If there is an emergency situation, where Long Islanders have to evacuate. (Think Hurricane.) Is this project worth $55 billion? I'd have to say Yes. However, I don't believe this is a legitimate amount. Someone is Lying.

Westchester to Long Island tunnel would cost up to $55 billion, study shows

CLOSE ALBANY - Gov. Andrew Cuomo this week pledged to continue pursuing a long-discussed plan to build a tunnel from Long Island to Westchester or Connecticut. But it won't come cheap, according to a state-funded study released Friday.

From article, (An 18-mile tunnel from Rye or Port Chester in Westchester to Syosset on Long Island would cost an estimated $31.5 to $55.4 billion, the study found.

A potential tunnel or bridge across the Long Island Sound has been debated for decades, with a state lawmaker first proposing one in the 1930s and the idea picking up steam with Gov. Nelson Rockefeller and master builder Robert Moses in the 1960s.

Various proposals over the years have raised concerns from Westchester residents and officials who fear a tunnel could increase traffic along I-287 and I-95, both of which already have plenty of congestion.

The study centers on various alignments between Oyster Bay, Kings Park and Wading River on Long Island; Rye and Port Chester in Westchester; and Bridgeport, Milford, New Haven and Branford in Connecticut.

 A single tunnel tube with two lanes each way between Oyster Bay and Rye or Port Chester, for example, would carry an estimated $31.5 billion price tag, according to WSP.

 A dual-tube tunnel with three lanes each way would reach $55.4 billion, while a bridge-tunnel hybrid would come in at $43.5 billion.

 A spokesperson for Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy did not immediately return a request for comment Friday.

Years of study are still needed before any tunnel proposal can move ahead, the study found.

At least five years would be needed for scoping and environmental reviews and approvals if Cuomo decides to move forward. After that, at least 1 1/2 years would be needed for the design phase.From there, a crossing could open approximately eight years after the start of construction, according to the study.)

Me, "First of all, there is no way this project costs $55 billion. I want to see the engineers who came up with that figure. You go overseas. You find a bunch of European/Chinese/ or Japanese companies who have built previous tunnels. You get two of them to design the tunnel. You fund one company to start on one end of Connecticut and another one that starts on Long Island. 
You pay them slowly over time, with rewards for each milestone they pass. The quicker they build the tunnel the more money they get. If they fall behind they don't get the rewards.
I am all for U.S. companies building this tunnel, but over time U.S. companies  have built up costs on design and costs on building. And a lot of them end up working for the DOT. You have to turn to the worlds construction companies and see who can build this tunnel on the cheap. As we have seen with the MTA: only two companies bid on jobs and this leads to run away costs. If a tunnel project like this was opened up to the world's best construction companies, U.S. companies would have to shape up or go out of business. 

$55 Billion? I want to meet the engineers who came up with that figure. They are either in the pocket of Unions waiting to benefit or they are engineers who do not believe in this project and are trying to sabotage the project before it even gets going.

Which is why the preliminary design for this project should not have been laid out by the DOT. A team of tunnel designers from Europe / China/ and Japan should have taken the engineering specs and given a pre-design proposal. The DOT is supposed to give a non-biased figure on how much a tunnel will cost. But did it take into account non-U.S. companies building the tunnel?" 

Will This (Helicopter?) Lead to The Affordable Flying Car?

Workhorse Gets Approved To Test Its SureFly Electric Hybrid Helicopter

There is something going on at Workhorse, and its latest press release hints at what the company is trying to do. After the announcement of its newest electric vehicle (EV) van, it is now announcing that the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has given it a green light to fly its electric helicopter, the SureFly Electric Hybrid Helicopter.

FAA OKs Tests Of The SureFly Electric Hybrid Helicopter

 From article, (The SureFly uses a drone-like octocopter design. The two-person, 400-pound payload aircraft has a range of roughly 70 miles. The appeal of the SureFly is that it is more affordable than a conventional helicopter, as well as easier to maintain.

As far as flying the SureFly, the system uses a joystick, much as you would use flying drone. Although early models will be manually piloted, future models will be autonomous.

Autonomous vehicles (AV) have been a hot topic for the past few years. Although some of the earlier projects have been throttled back (think Volvo’s enthusiasm in 2013 and how the company is now much more careful about the technology it hypes), Workhorse feels autonomous aircraft technology is nearly ready.

The company expects the SureFly to find use in agriculture, surveillance, aerial inspection, as well as emergency response tasks. What interests me is urban commuting, something that will need regulation on top of maturing the technology — and, of course, the coordination of this new type of traffic.

The price of a SureFly electrified helicopter is expected to be approximately $200,000, a fraction that of a regular helicopter. To give you an idea, an entry-level Eurocopter EC120 price will run around $1.4 million. The law enforcement ES350 and 350 B3 will run anywhere from $1.6 million to $1.9 million.

Although we’re still in the infancy of personal hybrid helicopters, drones, and other forms of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft, the price point and maintenance budget of such personal aircraft are becoming alluring. We imagine they will spawn a wave of more efficient air travel. As to how the technologies will become democratized is another subject.)

