Back in the 1970s then-Mayor John Mandanici opined a solution for quicker access to Long Island that was met with incredulity: an underwater tunnel. A Montreal consulting firm, with a nod from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, embrace it as a solution to traffic misery. Hey, it’s only tens of billions.
More on this from the Hartford Courant:
Tasked with solving the Long Island Expressway bottleneck and handed $5 million to do it, a Montreal consulting firm offered its prescription last month: An underwater tunnel, a bridge, or some combination of the two, with a price tag ranging from $8.5 to $55.4 billion.
Two of the proposed termini are Bridgeport and New Haven, as detailed in the firm’s 82-page report released last month. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo referenced the tunnel on Jan. 3 in his State of the State address, the latest in a long string of statesmen to speak audaciously of a conduit spanning the Sound. “It would be underwater,” Cuomo said. “It would be invisible. It would reduce traffic on the impossibly congested Long Island Expressway, and would offer significant potential private investment.”
Full story here.
They can’t even build a bridge at Congress Street or a railroad station on the East Side. Now they’re talking about a tunnel under Long Island Sound? Another nonstarter.
This is a big, bold and grand idea! Now we only need big, bold a grand leaders to make it happen!