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MTA & Port Authority Refute Trump's Lies About Crumbling NYC Tunnels
By
Rebecca Fishbein
Published Feb 28, 2017
Modified Feb 28, 2017
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By
Rebecca Fishbein
Published Feb 28, 2017
Modified Feb 28, 2017
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At a meeting with the National Governors Association yesterday, President Trump threw some shade at the United States' infrastructure, claiming that our "highways, our bridges are unsafe," and our tunnels—specifically the Lincoln Tunnel and the Queens-Midtown Tunnel—are so decrepit tiles and cement are literally falling from the ceiling and hurting people. Indeed, he told the crowd:
Our tunnels—I mean, we have tunnels in New York where the tiles are on the ceiling, and you see many tiles missing. And you wonder, you know, you’re driving at 40 miles an hour, 50 miles an hour through a tunnel. Take a look at the Lincoln Tunnel and the Queens-Midtown Tunnel, and you’re driving, and you see all this loose material that’s heavy. And it was made many years ago, so it’s heavy. Today, it’s light. It used to be better.
The problem is, you got to hold it up. And I say to myself—every time I drive through, I say, I wonder how many people are hurt or injured when they are driving at 40, 50 miles an hour through a tunnel, and the tile falls off. And there are so many missing tiles and such loose concrete. So we have to fix our infrastructure. It’s not like we have a choice. We have no choice, and we’re going to do it, and it also happens to mean jobs, which is a good thing.
Trump is in fact familiar with these tunnels, having shut down at least one of them during Friday rush hour to punish the blue staters who laughed at him at the voting booth. It's also true that Lincoln Tunnel is 79 years old and the Holland tunnel is 90 years old, and both require regular maintenance. But the world he depicts—one in which commuters are in danger of getting smacked in the head by a loose tile or crushed by caved-in walls—is about as realistic as a world in which sunshine blessed his tremendously well-attended inauguration speech.
Though there are loose tiles in the tunnels, the MTA says they are neither falling nor knocking commuters unconscious. "Not a single person has been injured by any falling tiles because no tiles are falling - they are being replaced by workers as part of an infrastructure project to repair the tunnel from Hurricane Sandy damage," Beth Defalco, MTA's director of communication, told reporters.
A spokesperson with the Port Authority added that the tunnels are doing just fine. "The tile structures in the various Lincoln Tunnel tubes are intact, regularly inspected and pose no danger to the public," the spokesperson said, adding, "In the last 12 months there have been no reported incidents involving falling tiles."
Trump has been touting his $1 trillion infrastructure plan since his campaign, though he hasn't done much to explain how he plans to fix the country's roads, bridges, airports, highways and tunnels other than to claim he will be spending "big." He seems particularly traumatized by the state of New York's infrastructure, having criticized La Guardia Airport over the years (not that he doesn't have a point!) And though, certainly, it seems important to upgrade the country's infrastructure, creating false disaster scenarios to justify an expensive plan is shady, to say the least.
Though, of course, that's just the world we live in now.
Tagged
donald trump
infrastructure
lincoln tunnel
MTA
Rebecca Fishbein
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