Boring, A Tunnel

It kind of sucks that the largest, most expensive public works project in New York City history is unseen by most of us:

It is the biggest public works project in New York City’s history: a $6 billion water tunnel that has claimed 24 lives, endured under six mayors and survived three city fiscal crises, along with the falling and rising fortunes of the metropolis above it.

Yesterday, the city’s Water Tunnel No. 3 reached a major milestone, as workers completed the excavation of an 8.5-mile section that connects Midtown and Lower Manhattan to an earlier section under Central Park. The tunnel is a multi-decade effort spanning four stages; yesterday’s announcement signifies the end of excavation for the second of those stages.

It was a major step forward for the tunnel, which was authorized in 1954, begun in 1970 and then halted several times for lack of money. The completion of the second stage will nearly double the capacity of the city’s water supply, currently 1.2 billion gallons a day, and provide a backup to two other aging water tunnels, allowing them to be closed, inspected and repaired for the first time since they opened, in 1917 and 1936.

“Future generations of New Yorkers will have the clean and reliable supply of drinking water essential for our growing city,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said, before he descended 550 feet into the city’s lower bedrock and sat at the controls of a 70-foot-long tunnel-boring machine, as it excavated the last eight inches of quartz, granite and silica.

Since 2003, the giant excavating machine’s 27 rotating steel cutters, each weighing 350 pounds, have chipped through the bedrock at a rate of 55 to 100 feet a day, more than double the 25 to 40 feet that could be excavated each day under the old drill-and-blast method.

For further discussion: “Tunnel Vision” (Popular Mechanics, April 2005).

De Facto Termination!

This will interest only about five people who go to Target on the weekends, but G apologists are openly speculating that the MTA is quietly implementing a “de facto termination” of G service into Queens:

The G train has been called the “stepchild” of the MTA.

It is the only line that doesn’t pass through Manhattan. It runs with just four often-crowded cars per train between Brooklyn and Queens. The trains lack a conductor. Portions stink from sewage that leaks from pipes onto the tracks. It runs its full route only after sunset and on weekends — when it’s not shut for track work.

Sometimes, it even runs in two segments, forcing a transfer.

Still, thousands of people, especially in booming Williamsburg and Greenpoint, depend on it. But the MTA is calling for unspecified subway service cuts in 2007, and G-train riders fear the 13-station Queens Boulevard segment will get axed.

“At this time, we do not know which lines will be affected by cuts,” said MTA New York City Transit spokesman James Anyansi. Specific cuts, if any, will be announced by the end of the year.

Advocates say that the MTA should consider adding train service, given the population boom in the neighborhoods the G serves.

“It really shows a lack of foresight on the part of the MTA,” said Assemb. Joe Lentol (D-Brooklyn). “Greenpoint is becoming a major site of redevelopment on the waterfront.”

Some MTA board members suggested that might be possible, but that’s not reassuring enough for Teresa Toro of rider advocacy group Save The G.

“They’ve already done a de facto termination,” she said.

She was referring to ongoing work to replace Queens tunnel road beds on the G, which runs from Red Hook to Forest Hills. That work has meant no weekend G service between Long Island City and Forest Hills since January. Disruptions will continue until at least Aug. 14, MTA officials say.

On weekdays, the G travels from the Smith-9th streets stop in Red Hook, to Court Square in Long Island City. On weekends and weeknights, it is supposed to continue to the last stop at 71st-Continental in Forest Hills.

There is, however, apparently movement towards extending the G deeper into Brooklyn:

Even though there’s a chance of a partial line closure, there’s actually talk of expanding the G by five stops in Brooklyn, some MTA board members said.

The southernmost G stop is Smith-9th streets in Red Hook. But after the last passenger departs the train, it has to pass five stations, down the F line tunnel to Church Avenue, where there’s enough room to turn the train around. Some MTA board members and rider advocates have suggested that the G simply keep picking up and dropping off passengers since it is going to Church Avenue anyway.

Backstory: G Love (And That Special Sprint); The Little Train That Couldn’t Get Any Respect; Ironic, Because Everyone Knows The G Never Comes.

Please Explain: Why Is That Manhole Cover Flying At My Head?

New York Magazine explains once and for all what happens when manhole covers explode:

The copper electrical wiring running beneath the streets is hung on the manhole walls and sheathed in insulation, which can crack and warp owing to age (many are 60 years old), chemical corrosion (a major culprit is road salt, which is carried down with rain), or hungry rats.

