a boss fight.
162,000 people 15 stories under ground. Sounds real great during the inevitable power outages and trains stuck waiting around.
I'll probably never be within 1000 miles of the shit hole NYC, but if I did I'd stay far away from this engineering monstrosity.
Those tunnels DO have some potential for turrist attacks, perhaps the mother of all false flags. <<Oh shit, there goes Harlem>>.
geezus...what're they gonna do when it floods?
15 stories beneath the city? This would mean, not only it is the tunnel made of concrete, but it is also beneath bedrock.
I think you need only to see what they did during hurricane sandy to see how they would handle flooding (of course this was not the worst possible scenario).
Mmmmm Oh my God, stop ur fuckin' lyin - this is Hilary's birth canal.
Put a sand hog in your circle of friends.
Naw not faceplant, dipshit.
The one she came through, or the one between her legs......
I hope the engineers are smart enough to place the emergency generators above sea level. Placing the generators below sea level didn't work out so well for Fukushima, or humanity at large for that matter.
Constructions sites flood all the time. You punp out the water and move on.
No canned air during power outages. Good luck.
Bomb shelters.
Either Satan dug his way up or his worshippers are digging their way down.
Yes, bomb shelters, because if I were Russia or China N.Y.C. is #1 for a nuke.
>>>N.Y.C. is #1 for a nuke.
Maybe, but I can't help but think that the longer Lower Manhattan remains intact in its current role (sucking wealth from much of the population, and distributing it "upward"), the weaker the USA becomes.
Besides, if somone dropped a nuke on NYC, scores of innocent lives could be snuffed out.
Perfect timing to return to the vault, Fallout 4 comes out Tuesday-
https://www.fallout4.com/age-gate
Norfolk roads
San Diego harbor
NY harbor
Why does everyone miss the incredibly obvious?
Hoover or Glen Canyon Dam.
...or Lebensraum for the undesirables?
I'm wondering which one leads to the secret underground base of the Lizard people...
"Dig underneath Goldman's headquarters"
You'll find a direct path to hell. One of Satan's many businesses/store fronts.
I was in Nome Alaska in the 1970s when someone bought the last remaining saloon that hadn't been panned out underneath. Apparently in the old days a lot of the miners had raggedy pockets and lost a lot of gold dust and nuggets through the cracks in the floors. I would bet Goldman bankers have learned to hold on to every crumb!
When you live in a city so full of shit, you need some big tunnels to remove it all.
The planning for the Second Avenue Tunnel started in 1972 and work was halted around 1975, thanks to the city's budget crisis when Nelson Rockefeller became vice president. If Squeaky Fromme had not hesitated on September 21, 1975, Nelson would have become president. But what happened when Rockefeller became VP was that his brother David, head of Chase Manhattan, withdrew his offer to roll over NYC's $700 million in short term debt at 8 3/4% interest. Then Controller Harrison Goldin had refused this offer, asking for an 8 1/4% interest rate on the city bonds. Eventually, NYC had to pay 12% and came under the control of Wall Street looter Felix Rohatyn's Municipal Assistance Corporation, which hired connected incompetents by the score. To pay the MAC costs, NYC turned over its sales tax revenues to these thieves and laid off teachers and cops. Those teacher layoffs pretty much wrecked the school system. Once the Mafia's man in Brooklyn, Hugh Carey, became governor in 1975, the die was sealed. Banksters and associates of the mob ran New York. Martin Carey, Carey's brother, was the frontman for the Gambino controlled Vantage Petroleum gas station chain with stations on state roads, selling PCB contaminated gasoline. When Martin was not letting mob filmmakers use his Newport, R.I. mansion for porn movies. These crooks saw no need for a Second Avenue subway, it took too long to collect graft on it. Besides, unlike the carpenters, the sandhog union was not completely owned by the Mafia.
No part of your political diatribe is accurate. Second Ave subway was first proposed in 1907. Construction almost started in the early 1930s, but the Great Depression stopped it. Several other false starts never happened.
1972 they dug a few starter tunnels, then the city ran bankrupt. If you didn't have your head so far up your ass with liberal stupidity, you would know the spending problems were (and are) pervasive all over NYC.
NY State took control of NYC finances because the city was hopelessly bankrupt, not because of a few one off mistakes that the democratic propaganda committee told you to mouth off about. If any of that political crap were true, Ed Koch (democrat) would have fixed the whole thing in his first term. He didn't, because he couldn't.
