Complex Numbers

Staten Island? Yes, It Is.

This one may not be too relevant unless you live in NYC. Or visit there a lot. Or are interested in transportation engineering and its associated politics. I meet two of these criteria, so here's an opinion piece from the New York Daily News.

The subway tunnel from the past to the future: 100 years ago today we started digging a connection between Brooklyn and Staten Island that should be finished  

For the uninitiated, NYC has five boroughs: Manhattan, an island (with a very small exclave on the mainland—interesting story there); Queens and Brooklyn (part of an island); the Bronx (mainland); and Staten Island (take a wild guess).

SI is kind of an outlier there; it's more residential and easier to access from New Jersey than from the rest of NYC.

It might help to take a look at a subway map,   (found on Wikipedia), though remember, this is not to scale or up to date. That blue route on the shamefully miniaturized Staten Island is not directly connected to the rest of the system.

The very elegant invitation before me, with the seal of New York City, is for 4/14/23 and reads “Breaking of ground for the Brooklyn Shaft” [of the Staten Island to Brooklyn subway]. But it’s not today; it was 100 years ago, April 14, 1923!

For reference, the famed subway system in NYC opened in 1904, so they were considering connections to Staten Island within 20 years of its initiation.

It's also not entirely a "subway," as much of it runs at or above grade. That 1904 date refers to actual underground subway.

Obviously, this 1.5 mile subway extension of the now R train never got built — although about 150 feet of the aborted tunnel lies under Brooklyn’s Owl’s Head Park. It was hailed as a brilliant idea then and frankly it remains a brilliant idea today.

Reminder: opinion piece.

Not only does Staten Island, a borough of a half-million people, not have a subway, to no surprise it has the highest share of vehicle trips of any borough, matching that of many suburbs.

Half a million sounds like a lot of people (and it is by some standards), but the total population of NYC is about 8.5 million.

As for vehicle trips, because of its lower density, parking is sometimes actually possible in SI, unlike the rest of the city. There is an extensive bus network in the borough, though.

Also, some people consider it a suburb, while Jersey City is jokingly referred to as an honorary borough.

If we turn back the clock to the dawn of the last century, civic leaders envisioned a unified metropolis of the five boroughs that merged into one city in 1898. In 1900, the president of the Citizens Association of Richmond, David Tysen, lamented that transit from the island hadn’t improved in a half century — a familiar plaint to Staten Islanders of today.

Explanation: Richmond is the county; Staten Island is the borough and the island's name. Don't ask me what's up with all the naming confusion; I don't live there.

Since 1900, there have been some improvements, like the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge connecting SI with Brooklyn... for vehicular traffic.

In 1923, groundbreakings were held in Brooklyn and Staten Island. But, bickering by civic leaders as to whether the tunnel would be for freight and/or people delayed the project through the Depression and then World War II. By 1945 the plan was dead. Instead, four bridges were built linking the island with New Jersey and Brooklyn, but for motor vehicles only.

With all the traffic delays that entails.

If you think this is a “tunnel too far,” remember every other borough has multiple subway lines, some going 10 or more miles deep into the outer parts of the boroughs.

By "deep," the author means "away from Manhattan," which is, of course, the center of the universe. Not that the tunnels are 10 miles deep. Just to clarify.

Considering how much the Second Ave. subway cost for a mile and a half tunnel, nearly $5 billion, I’d say roughly $3 to $5 billion would be enough.

I'd take that with a NYC-sized grain of salt. The 2Av doesn't run under a major shipping channel. Underwater tunnel construction is its own ball game.

Discussion of interborough transit would be incomplete without a mention of that mainstay of NYC culture, the Staten Island Ferry. Build a subway, reduce the need for the Ferry.

In 1993, nearly two-thirds of island residents voted to secede from New York. If city and state leaders continue to ignore “the forgotten borough,” we better get used to saying the four boroughs of New York.

Don't threaten me with a good time. And you're still going to have transportation problems because you're an island. Hey, maybe New Jersey would take you into its loving arms.