Cables carry an average of 13,000 volts. With demand up, the cables have to carry more power and begin to heat up. This heat, coupled with the electricity leaking through the cracks in the wiring, starts to burn the insulation.

Carbon monoxide, an extremely flammable gas, is released from the smoldering insulation and collects in the empty chamber; the cover is pushed up like a lid on a pot of boiling water.

An electrical spark can ignite the gas. This is surprisingly common: In one 24-hour period in July, the Fire Department reported 25 manhole explosions in Astoria. Not all result in the covers being shot into the air: That depends on how much gas and electricity is involved. But some covers have been flung over 50 feet.

Will The Outages Ever Cease?

Con Ed can’t get a break as the power goes out in Staten Island, affecting 16,000 “customers”*:

The latest power failure occurred as the utility and the city braced for a second summer heat wave that could endanger a fragile electrical network in Queens that is still being repaired.

The power failure on Staten Island began at 4:15 p.m. when three overhead lines were damaged — just 12 hours after Con Ed announced that electricity had been restored to the last customers in the Queens blackout. Around 10 p.m., Con Ed said, power was restored to all of its customers on Staten Island. The term “customer” includes residential and commercial buildings as well as households.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg canceled plans to visit Queens last night to go instead to the affected areas of Staten Island. “The good news is the temperature is reasonably cool and we do expect to get everybody back very soon,” the mayor said last night in a news conference at Dongan Hills.

The mayor further noted the difference between above-ground and underground power lines:

He took care to distinguish between the power failure on Staten Island, which uses overhead lines, and the blackout in Queens, which relies mostly on underground networks.

“This is a very different situation than existed in Queens,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “Here, when a cable is out, they know that everybody downstream is not getting power, so their estimates are very good. In an underground system, there are multiple paths to every house, so they don’t have a way of knowing.” In Queens it took Con Ed four days to correctly estimate the number of customers without power.

*And don’t let the terminology fool you — 16,000 customers could turn out to be a lot of people.

City To Foreign Coins: Drop Dead

Each year the Department of Transportation takes in hundreds of pounds of foreign coins inserted in city parking meters:

So numerous are the foreign coins that the city, for the past decade or so, has taken to selling them annually to the highest bidder. The latest batch — 700 pounds of foreign coins — is now on sale by the city’s Department of Transportation, which is accepting bids until 11 a.m. on Wednesday.

In the past, winning buyers have paid roughly $2 to $4 a pound.

“We’re not here to make a killing or a windfall,” said Anthony A. Alfano, deputy chief of meter collections. “We’re here to flush out the spurious coins that are not of value to the city. We don’t have the resources to pull out 3 Swiss francs, this and that. We’re not collectors here.”

Each day, the city takes in about 1.2 million quarters, or $300,000, in parking revenue, officials said. While multiple-space meters have coin-return slots, meaning they will not accept improper coins, the traditional single-space meters do not, so foreign coins end up with the quarters whether or not they are recognized as legitimate.

. . .

Although Canadian quarters, Dominican pesos and Greek drachmas have traditionally been quite common, a quick survey of coins from a 50-pound canvas bag that is part of the sale revealed money from at least 50 countries, with both current and obsolete coins of many sizes, metals and even shapes. (A square coin with rounded corners from Aruba was in the mix.) While it is easy to envision the voyage of a pocketful of change from, say, France or the Dominican Republic, countries that were well represented, it is harder to imagine the journey that coins from French Polynesia or Uzbekistan took to wind up in a New York City parking meter.

The denominations in this sample varied widely too: a 10-franc coin from West Africa, a 5-shekel piece from Israel, 50 centavos de lempira from Honduras, 10 kroner from Norway, 5 korunas from the Czech Republic, 25 cents from the Bahamas.

Most of the coins were about the size of a quarter, but some were much smaller (like a euro cent coin from Germany) and others much larger (a seven-sided 50-pence coin from Ireland, and now withdrawn in favor of the euro).

The highest face-value coin was a 2-euro piece, worth about $2.50. Some of the old Polish and Chinese coins, while worth tiny fractions of a cent in face value, if anything, were probably worth a few cents to a collector. Some of the coins were shiny and new and looked as if they had hardly been in circulation; others were so dirty and worn that few collectors would want them.