Extension of the Hudson River Tunnel Project
The Hudson Tunnel Project is an infrastructure project developed by the need for redundancy and stability in rail tunnels crossing the Hudson River. One of the main problems that needed a solution arose when Hurricane Sandy hit, it halted all travel for 5 days due to the abundance of seawater. This caused many issues financially and socially. In addition to the tunnel’s extended use and age, while the tunnel is still usable, the tunnel is in relatively poor condition. The Federal Railroad Association with NJ Transit and the Port Authority of NY have developed a project to not only restore the existing North River Tunnel, but also create a new tunnel under the Hudson River that doesn’t replace the North tunnel, but simply allows for redundancy to prevent overuse, as well as if there are any emergencies in one tunnel, the other can still be in use.
The Hudson Tunnel Project is pretty far into development, while it hasn’t been constructed yet, most of the design work is finished as well as they just finished environmental studies on the project so it can be approved for construction. We then looked into ways we could further improve the reach of this project. After studying the usability of Penn station in conjunction with the new Moynihan station including the port authority bus terminal, we focused on finding out how much travel occurs within those blocks in a variety of manners including walking, cycling, driving, subway usage, train usage, and bus usage. While the new tunnels help the rail usage, we thought that could be extended further into allowing another level specifically for public transport buses as well, as buses into New York City are also very common, and are often the less expensive option for the everyday commuter.
The first part of our proposal is to extend the new tunnel (not the existing one getting refurbished) for rail and bus-only usage. A precedent looked at for this was the Underground Bus and Train project in Queensland, Australia. While this project is similarly not completed yet but is in the approval phase after environmental studies, it is one of the first of its kind that are combining rail and bus in a double-decked tunnel. However, projects have been completed using multiple modes of transport for years, including the George Washington Bridge in New York City separating cars and buses partially, as well as the Waterfront Project in Seattle Washington where the road along the waterfront was rebuilt including a new street that has dedicated lanes for transit and ferry queueing, as well as a bike path and raised pedestrian crosswalks. The new tunnel would then provide redundancy for the bus and the rail lines reaching a wider audience to ensure there are no delays.
Existing Station PlansProposed Station PlansExisting City PlanProposed City PlanThe second part of the proposal involves consolidating how the buses and trains would access the tunnels, by removing Port Authority’s current location, and putting the bus slots underground near the current rails accessible by the Moynihan Waiting room, so patrons could access both the rails and the buses from the one waiting room. Most of the bus usage would then mimic the trains, the buses would then park if needed to wait or be stored on the block next to the rail yard, as well as the buses would exit the underground similarly through a new tunnel/path that would either bring them into New York City traffic to potentially go North or otherwise get on highways or access the river tunnel to cross the river.
The existing Hudson River Tunnel project seeks to create redundancy in the current ways to cross the Hudson River with exclusivity to the rail lines while improving the quality of some of the current routes. The proposed extension to the project not only seeks to keep these goals but expand upon the to include additional bus line access, as well as simplifying major public transport into and out of the city, which also simplifies access to the tunnels as well.
