Gateway to Fund Public Housing
Why Backers Say a New Tunnel to Manhattan Benefits the Broader Economy
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/07/nyregion/nyc-gateway-tunnel.html
Architect, New York
Twelve years to complete the Gateway project appears rather lengthy when similar and much longer and complex tunneling jobs are being finished elsewhere in far shorter times and at less cost.
No doubt some of the luxury of cost and time are required to get political support for the expenditure in the NY-NJ metro area with its distinctive skill at padding for interest groups deeply buried in the culture of Robert Moses-grade generosity for supporters.
Still, it is satisfying to imagine a Fiorello LaGuardia-grade time and money frugality for Gateway,
with the difference going toward affordable habitation for those unable to gain access to the booty for those well connected.
Say, starting with constructing affordable housing, schools, recreation, health care and such on the western side of Hudson Yards and forget about more luxury housing to sit empty of owners holding the towers for investment.
What a surprise if duplication of some of the best housing estates for workers in the city from the 1930s and 40s and 50s, with ample open space, was constructed above the transit boondoggle which provided the funds for doing the right thing.
That might dig MTA out the holes it has dug around the region with excessively costly and poorly managed transit facilities (and its palace of over-runs at its HQ, 2 Broadway).
Just maybe, a Gateway belt-tightening and sharing of funds for (Senator) Schumer Family Residences would burnish the tawdry riverfront into a brilliant co-star for (Senator) Javits Center.