Reply #4: And still more

[nonperson]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-03/christie-killing-new-york-tunnel-erases-wages-risks-montclair-property.html

Christie Scrapping Tunnel Brings $5 Billion Wage Loss, Threatens Montclair
By Dunstan McNichol and Terrence Dopp - Nov 3, 2010 6:07 PM ET

"Governor Chris Christie cut off New Jersey from $5 billion in New York-based salaries and diminished its future role in the world’s second-largest regional economy, according to government data and former state Commerce Commissioner Gil Medina, by ending construction of a Hudson River rail tunnel he said taxpayers couldn’t afford.

The first-term Republican canceled the $9.8 billion tunnel, the country’s largest federally supported infrastructure project, on Oct. 27. New Jersey, which already faces a $10.5 billion budget deficit next year, couldn’t accept a “blank check” on cost overruns that might exceed $5 billion, said Christie, 48.

Christie’s move means the state will have to repay the U.S. government $350 million already spent on the project, forgo $3 billion in additional federal aid and lose the 3,000 construction-worker openings the tunnel was projected to generate for the next decade. Canceling the tunnel will also cost New York and New Jersey 44,000 jobs and $4 billion in additional income that would have come through economic growth, according to a 2008 study by New Jersey Transit.

“This tunnel project is vital to the long-term health of the region and to New Jersey,” Medina, executive managing director for real-estate firm Cushman & Wakefield, said in a Nov. 1 telephone interview from his Secaucus office. “We have to allow for an efficient flow of people, goods and materials through the region.”"

Read the rest at the link.