I worked in a tunnel crew in the summer holidays during my degree. It was interesting to see the cultural similarities and differences when I moved into programming. It is probably one of the few industries (at least in the UK) where the majority of the power is in the hands of the workers and not the managers. They were paid significantly more than the managers and broadly speaking the job went ahead on their schedule. Unlike in programming a mistake could cost one of your coworkers their life, which seemed to have something to do with the strong camaraderie, but did also lead to a deep suspicion of unproven outsiders (like myself for the first few weeks I worked there). I prefer to be able to experiment with things and I was a bit too much of a delicate flower to be happy in that environment. I wonder how much the culture in different industries arises from people with certain personalities self selecting into or out of them, and how much is the actual nature of the work changing you.

Ok, NYC transit has something I need to point out that freaking owns:

Express trains.

All across the US, municipalities keep building annoying light-rail systems and basic commuter lines. They have one class of train: stop everywhere and waste your time.

What NYC has that I love is express trains on almost every line. Want to go from Penn Station straight to JFK airport? Easy. Want to go from uptown right down to Wall St.? There's a train for that.

Most cities - and nations - could learn a lot from NYC being able to handle such a diverse set of schedules.

Now if they could only do something about the rats...

We have a similar subway project going here in Amsterdam called the North-South line. It's more than 8 years late, went over its budget multiple times, and is still not finished. City is completing it anyway and hopes it will start making money in ~3013.

Also the line's route is questionably useful to the locals. Somewhere someone is filling his pockets with an evil grin.

"To keep the soft ground from collapsing, engineers snaked coils of coolant through the soil to form a protective arch of frozen earth. That let crews work safely while traffic rumbled overhead. Cost: $1 million per foot."

I have mixed feelings... does the US know that many big cities in developping countries have better subways (automated, brand new, clean, without pee smell, ?). Officials should at least be motivated to fix the minimum: like digital display in wagons displaying the right stations... ;)

More details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Side_Access

My father-in-law is working on this project. I've been having conversations about this for a long time...great to see it in the press...

Seems a bit excessive just to shorten commute times for only 160000 people. Are there other benefits?

$8.24 billion for 7 miles of tunnel