MTA releases climate resilience roadmap
Highlands residents using the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s Hudson Line have spent the last year seeing their trips delayed and canceled because the railroad’s tracks are submerged under floodwaters and mud from landslides.
But perhaps they can take comfort in the fact that the MTA has taken the next step in addressing those increasing disruptions with the release of its Climate Resilience Roadmap.
The 70 page report at bit.ly/mta-roadmap outlines solutions to the many ways in which the MTA’s subways, train tracks, buses and bridges are becoming more vulnerable to the rising sea levels, heavier storms, hotter days and higher tides that New York state is already experiencing.
The agency has yet to start any projects based on the report’s recommendations, said Kayla Shults, an MTA representative. More details about specific projects in exact locations are expected to be released in the MTA’s upcoming five-year capital plan.
But for local straphangers and commuters who have, just in the last year, experienced service disruptions from floods, mudslides, landslides and a tropical storm, the report offers an invaluable guide to the ways those ever-increasing disruptions will be mitigated.
The very thing that makes the Hudson Line commute so appealing — its proximity to the Hudson River — is also one of its greatest vulnerabilities, as the MTA estimates that over half of the 74-mile-long route is already susceptible to coastal surges.
By the 2050s, the percentage of vulnerable tracks will grow to 80 percent as sea level rises and storms intensify, and one-sixth of the tracks will be flooded every month from high tides.
Raising the tracks is the most obvious solution, but the report details other less-drastic mitigation efforts, such as improved drainage and building platforms to elevate equipment.
Much of the shoreline along the tracks is especially vulnerable to flooding because it consists of riprap and other fill used to create enough land for the railroad. Building a more stable shoreline with higher rock walls and floodgates is suggested.
On the other side of the tracks, the MTA estimates that 41 percent of its railroad runs next to slopes that are sufficiently steep enough to make them a landslide risk. Retaining walls can be built to mitigate the mudslides caused by heavy storms. But a retaining wall failed during an Oct. 21 storm, dumping over 350 cubic feet of soil and 250 cubic feet of cement wall debris onto the tracks, halting service for Metro-North and Amtrak.
One solution to landslides may be out of the MTA’s hands. The report notes that if upland properties, beyond the MTA’s right-of-way, reduce runoff, then the risk of landslides would decline. On a list of short-term strategies the MTA recommends undertaking within the next five years, one of them is to “collaborate with local partners to investigate and mitigate flooding along the Hudson line.”
Representatives from the MTA declined to discuss what those collaborations could look like. But the illustrations for shoreline protections in the Climate Resilience Roadmap echo the strategies that the Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail is undertaking for its 7.5-mile linear park from Cold Spring to Beacon.
Much of the trail hugs the coastline of the Hudson River, just beyond the Metro-North right-of-way, and is being designed to withstand projected sea level rise and storm surges.
“There are some areas where the existing shoreline will need some targeted repairs,” said Matt Carter, a principal at the design firm ARUP, which is working on the Fjord Trail. “The existing riprap has deteriorated in some places. Creating a gentler, more erosion-resistant slope can help with sea level rise and storms.” Carter said that planting native vegetation along the artificially fabricated coastline will help bind and stabilize the shore, further reducing flood risk.
The MTA is in discussion with the HHFT about making sure the trail does not interfere with the 25-foot setback from the tracks, a need that becomes even clearer when considering the ample trackwork that may be needed to mitigate the effects of climate change on the Hudson Line.
But if the Fjord Trail does proceed as planned, Carter said it presents an opportunity for the MTA to focus its own mitigation efforts in places beyond the Fjord Trail’s scope. “They’re very pleased with the opportunities for us to potentially help,” he said.