You cannot spend more than you earn, year after year. Its called math you dipshit Obama loser.
Hey, it's the WTC gold! Pull it (underground).
Spending on long term infrastructure in a city that will be an ashen heap within 5 years.
What he said. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
What both of them said^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Tom Waits - 9th & Hennepin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlI7vaxBm9o
.
this is the crux of it.
preparing new world for elite and oigarchs after ww3?
Negative ! No place to run no place to hide for those fuckers.
Yeah, then we get to seal up all the entrances and exits.
My thought exactly! Bankers saved from the bomb...
East Side Access, Lol. 10.8 billion as of 2010 so 80,000 rich pricks coming in from the island have an easier time of it. That works out to 135 million a head. So worth it. Not.
errr, 10 800 000 000 / 80 000 = 135 000, unless the US has suddenly adopted the traditional meaning of the word "billion".
Shhh! If you aren't careful they will announce that their debt is now measured in metric billions not imperial trillions....
I don't know what would rile up the locals more - gun confiscation, or disposing of an antiquated system of measurement based on the length of a dead foreign monarchs body parts!
Common Core Award Winnah!!!!
It's a deal.
It cost $15 billion (1990s dollars) to build a 1/4 mile highway tunnel on Boston's waterfront.
To enter the tunnel from either side you must reduce your speed to 45 mph to accommodate the two steep ski ramps on either end. There are no more travel lanes than there were when the elevated road was there, and so the same traffic jams form. Tiles from the ceiling fall and kill people. The tunnel floods. The bridge that connects the tunnel to the other side of the Charles river is named after a dead gay activist that no one has ever heard of.
But real estate values are higher now that the elevated road is gone and tourists have a nice park to walk in.
#winning
It cost $15 billion (1990s dollars) to build a 1/4 mile highway tunnel on Boston's waterfront.
Probably one of the biggest construction boondoggles in USA in the last 50 years. Then when it was completed the steel anchors used to attach the concrete linings of the tunnel to the surrounding strata failed, dropping the panels into the tunnel. Isn't that special??
Actually, it was the epoxy adhesive, not the steel.
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?doc_id=227738
Panels fell. People died.
Wait, I think I saw this movie before. All the gold at the NY Fed was moved by truck to Canada.
Call John McClane, he'll know what to do.
YIPPIE KAY YAY MOTHERFUCKERS!!!!
This would really be a scream if Yellen hiked up 50bp instead.
We would need more popcorn. (with lots of butter &salt).
That would be dumping oh half a trillion in T-bills. lol
Fed Fat Finger.
http://cdn.meme.am/instances2/500x/2791691.jpg
Why can't the remaining usa do without the east/west coast again?
In our ignorance and sloth, we look to the coastal elites for guidance... and inspiration.
Maybe a benefit of rising sea levels. What a nice reset. Like flushing the toilet.
What would we do with all of the budget surplus when the War on Poverty lost most of its targets?
...'cause we can't unhook them?
1oz Silver American Eagles €12 @ EurGold
https://www.eurgold.eu/silver/silver-coins/american-eagle-1oz-silver-coi...
That;s nice.
How much does your sister charge for blow jobs?
How much does your sister charge for blow jobs?
With, or without, her dentures in??
My Great Grandfather was a sandhog. He was an Austrian/Italian immigrant. He was told that if he wanted to be a foreman he would have to change his name. He refused, but he was eventually made a foreman.
(Technically, he was an Austrian immigrant because he came before WWI. Anyone who came from his village after WWI was Italian.)
Südtirol, perhaps? (BTW, one of the nicest places on this planet.)
That's hands-down the most dangerous, difficult job in the construction industry. I think Local 3 sparkies are outrageously overpaid but the sandhogs earn every dollar of their pay.
Trivia: So many men were killed building the Hudson and East River tunnels by the Pennsylvania Railroad that they refused to keep records of those who died. Even the NYC Water Tunnel extension (which is over 500 feet below sea level in places) has had, on average, 1 fatalaty per 3500 feet of bore.
Ghostbusters II
Didn't the baddies in Die Hard 3 steal a load of gold via similar tunnels?
Perhaps that can be excuse if the vaults are found to contain not gold this time.