New Way of Discovering Exoplanets Announced.

New Method Aids Search for Dazzling Alien Worlds

A group of astronomers is using a new method to search for hard to spot alien planets: By measuring the difference between the amount of light coming from the planets' daysides and nightsides, astronomers have spotted 60 new worlds thus far. The researchers used data from NASA's Kepler space telescope to apply their technique.

 From article, (Traditionally, scientists have relied on a handful of methods to hunt for planets. One technique, called the radial velocity (RV) method, was the first to reveal a distant world, tracking how a massive planet can cause its parent star to wobble. And using another technique, called the direct imaging method, researchers snap photos of exoplanets, but that method can be applied only to large worlds orbiting far from their stars.

But thanks to the Kepler space telescope, the transit method rules the exoplanet roost. Over the course of its primary mission, which lasted about four years, Kepler revealed thousands of potential and confirmed worlds.

But the transit method of searching for exoplanets also has limitations. For a planet to block the light of its star, it must orbit along the line of sight between Earth and the parent star. For every planet Kepler has spotted, there are likely another 99 that it couldn't see, according to an estimate by astronomy blogger and astrophysicist Ethan Siegel. That's an awful lot of missed worlds.

Millholland and Laughlin weren't content to leave all of those planets hidden. They used the Kepler data to look for worlds lit up by their parent stars, just like the sun lights up the face of the moon and the planets in our solar system (which is why planets in our solar system look like "stars" in the night sky). When an alien planet is on the near side of its star, it radiates a dim light from its nightside (from retained heat), and when the exoplanet is on the far side of the star, it reflects light from its parent star (the dayside). If those variations appear in the Kepler data, they can reveal a planet's presence.

After ensuring that the program could identify already-known, hot gas giants by their glow, the researchers turned their program loose on over 140,000 Kepler stars. The new technique turned up 60 previously unidentified gas giant candidates that don't transit their sun. 

Due to limitations in its precision, Kepler can hunt only for the glow of close-in gas giant planets — the so-called hot Jupiters. Future instruments with increased precision could extend the method to smaller worlds, Millholland said.

Compared to the dazzling searchlight glow of a star, the glow from a planet is extremely faint. Stellar activity, such as sunspots and flares, have the potential to give false positives in the search for planets. That's why, Millholland said, any detections made with the new method should be followed up with RV-method measurements; they have not yet used RV to follow up on the 60 detections reported in the new study.)

Me, "As time progresses, new methods for discovering exoplanets are discovered. Exoplanet discovery really is an amazing an advancing field because it teaches us so much about how planets form, what are they made of, can they hold life, and what are the major kinds in the universe. This knowledge can then be compared to planets, in our own solar system. And, of course, motivate us to find ways of one day getting to them."

Private Land: How far down under a house or building do private landowners own? And, can digging subways or underground infrastructure, be cheaper and be an end run around eminent domain?

Trump's infrastructure plan will likely include an underground high-speed rail

New York to Chicago by train in under five hours. It's not science fiction, but old-school tunneling-a critical, yet oddly ignored, part of President Donald Trump's forthcoming infrastructure plan that supporters say will cost the federal government virtually nothing, but experts say the proposal's deregulation approach amounts to a handout to Big Business.

Me, "While I am not a big fan of eminent domain. The idea of just how far underground a person can own the land their house sits on is an interesting concept. In cities like NYC, Subways are commonly constructed under buildings and streets. These building owners do not have a say as to what can be placed under their building, and streets are for the public. So, digging transportation projects, like subways would be cheaper and less time consuming to dig then to wait and try and get the land above ground by eminent domain.

However, you need to supervise. You have to get out of your office everyday and go and inspect the project. Managed effectively, and having some kind of competition would bring down construction costs to make sure you don't get cost overruns. The idea at the MTA has long been to higher one company to do the whole construction project. Why not higher multiple companies and put them into competition with rewards for how much they have done in how short a time.

The only problem where you might need to use eminent domain is where will you create subway station exits and entrances for passenger egress. And, where do you dig the shafts to put in the digging machines. In NYC this is done in the middle of streets since the city owns the land. But for longer tunnels into the country side you'd need the approval of either a public land holder or private land owner."  

From article, (The government can take privately held land under its power of eminent domain—as long as the land is used for a public benefit, like a road, hospital or even an economic development project. But eminent domain is controversial; many on the right consider it a government overreach, and many on the left say it benefits private corporations at the expense of the public.

It’s also not free, as Cohn suggested. Private landowners must be reimbursed at a fair market value—though the value of property rights deep underground is unclear. That would be a matter for the courts.

“The question is where are you going to put the ports to get the tunneling machine and other utilities underground. Where you locate the ports may have to be on private land, you’re going to have to get owner permission. If it’s on government land, you’re going to have to apply for permits. Access is always a problem during tunneling work.”

A large part of Trump’s infrastructure plan calls for deregulation that Republicans believe will get rid of government “red tape.”

“The biggest single thing we can do for infrastructure in this country is we can shorten and improve the approval process,” said Cohn. “We can streamline the approval process from years to weeks and months.”

