Far beneath the bustling streets of Manhattan, and out of sight
for the majority of New York City’s 8 million residents, the
largest transportation project in the country is churning away
day and night hollowing out granite to create six miles of new
tunnels. It’s the biggest addition to New York’s public
transportation system since the opening of Penn Station in 1910;
a push to connect the Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central
Terminal. When completed, 32,000 feet of new tunnels will have
been excavated. Thus far, all digging has been done by a pair of
22-foot long hard rock boring machines; to date, nearly 22,200
feet of tunnel has been cleared. Outside of Manhattan, two soft-
ground tunnel boring machines will begin excavating 10,000
linear feet of tunnels in Queens to connect the 63rd street
Tunnel to the existing LIRR tracks in Sunnyside. If you’ve never
visited the Big Apple, take it from this New Yorker: such
connections will change the lives of hundreds of thousand of
commuters each week. Construction