“When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don't throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.”
--Corrie Ten Boom
By Alex P. Vidal
NEW YORK CITY -- Of all the tunnels I have crossed, it’s the Lincoln Tunnel that doesn’t only give me cold creeps but also a dyed-in-the-wool goosebumps.
When I first crossed the tunnel three years ago, I had an eerie feeling; it’s like entering a hole with no assurance to see a light at the end.
The phobia was similar when I was “trapped” for about 12 minutes in a stranded 7 train from Queens to Manhattan in fall of 2017.
I felt like being locked inside a calaboose. I could pass out had the train was delayed for another five to 10 minutes.
The feeling revisited me again when the van I was riding before the Holy Week had to spend some 20 minutes doing detours in the dizzying Weehawken roads to avoid traffic before finally reaching the mouth of the tunnel.
It normally takes the rider a good five minutes before emerging from the tunnel.
The 1.5-mile-long (2.4 km) Lincoln Tunnel, opened to traffic for the first time in 1937, connects Weehawken, New Jersey to Midtown Manhattan.
If we don’t take a ferry boat or train, we pass through this tunnel, much heralded as the next great engineering triumph, from New York City to New Jersey City vice versa.
-o0o-
The tunnel is 95 feet underwater at its deepest point, and cost about $1.5 billion to build, reportedly adjusting for inflation.
It reportedly sees upwards of 120,000 cars passing through every day on the average, making it one of the busiest roadways in the United States.
Its separate bus lane sees about 1,700 buses every morning, primarily bringing its 62,000 commuters to the Port Authority Bus Terminal on Manhattan’s 42nd Street.
This was the second tunnel funded by the New Deal’s Public Work’s Administration in 1934, fresh off the success of the northern Holland Tunnel, the first mechanically ventilated underwater automobile tunnel to be built under the Hudson River.
A second tube was built shortly after the Lincoln Tunnel’s first, with a third requested due to increasing traffic built in the late 1950s.
The three tunnels service hundreds of thousands of cars and buses coming in and out of New York City to this day.
I find it more relaxing to take the train or bus when I travel from New York to New Jersey vice versa.
"Terrorism has no nationality or religion."
--Vladimir Putin
By Alex P. Vidal
NEW YORK CITY -- I may sound corny to some people, but every morning before I take the subway train to Manhattan, I pray.
A short prayer is good like, "Lord, please take care of me and my loved ones today, and guide me until I reach my destination."
I am a regular subway train commuter.
Every Monday, I load $32 in my (Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) MetroCard for a seven-day unlimited ride.
This budget load can bring me to the Big Apple's 472 stations in five boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island anytime without limit for seven days. (Because it lacks a rail link with the subway system, the Staten Island Railway, by the way, is not officially considered part of the subway. Passengers traveling to another borough can take a ferry or bus; however, free transfers are allowed to the New York City Subway and the MTA's bus system.)
I am aware that the New York City Subway, being the largest rapid transit system in the world, has always been a potential target of terrorist attacks.
IMMIGRANT
Which exactly what happened at past seven o'clock in the morning on December 11, 2017 when 27-year-old Bangladesh immigrant, Akayed Ullah, detonated a homemade pipe bomb strapped to his body in a crowded subway passage between Times Square station and Port Authority in Manhattan.
Anybody in the wrong place at the wrong time could die when the likes of Ullah strike unnoticed.
The incident disturbed me a lot and made my mind juggle the words "what if."
What if I was one of those walking alongside or near Ullah?
What if Ullah had detonated or "accidentally" detonated the bomb while he was sitting or standing beside me inside the running train?
Without knowing it, I could have sat or stood beside the likes of Ullah inside the train in the past. I hope and pray there will be no more Ullahs taking the subway train in the future.
WORRY
Like other anxious passengers, I also worry a lot because when I take the subway train, I always fall asleep if I get lucky to sit down during a long trip.
I can't count how many times I disembarked on the wrong station, mostly way past the station I was supposed to arrive because I slept with my earphones on to boot.
I could die if the likes of Ullah attacked while I was in dreamland.
The only consolation is that if I could fight off drowsiness inside the train, I looked around and observed every passenger's demeanor and body movement. The devil doesn't choose the place where to inflict a mayhem.
I realized, however, that just the same: if a neurotic or a determined terrorist happened to be in the running train, he could send everyone to the Kingdom Come if he suddenly unleashed an explosive device or any deadly instrument.
In a subway train, no one is safe. In terrorism, the damage is always intended "to whom it may concern." Help us God.