Why would anyone build this at such great cost IF sea levels are rising and with Manhattan being as low as it is? Ask a NY liberal and let the dissembling bullshit flow like wine.
Because, as we all know, the state will spend money on anything. Logical or not. Hence the term (and the actual practice) of bridge to nowhere.
You will have to rethink this line of reasoning.
A flood barrier between NJ and Long Island is already being talked about.
Think Venice, but larger. Much larger.
maybe they get the taxpayer to fund via taxes, under the premise it is a necessity infrastructure and then they have to pay to remove the spoils, which get sold on for even more profit. And all the companies are part of the same gang.
Modern infrastructure is not built above ground.
Heh! buddy!Get that cab outta here!We got a sewer line comin' through!
Yawn, arent these tunnels standard for large metropolitan areas? London has Crossrail, China is planning a 76mile tunnel between Dalian and Yantai...
this is nuthin, waiting for the pics of under the Denver Airport. some creepy stuff goin on there "they" say.. http://www.exohuman.com/wordpress/2013/11/denver-airport-secret-undergro...
this is nuthin, waiting for the pics of under the Denver Airport.
Don't hold your breath. The underground complex under DIA (called the "bunker" BTW) is part of the US "continuity of government" program and is above top secret. The engineering firm I used to work for had a large contract at that site during DIA's original construction in the 1990's and one of the things that was pretty much common knowledge was they were taking out WAY more soil and rock than could be accounted for from published plans for the facility. The other thing that was never explained were the massive cost overruns for the construction of the airport (in the billions, not millions).
Insiders I've talked to that worked there told me there are actual rail tunnels that connect the underground complex at DIA to other underground facilities in the southwest US, including a huge one under Dulce, MN. It's likely that a good portion of the unaccounted trillions spent by the Pentagon went to construction of bases like this.
The only way this kind of activity is remotely "cost effective" is if the rest of the country is subsidising the behaviour, i.e. someone else pays for it.
The question for you is if you think you should be subsidising the lifestyle of those who benefit from the results.
Get a grip!
In a country where - what is it? - 96 million working-age people don't have a job and tens of millions more are working at low-value low wage jobs far below their skill levels, you worry about the wasteful nature of building a modern transportation link for New York City? You're going to get down to calculating the cost per passenger per day and recoil from that, when the alternative is letting this city and the lives of those sand hogs go to ruins? What are you talking about? The social waste of leaving tens of millions idle absolutely dwarfs the cost of a project like this. And if your concern is the cost to your stash, your treasure, what use will that be to you when our civilization collapses?
Is it in you to be a human being who grasps and values the human cost of your little fortune and willingly pays your dues to keep the game going and keep it working for those sand hogs too?
Or are you just a Golem?
The only reasons NYC is still livable are the subway and pure drinking water. The EPA and the unions are now making sure it takes 50 years to build a subway line that used to take 4 years to build. I'd keep my eye on the reserviors and make damn sure that 3rd water tunnel gets finished before 8 million people are blackmailed by some other union thugs.
Some of the owners of the construction companys around NYC, they make less than their union operating engineers.
Man made fault line for next earthquake seperating east from west side of New York, New York, the City that never sleeps.
I thought I was looking at Chris Christie's colonoscopy.
Where are the homeless?
1 storm surge and everything is underwater.
So if 162.000 will be there on rush hour and this shit happens... THAT'S B MOVIE QUALITY MATERIAL!!!
When I was a very young man, I used to have to pass through NYC on my way to Groton/New London Connecticut. This was forty years ago, and I wondered then:" Who could live in such a shithole". No wonder I don't understand them, they are closer to being rats than humans.
I had the chance to take a tour of this project. There's one main room that is huge. You could have a football game in there and have 5000 people watch.
Great project. Complaining shouldn't be a knee-jerk reaction.
These guys are actually doing some real value added work, instead of being a waiter, bartender or bloody security guard.
The US should be heaving with such projects to replace 3rd world railroad systems with 21st century inter-state high-speed rail connections.
Par for the course on here nowadays. Just streams of negativity. At least this kind of story doesn't attract the religious nuts or white peckerwood trash.
Comments used to be the best part of ZH especially since most of the continuing streak of third-rate op-ed posters give a steady stream of hot trash takes because ZH doesn't have to pay them anything.
or bombshelters for the incoming!