Portal Bridge funding is a pyrrhic victory

A few days ago, the New York press was abuzz about a report that Trump has agreed to let the Portal Bridge North project obtain federal construction funds. This project would replace the drawbridge that carries the Northeast Corridor over the Hackensack River between Newark, NJ, and New York City with one that is high enough to not need to open. Make no mistake, Trump has been playing political games with infrastructure. Replacement of the existing drawbridge with a fixed bridge is a worthy project. But securing federal funding would be one battle won in a war New York is losing with itself.

As has been extensively chronicled, no urban area on earth is getting less transit construction per dollar than greater New York. Even though the available examples of rail bridge project costs are fewer in number and less well compiled than metro and rail tunnel projects, the data points still suggest a substantial New York premium. The asking price of $1.8 billion for 2.3 miles of construction is double the per mile cost of replacing the Crum Creek viaduct, which carries the SEPTA Media-Elwyn Line over a deep gorge. Worse still, the Portal Bridge North cost includes approach spans that are comparatively easy to construct, whereas the Crum Creek project limits are entirely within the canyon. Overseas, the Erasmusbrug in Rotterdam cost around $550 million per mile in today’s dollars. It carries an urban boulevard with four road lanes and a tram line and has a movable span. The Po River bridge along the Milan-Bologna HSR line cost $70 million per mile, including approaches. The Portal Bridge North cost of nearly $800 million per mile would, nearly everywhere else in the world, suffice for an under-river tunnel.

In contrast to the Hackensack crossing, the new tunnel proposed to span the Hudson remains mostly unfunded. Like Portal North, the asking price reaches highs seen nowhere else in the world to date. The tunnel proponents are asking $9.5 billion for 2.7 miles of tunnel from North Bergen to Penn Station. By contrast, the tunnels and systems for the Second Avenue Subway Phase I cost around $500 million/mile. Tunnels and systems on London’s Crossrail project, which spans the Thames twice, cost $400 million/mile. Both of those projects suffered significant schedule and cost overruns. The Transbay Tube connecting San Francisco and Oakland cost about 40 % more than the corresponding segments entirely under land, whereas the Hudson tunnels are to cost sevenfold more per mile than the Second Avenue ones.

Politically, if New York and New Jersey want to feed the narrative of Trump swooping in to save the day, taking the money for Portal is the perfect way to do it. He will be able to say he saved the incompetent New York/New Jersey bureaucracy from itself, and in that regard he will largely be right. Excusing away poor yield per dollar by pointing out that the Northeast states are “donor states” is also not politically tenable. While the Northeast certainly receives less in federal benefits than the tax money it sends to Washington, the end result is in large part exactly the downward redistribution of wealth to the relatively poor interior states that the dominant Northeastern political ideology—and the one offered up to “resist” Trump—claims to, and should, espouse.

Instead of relying on a couple of tweets on which our mercurial Commander-in-Chief can renege on a dime, the New York infrastructure sector needs to work on increasing its yield per dollar. The available evidence suggests a substantial premium that cannot be explained by geography or the political complication of a densely populated, high-cost union stronghold. Moreover, California has coaxed substantial sums out of the Trump Administration for transit construction. It strains credulity to deny that their relatively high yield per dollar did not factor into their relative success. The tunnels on the Los Angeles Purple Line are to cost $500 million/mile, and the overall cost is just over $1 billion/mile. Compare that to the $3.5 billion/mile asking price for the Second Avenue Subway second phase, the tunnels for which are partially in place.

The good news is that the project management just has to improve yield per dollar to the low end of that experienced elsewhere to make the Hudson tunnel and the larger Gateway Program work. Just achieving the productivity realized under Second Avenue would build the tunnel for $1.4 billion. Clearly, something about Amtrak’s project management methods increases costs far beyond what even the famously inefficient MTA incurs. It’s time to figure out what that is and do the hard work of fixing it.