Happy 90th birthday to the Holland Tunnel

The first vehicle crossing was 90 years ago today so happy birthday to an integral part of our lives whether we drive or bus through it or not. Such a rich history as you'd expect. This link will take you to the Jersey Journal story with some cool Holland Tunnel facts and this link will take you to the official report archives of the great south tunnel fire in May 13, 1949 chemical truck fire that cost several lives courtesy of the Hoboken Historical Museum. The WIkipedia post on the fire goes into some more detail. Originally the tunnel was called either the Hudson River Vehicular Tunnel or the Canal Street Tunnel depending on which side of the river you lived on.

Happy Birthday to a tunnel, it's well deserved.

Case of Pennsylvania "anti-drug crusader" with a van full of weapons in Holland Tunnel ends with guilty plea

John Cramsey, East Greenville, Pa, pled guilty to two charges after being arrested last year driving through the Holland Tunnel on some kind of self-proclaimed rescue mission, with quite the cadre of weapons, including:

Police said they seized a 12-gauge shotgun, an assault rifle with high-capacity magazines, five handguns, including some that were loaded, and a pair of knives, police said.

The two others arrested in the Tunnel along with Cramsey, Kimberly Arendt 29, of Lehighton, Pa., and Dean Smith, of Upper Milford, Pa., were admitted to a pre-trial program for first-time offenders and agreed to testify against Cramsey if his case went to trial.

Look, we understand Cramsey is mad and damned mad at the heroin trade as involvement with it ultimately took the life of his daughter. We're glad he's an activist in the cause. We truly wish him well but you simply cannot bring an A-Team van of weapons through the Holland Tunnel on your way to a halfway house in Brooklyn to possibly shoot your way in and out to rescue a girl who may or may not be at that address. That's why we have SWAT teams and police. Cramsey gets a lesson in what not to do but more importantly it didn't spin out of control in a shootout where the penalties would have taken him and his cohorts away from trying to help people for a far longer time.

Quite the bombshell this morning, and it goes off next to the Mayor

The Jersey City Daily posted a link on Twitter that helps show a mayor obsessed with fighting the Port Authority. Former Jersey City Police Chief Robert Cowan noted in court documents that though he had only recently assumed command, he said in Superior court documents that a top Fulop staffer told him exactly how they were going to try and "to obtain leverage against the Port Authority," and in doing so Cowan said, he saw illegal actions taking place:

Cowan's complaint in Hudson County Superior Court describes a meeting on Nov. 4, 2013, in which the mayor's chief of staff "issued an unlawful order to Cowan, instructing Cowan to establish a traffic stop (looking for seat belt violations) with the intent of shutting down traffic outside of the Holland Tunnel."

In fact Cowan said it wasn't just seat belts at the Holland Tunnel that had the mayor focused like a laser on the PA (Johnny's words), no, it gets much more vindictive, read on citizen:

Fulop's office nevertheless called Cowan in a week later to discuss plans for a traffic stop meant to check trucks coming out of the Port Jersey Global Container Terminal, according to the complaint.

When Cowan balked again, Fulop's allegedly responded with, "this is not a negotiation, I am telling you to do this."

Cowan says the truck stops at the terminal occurred on Nov. 18 and Nov. 18 but that he shut the traffic stop down because he perceived that the back-up it caused was "hazardous and a misuse of police resources."

An "angered" Fulop allegedly called for another stop to harass the Port Authority, but Cowan says he told the mayor "that his instructions were unlawful."

"Fulop became visibly angry and reminded Cowan: 'you serve at my pleasure' threatening that Fulop could remove Cowan as chief if he so desired," the complaint states.

So ladies and jellyspoons, Mr. Steve Fulop, Mayor of Jersey City and so obsessed with getting leverage over the Port Authority he's willing to make orders his police chief finds illegal on their face.

If this is true, and outside the city denying the overall lawsuit filed by Cowan, nobody in the Fulop administration has denied these comments, then we as a city have a problem. A egotistical "I'm never wrong problem" in our city. An "I'm willing to do whatever I want laws be damned" problem. Sure the Port Authority are assholes. Sure they rip us off daily. But we'd expect more from the mayor of Jersey City over this. Much more.

According to the Port Authority the Holland Tunnel is closed tomorrow

Men in colorful costumes are dressing up to play pretend bomb scare or something and here is the announcement from the PA themselves:

Whatever they're doing in the Holland Tunnel give some of them asphalt and some shovels and buckets and fill a few potholes while they play savior of the earth. Port Authority, goddamned mall cops...

We should add this to the sign for visitors coming into Jersey City through the Holland Tunnel

Welcome to Jersey City with these words under it:

Holland Tunnel backups are no longer measured in miles but years

The Holland Tunnel is about to get a lot more congested and that'll mean traffic backups for at least the next five years. The Port Authority warns of a water main repair project that will keep the tunnel’s Hudson Street approach in Manhattan closed for five years.

Yes, five years. So all you crazy kids coming off of the Turnpike extension and or route 139 heading for the Holland Tunnel are going to have to be patient. We figure while you're being patient you can wonder about Governor Christie's plan to kill the new commuter tunnel so he can pretend he cares about saving money (1 whole billion dollars which the USA blows in Iraq roughly every day) all while turning New Jersey into nothing more than a bigger parking lot for NYC.

From the NY side of the tunnel the Jersey Journal tells us:

The tunnel’s Varick, Broom and Canal street entrances will remain open, and northbound motorists on West Street will be allowed to turn right onto Canal to access the tunnel.

Sit tight and turn up the radio kids, it's gonna be a long slog...

There's the Holland Tunnel, the Lincoln Tunnel and now the 'Johnny Action Space Punk Tunnel'

That's right rail tunnel transportation fans (and who isn't?), the federal gubmint has given the go ahead to a $5.7 billion ($10 billion after requisite cost overruns and delays) new rail tunnel between New Jersey and the Big Appletini, which Johnny is insisting we at the Jersey City Desk refer to as 'The Johnny Tunnel'.

It'll provide jobs, and lots of jobs, upwards of 40,000 to 50,000 jobs by the time it's done in 2017. The new 'Johnny Tunnel' is expected to make the word a greener place eliminating a possible 22,200 car trips between NJ and NY a day. It's expected to double the rail trips at peak commuting hours leading to much less congestion on the PATH trains as well meaning you citizen might get a seat once in a while.

Good news all around here and well done by those who got their names in the paper...