Quote:
Originally Posted by aquablue
I'm talking about in the distant future, not now, wise guy. If NY decides to up zone and re-develop Staten Island with large HY style projects (which I believe will happen some day down the road once other options are exhausted), and if land is needed for massive growth, the connection could be well worth it. Basically a new city within a city, a new CBD for NY. It would have to be tied in with a development plan. Something similar to that AECOM development plan for Red Hook that included a new subway tunnel.
Sooner or later Staten Island will be seen as the final frontier. Land is scarce in NYC and Staten Island is remarkably low density and underutilized. That's because it is inaccessible. The North Shore of the island has plenty of potential for massive redevelopment, but it just needs the connections to the current CBD.
The ride through Brooklyn to Manhattan from SI would be very long and if it were to be successful, just like HY, the place would need a direct connection to Manhattan. Anyway, the cost of tunneling in the future will most likely go down radically due to Elon Musk's new technology.
You ned to think big BrownTown. No bean counter stuff. What would Moses have thought of you? He wouldn't have been impressed.
Staten Island is obviously an island apart from the city of NY. To properly integrate it as a potential business hub you have to have transport that is adequate, and your plan of a line through Brooklyn wouldn't be that at all.
I believe you are the one who was against the CA HSR? If so, that tells me all I need to know right there.
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aquablue, believe me, in terms of thinking big, I agree with you. But take it from someone who grew up on Staten Island and who's family still lives there: the attitude of the residents of the island is and has always been largely anti-development.
Where in Manhattan you see large neighborhood groups protesting new taller towers, in Staten Island a small group of residents on a single block will protest the construction of a single new home or handful of homes if it's "out of scale" or "not a small-town feel." They also will stop development of open woodlands just because they're open woodlands. They'll get the city to stick a sign in the ground and call the unimproved land a "park." This is not made up, trust me.
Encouraging greater density near commercial and activity centers and transit hubs, sure. A new CBD in Staten Island will not be a thing, unless it's in the 2100s.
As far as transportation improvements, connecting to Manhattan with regular heavy rail will likely NEVER be feasible, they'll never recoup the astronomical costs of a project. Connecting to the R in Brooklyn would be feasible, but it would tack 45 minutes on to the trip from Bay Ridge, which is already extremely long.
My best suggestion for a real connection would be either of the following: to connect NJ Transit over the rail bridge across the Arthur Kill (close to and paralleling the Goethals). This bridge was recently reactivated for freight rail and can likely be easily outfitted to carry passenger traffic. At a higher cost you could construct a new line with a more direct path under the Kill Van Kull to Bayonne, with a Metro North style commuter livery.
The point is, the heavy rail standard of the subway is not going to be useful to Staten Island for the forseeable future. If not for construction costs, the genetic makeup of the island is unlikely to accommodate such a thing. What would benefit the island most would be a "Metro South" train with very limited stops between the island and Manhattan, possibly at locations where it will facilitate easy transfers to the subway system. If we're talking time savings (the BANE of every island resident's life), that's likely the best and most realistic idea.
cheers
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