It’s worth nothing that Trump has a long history of using eminent domain to develop his own properties. He got officials in New Jersey to boot small businesses and families from land he wished to use to develop his Atlantic City hotels and casinos in the late 1990s.

“Cities have the right to condemn for the good of the city,” he said at the time.“Everybody coming into Atlantic City sees this terrible house instead of staring at beautiful fountains and beautiful other things that would be good.”

In April, Cohn spoke of tunneling in relation to Elon Musk’s Hyperloop and Boring company, saying during a town hall meeting that he was soliciting Musk for information and ideas on how to bring high-speed rail to America. There Cohn told the crowd that Musk said he could “solve the problem” of fast railroads by “tunneling the whole way.”

Musk believes that these tunnels will eventually used for Hyperloop, his high-speed travel concept that transits people and cargo in pods through an system of giant vacuum tubes.

Still, by taking care of permitting and eminent domain issues, the federal government could make the building process faster and cheaper for Musk or any other company.

But the government won’t be able to earmark money just for Musk, says Puentes.

“It’s a lot more complex than the president thinks it is,” he said. “It doesn’t help so much to have these wild proclamations, it’s time to stop focusing on moonshots and instead focus on what needs to be done to save our country’s infrastructure.”

 Still, high-speed rail has been available for years in Europe and Asia and is built there at relatively low cost. President Barack Obama wanted the same, but encountered opposition from local officials and did not resort to the use of eminent domain.

Barring that kind of land appropriation, there is little federal officials can do in the United States, which lacks the kind of central political authority of small European nations or China.

Other countries are also able to build their railroads in a more cost-efficient manner, while the average unit price of high-speed rail in Europe is between $17 and $24 million per mile, the estimated cost for high-speed rail in California is about $35 million per mile. The cost difference is due to lower ridership as well as the far wider suburban sprawl on the landscape itself.

But Trump apparently thinks he can tunnel under all those problems.)

"China Got Played!" For a country that rips off patented technology from other countries, left and right and makes cheap knock offs. Somehow this seems fitting.

Someone stole a piece of China's new solar panel-paved road less than a week after it opened

Putting solar panels into our roads isn't the craziest idea, but we may as well admit that it poses some unique challenges. For instance, people may want to walk away with pieces of it. That's what happened in China, anyway, just five days after authorities took opened up what they claim is the world's first solar panel-paved highway.

From article, (Putting solar panels into our roads isn’t the craziest idea, but we may as well admit that it poses some unique challenges. For instance, people may want to walk away with pieces of it. That’s what happened in China, anyway, just five days after authorities opened up what they claim is the world’s first solar panel-paved highway.

it appears to have been done by a “professional team,” (Google’s translation) according to an industry source cited by the local news channel, may give some insight. Perhaps they’re interested in the technology, speculated another source.

Indeed if a group wanted to replicate the photovoltaic sandwich and offer a similar product for a lower price, this might be exactly what they’d do. The practice is not uncommon in China, but this seems an unlikely target for counterfeiting.)

Me, "China Got Played! For a country that rips off patented technology from other countries, left and right and makes cheap knock offs, forcing these patented companies out of business. Somehow this seems fitting."

Why Stop With Pakistan?

Trump backs Sen. Paul's plan to fund infrastructure projects with suspended aid to Pakistan

President Donald Trump on Friday evening issued support for U.S. Sen. Rand Paul's proposal to fund infrastructure projects in the U.S. with foreign aid halted from going to Pakistan. "Good idea Rand!" came the president's response. In a tweet Thursday, Rand, a Kentucky Republican, said he planned to introduce his proposal soon.

President Donald Trump on Friday evening issued support for U.S. Sen. Rand Paul's proposal to fund infrastructure projects in the U.S. with foreign aid halted from going to Pakistan.

"Good idea Rand!" came the president's response.

In a tweet Thursday, Rand, a Kentucky Republican, said he planned to introduce his proposal soon.

"My bill will take the money that would have gone to Pakistan and put it in an infrastructure fund to build roads and bridges here at home," the senator tweeted.

 The United States is currently holding up more than $200 million in foreign aid to Pakistan. A senior U.S. administration official emphasized the money could potentially still be available if Pakistan were to change course.

But Paul went a step further Thursday, arguing that Pakistan has been of little use in the war on terrorism, and proposed cutting off aid to Pakistan altogether.

“We’ve sent Pakistan $33 billion since 2002. What did we get for it? Well Pakistan didn’t even help us find Bin Laden, even though he was living in one of their cities for years. Then they jailed the informant who helped us to get Bin Laden. They’ve allowed suspected terrorists to operate in their country. Some say Pakistani intelligence agents actually aid and abet the terrorists. It’s wrong.”

Paul, who said he has been fighting to end aid to Pakistan for years, called Trump’s recent proposal to suspend aid “a breakthrough.”

Me, "Why stop with Pakistan? If there are other countries getting aid from us and not siding with us, on issues, maybe we should cut their aid and redirect the funds back here, (The U.S.) into infrastructure. Why are we being the world's sugar daddy and getting slapped in the face, in return?"