Originally Posted by indyfabz

The East River Tunnel was only part of it. They had to tunnel under Manhattan to reach GCT. Two giant caverns deep underground that will each hold two levels of tracks. We had to walk down to the platform levels and back up. There were 17 landings on the stairway. Plus, construction came to a halt at one point for various political and funding reasons. You have to see the scope of this project to understand it. It even involves constructing access to new office buildings that haven't even been built yet. A couple of existing buildings are going to be razed and replaced, so they have to try to coordinate with the building designers to solve engineering issues that are unknown.

One really interesting issue is what sort of technology features should be built in. The MTA has actually been having discussions with people like Apple and Google to anticipate what technology will likely be the standard for years from now. Think back to the 1800s, when some canals were made obsolete by railroads not that long after construction was complete. Today's technology development moves even faster.

And it would be easy to build it cheaper and faster with slave labor and lax safety standards.