Post-Sandy New York Aims to Rethink Infrastructure Not Just Rebuild It

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http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/10/31/post-sandy-new-york-aims-to-rethink-infrastructure-not-just-rebuild-it/



As New York, New Jersey and the rest of the northeastern U.S. come to grips with Hurricane Sandy’s impact, some leaders there are realizing that two debilitating hurricanes in as many years there are a sign that infrastructure there needs rethought, not just rebuilt.

Postmortem assessments of Sandy’s impact should include a “fundamental rethinking of our built environment,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday during a press conference. “The challenge is not just to build back but to build back better than before.”

Cuomo called the storm, which has claimed more than 30 lives so far, “frightening” and described scenes around the city that sounded like something out of Michael Bay movie—including lower Manhattan’s Ground Zero site flooding and sections of the nearby West Side Highway submerged beneath more than 1.5 meters of water. Overflow from the Hudson River also covered tracks and lapped at the platform along an eight-kilometer stretch of a Path Train tunnel connecting lower Manhattan with New Jersey, the governor added.


The city’s subway tunnels and underground infrastructure are normally an asset for moving millions of commuters and residents around on a daily basis. During a storm of Sandy’s magnitude—”when the Hudson River was intent on meeting the East River,” Cuomo noted—they become a liability, particularly because the subways share space underground with much of the city’s electrical infrastructure.