Sandy-damaged New York subway tunnel reopens
The recovery from Superstorm Sandy continues nearly two years after it devastated the Northeast, causing an estimated $68 billion in damage.
According to the New York Times, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority reopened the flood-damaged Montague Tunnel, which connects Brooklyn and Manhattan, on Monday after $250 million in repairs were completed several weeks early and about $50 million under budget. The shuttered tunnel had forced tens of thousands of straphangers to alter their commutes; an estimated 27 million gallons flooded the tunnel during Sandy.
"This isn't their usual m/o," said Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign, an advocacy group that represents transit riders, in an interview, adding that it "augers well" for a system that is in need of repair.
About 11,00 feet of track and 278,000 feet of cable were replaced in the century-old tunnel. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) and MTA Chairman Thomas Pendergrast rode an inspection train through the tunnel on Sunday, according to the paper.
"New York's transit network suffered more damage during Sandy than anyone at the MTA has ever seen in our lifetimes," Pendergast said in a press release. "The effort required to rebuild the Montague Tube was nothing short of heroic. It took more than a year of round-the-clock reconstruction in difficult conditions, but we have restored the train with a smoother and more reliable ride in a tunnel built to handle future climate risks."
Some residents and business owners in the affected communities continue to complain that government officials and insurance companies are moving too slowly to compensate them for their Sandy losses.
And the political reverberations from the disaster continue for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a potential 2016 presidential candidate. An audit released earlier this month by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development found that the state's "Stronger Than The Storm" promotional campaign that sought to assure tourists that they could visit New Jersey "did not fully comply" with federal competitive bidding requirements. Christie starred in the campaign.
According to the Associated Press, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has asked about 850 people to return Sandy aid that they were not entitled to receive. Many of those who have been targeted deny the accusations and can't afford to pay the money back, the wire service says.
"I lost my home. I lost everything. I don't have $17,000 to give back," Lindenhurst, New York, resident Gary Silberman told the AP.
Residents of the Jersey shore town of Ortley Beach also continue to struggle. Mike Kelly, a columnist with The Record newspaper recently spoke of " ... uncertainty about the financing of rebuilding, uncertainty about logistics and new construction codes and, most important perhaps, uncertainty about whether it is safe to continue to build on such vulnerable beachfronts."