>>1326634They actually had decent reasons for demanding a viaduct.
>>1326794>>1327376>>1327572Listen up, y'all. None of you read anything about this.
First up, the "causeway that's already there" was built by dumbasses of the 19th century, trying to cash in on the dumbass incentive structures for railroads. It was used until the 1950s when, in addition to collapsing passenger numbers from freeway subsidies, the operators realized operating a railroad on a century-old causeway of unknown construction was a bad idea.
And that's implying the causeway wasn't damaging on its own. Environmentally, causeways are generally a bad idea because they block natural water flow. Half the white cedars in the swamp died because their water cycles were interrupted, and there aren't that many white cedars left in the world. Even as a hiking trail, the causeway floods frequently because the natural course of a river runs through it.
The environmental impact study was absolutely in the right to nix putting thousands of people on a train over a long dirt pile of indeterminate construction in the middle of a fragile swamp. All the "ballooning" costs that came after that are just reality sinking in.
