Comment by bogomipz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bogomipz | Hacker News Reader

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>"I imagine infrastructure-based incentives will be popular in New York. Large tenants make big infrastructure possible. That enables further density, which means more jobs, more municipal budget and more demand for local commerce. Turning Amazon's HQ2 into the catalyst for building out Western Brooklyn and LIC infrastructure isn't a bad trade for the city"

What infrastructure is that exactly?

Long Island City and Greenpoint/Williamsburg have already been absurdly built up by developers over the last two decades.

It's hard to believe an influx of new tens of thousands of individuals to fill vacancies at Amazon is going to produce new train tunnels under the East River or new bridges over it. NYC already has large tenants - Google, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Verizon etc, and the city's infrastructure woes have worsened despite their presence.

I would also imagine that much of the gain in the local tax coffers by the additional work force will be offset by whatever tax deals the city and states extends to Amazon.

This is such a glib response.

- The G train can be elongated and run more often. Signal work can allow it to run more frequently with the F.

- The East Side LIRR extension can be expedited.

- The circumferential freight line can be restored to create a new transit line between Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx.

- The L train restoration can be expedited.

All these project are cheap and would increase the livibility of NYC outside of Manhattan, while also shortening commute time to LIC.

>"This is such a glib response."

It's ironic that you have chosen to call my comment glib when you offer nothing but "___ can be expedited." You can't get any more hand-wavey than that. Your comment is the very epitome of glib.

No they can not be "expedited." The highest priority for the MTA right now is upgrading the depression-era signaling, which even under the aggressive rollout that Andrew Byford is advocating will take 10 years. The L train shutdown is already being "expedited" the line will be completely shutdown for almost a year a half starting in a couple of months. You can't really "expedite" much more than that now can you? And even after the repairs its still the same single track tunnel it was before.

My comment was actually thought out and based on decades of observing growth and change in the city. Maybe you don't understand the meaning of the word "glib"?

Thanks for the shoddy dismissal and personal insult, I guess?

It took NYC one hundred years to finish the Second Avenue subway. The MTA is crumbling and can barely maintain the already existing service. The L train shutting down will be a huge blow to the functioning of NYC and if they could bring it back any faster, they would. I wouldn't count on a G extension anytime soon, or on the L repairs magically being expedited.

It's almost impossible to overstate how important the L train is. It is the main artery into the city for absolutely enormous swaths of Brooklyn.

Ferry transportation is also becoming mainstream

Ferry transportation doesn't scale to tens of thousands of commuters though. I think.

The system island ferry carries 70k per day [0]. The San Francisco ferries do almost 10k per day [1].

[0] https://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/225-17/mayor-d...

[1] https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2017/08/07/vid...

Do the people downvoting this live in NYC? It has massive infrastructure problems.

I took njtransit every day for the last 3 years. It has massive delays, cancellations, derailments, manpower shortages, etc, all the time. Probably at least twice a week you should expect a major delay. (an extra hour kind of delay)

The Subway also has major problems. It's falling apart, chronically late and costs a fortune. But there's no money for fixing it.

They're shutting down the L-Train next year, the main train you take from the most popular places in Brooklyn.

Commuting in NYC sucks and you shoud expect it to get worse.

> Commuting in NYC sucks and you should expect it to get worse.

The secret is to move to Jersey and take the NY Waterway ferry. $272/month, including bus transit on both sides if you need it. While your boat may occasionally be 5 minutes late (like every other mass transit option), they almost never shut down.

I can't speak to the East River Ferry.

I agree with the "move to Jersey" part, but NY Waterway is a truly terrible company.

They fraudulently overbilled the government for ferry services they provided after the 9/11 attacks. Really profoundly sick behavior. [1] [2]

More recently, they've sold their Weehawken depot to a developer -- and then used their lack of a depot as an excuse to shadily land-grab space in Hoboken. They're threatening to put an industrial refueling depot in a spot surrounded entirely by parks, housing, and a university. [3] [4]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/18/nyregion/ferry-operator-i...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/18/nyregion/18ferry.html

[3] https://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2018/01/hoboken_mayor_bl...

[4] https://betterwaterfront.org/?p=7820

I agree that it’s a shitty company run by a real life Montgomery Burns. But that whole dispute over the “land grab” strikes me as sour grapes.

Union Dry Dock has been courting buyers since at least 2000 when the Stevens Institute planned to buy it. If it was so important to the city of Hoboken, why didn’t they just buy the land in the intervening decade and a half?

Seems to me that the residents ought to be taking their own local government to task here. It’s like they were holding off indefinitely, under the assumption that they could avoid spending the money, then swoop in when someone else tries to buy it. And then their plan bit them in the ass.

My understanding is that NY Waterway's execs previously owned the Weehawken land where their current depot is, but chose to sell to a developer. Their entire predicament seems to be tied to this decision, of their own making, which they profited from.

Meanwhile in 2017, when Union Dry Dock announced they were winding down their business, Hoboken tried to buy the land, but they could not come to an agreement. Ditto for multiple previous attempts by Stevens, private developers, etc over the years. The value of some of these offers exceeded the amount eventually paid by NY Waterway!

And now the only reason Hoboken can't use eminent domain is that NY Waterway convinced NJ Transit to swoop in and buy the land from them. As a state agency NJ Transit is immune to municipal eminent domain. Yet, NJ Transit does not operate ferries, and never has, to my knowledge. And NY Waterway's execs have state lobbyists and make extensive political donations [1]. This smells corrupt.

[1] https://betterwaterfront.org/?p=7797

Yeah, I'm not sympathetic to either side. And while I have very strong feelings about using eminent domain against private citizens, I'm much less likely to object to it being used against a corporation (though I guess that ship has sailed thanks to the deal with NJ Transit).

From a legal and due process perspective, I'm ambivalent as to how the situation shakes out. There's been enough foolish, lazy and/or shady behavior on both sides that neither has much ground to stand on.

As far as my personal feelings go, I'd rather not see a refueling station built there, but nobody asked me.

Don't forget the best effect of all: even more insane housing prices!

Seriously, Amazon, kindly fuck off somewhere.

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