From the New York Business Journal:
South Ferry station repair estimate: 3 years, $600 million
The Manhattan subway station closed after Hurricane Sandy will take a lot longer to repair than originally estimated, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.
In November, officials tentatively assigned a $600 million price tag to rebuilding the station, and as late as mid-December there was still no timeline on the project. Now, Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials say they will secure contractors to rebuild the station sometime this year, and that full repairs could take as long as two more years after that, according to the Journal.
The $600 million estimate has not moved, the Associated Press added, specifying $350 million for 'physical repairs', $200 million to replace salt-corroded signals, $30 million for the station's third rail, and $20 million for 'line equipment'.
Well no problem then -- they can just take it out of their contingency fund. You know, the money that they set aside for events like this?
Wait - what? So they expect the rest of the United States to bail them out.
They built the infrastructure in the first place -- they should have provided for the occasional extraordinary repair.
And a very major gripe - so called "Hurricane Sandy" was not a Hurricane at all when it hit the US coastline. A Hurricane has to have winds of 74 MPH or greater (Force 12 on the Beaufort Scale). It was a Category 2 Hurricane when out at sea but weakened after crossing over Cuba and was a Tropical Storm when it hit New Jersey. This is not to belittle the horrible impact -- what made Sandy so bad was its size and the fact that it made landfall at the same time that a full moon was raising the tides.
