>>1770503>>1797669Anyways, those guys have the receipts for the history of the line and even the restoration of it. The project isn't even that ambitious- they just want to get 7 miles done- about a quarter of the length of the original, with all of a single station in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere (Andover, NJ- pop. of around 6k, not really growing, either). As others point out- a lot of encroachment by adjacent landowners can really hold up rail construction and fuck a project sideways. So by trying for it on rural land, the idea is that it limits the obstruction. But even that shit's fucked, because some fucking farmer threw a fit about a culvert. Then some "environmental" activists blocked the construction of a train line in favor of cars, because there MIGHT be bats that don't yet have Whitenose disease in one of the railroad tunnels. Not even "are confirmed to be." NJTransit called the bluff by declaring the tunnel 'structurally unsound' even though it's fine, and intend to therefore blow it the fuck up practically out of spite. (Ah, politics.) But even then, how much of this was theater? How hard did they fight to actually get progress on this line moving ahead/along? How high a priority was it for the next governor? For the construction crews? For anyone? Well, we're still dithering, so at least one of these "stakeholders" seems incentivized to not really move their asses along with it.
Current progress: We've taken more than 11 years and have laid one mile of track.
God fucking knows how much it has cost, but I assure you, we've broken well past the cited figure when ground was broken of $36 million and well past the original completion date of 2015, with the current "estimated completion date" being "2035." 95% of the work was already done by the time they started work. Pathetic.
(Same station along the Lackawanna line, different angle)
