NYC Sues Trump to Spend $5 Billion Per Mile of Track
Daniel Greenfield
On May 10th, 1869, the first transcontinental railroad of almost 2,000 miles was completed and marked with a ‘Golden Spike’ driven in. Over 150 years and another 2,000 miles later, the New York City subway is struggling to finish its 10 mile Second Avenue line, underway in one form or another since the 1970s, and is suing Trump to help secure funding for $4 billion per mile.
That’s not a typo.
Houston’s entire budget is $7 billion. NYC wants to spend more than that on two stations.
The $7.7 billion second phase of the 10 mile Second Avenue line will run only 1.8 miles. That’s $4.27 billion a mile. That’s more than double the cost of the whole nearly 2,000 miles of the first transcontinental railroad in today’s dollars. All to build a walkable distance of subway tracks.
After $3.4 billion in grants from the Biden administration, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is suing the Trump administration for an immediate $58 million payout complaining that if the notoriously corrupt and inept agency doesn’t get the money right away it’ll lead to “‘a domino effect’ of delays and inflated costs” and the last thing anyone wants is to see what delays and inflated costs look like for a 50-year-old project spending over $4 billion a mile.
But that’s optimistic. The first phase of the Second Avenue Line already became the world’s most expensive project at $2.5 billion a mile and cost a total of $4.45 billion, but was originally budgeted at $3.8 billion, if the same thing happens to the second phase, it will cost $9 billion.
That would bring the final cost to over $5 billion a mile.
https://www.danielgreenfield.org/2026/03/nyc-sues-trump-to-spend-5-billion-per.html
