Sinking 1K NYC subway cars in the Atlantic to create a reef didn’t go as planned

Phew. I assumed this was gonna be another catastrophe. Like Osborne Reef, where some yahoos dumped TWO MILLION car tires into the ocean and just hoped for the best.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Osborne_Reef" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Osborne_Reef</a><p>First try a little, see what happens, then maybe do more.<p>Someone should have dropped 5 subway cars in. Then checked back in a few years.<p>Worse than scream-and-leap policy making is the utter refusal to do any kind of follow up assessment. (Perhaps you&#x27;ve heard of the opioid crisis? Best intentions leading straight to Hell.)<p>--<p>Tangent, from the OC:<p>&gt; <i>...artificial reefs were designed to boost recreational fishing, which in 2011 generated a whopping $15 billion in state and federal taxes.</i><p>We should ban commercial fisheries.<p>In my state, every salmon caught by a commercial fisherman costs the taxpayers $1.<p>Whereas anglers make the state money.<p>If this doesn&#x27;t make sense to you, you simply don&#x27;t understand Freedom Markets™.

&quot;Brightliners were made of stainless steel....but this worked against them underwater.&quot;<p>&quot;the project failed for two reasons: first, because the trains’ envelopes were spot-welded, which formed a thin layer between the two metals that led to corrosion. Second, because the corrugated pattern made it easier for undercurrent waves to “grab on to” and further pull the stainless skin apart&quot;

If those were meant to also serve as spots for scuba divers I guess that they are not safe?<p>A thousand cars seems like a large number so I just went to check how many subway cars does NYC has in operation. Here is what Wikipedia says &quot;As of November 2016, the New York City Subway has 6418 cars on the roster.&quot;[1].<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;New_York_City_Subway" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;New_York_City_Subway</a>

This is still not bad for the ocean or environment. Yes, they seemed to have decayed faster than thought but things on the bottom of the ocean even if they are a pile of rubble are good for fish havens. The whole area on the continental shelf south of Long Island is mostly featureless sand. Small fish need places to hide out and that brings bigger fish to the area. I fish in the area. So perhaps they might not be as good as hoped but it is still good.

It went exactly as planned for MTA. They got rid of their problem dirt cheap!

Really obnoxious web design there; why would I want an auto playing video of unrelated celebrity dribble that you can&#x27;t close and sticks in place as you scroll covering 1&#x2F;3rd of the screen?

It did not damage the environment much because they were already stripped. They just didn&#x27;t last as long as thought!

&gt; Back then, artificial reefs were designed to boost recreational fishing, which in 2011 generated a whopping $15 billion in state and federal taxes.<p>Maybe I&#x27;m out of the loop, but in Europe I sometimes see people recreational fishing on the piers at the beach for example and I can&#x27;t imagine how this activity could generate 15 billion in taxes.<p>If the 3 mentioned states together have 20.4 million people, then every inhabitant on average is paying $700 in taxes for recreational fishing. What&#x27;s going on there, how many people have this hobby and how much are they paying for it?

I&#x27;m very confused, the article says:<p><i>&#x27;The MTA had good reason to believe the program would succeed. Just a few years prior, it had dropped more than 1,000 Redbird trains in the ocean. They remain on the ocean floor to this day, in part because they were made of carbon steel, which helps prevent corrosion.</i><p><i>By comparison, Brightliners were made of stainless steel. When the subway cars debuted in 1964, they were a mechanical and aesthetic innovation. The stainless steel made the train cars lighter on the tracks, but this worked against them underwater.&#x27;</i><p>Few questions here. First, isn&#x27;t carbon steel ... steel? Steel is primarily iron and carbon, so my understanding is that carbon steel is mostly just a marketing term to have at least an adjective of some sort, just like &#x27;aircraft grade aluminium&#x27;, which is in fact one of the cheapest, bulk types of aluminium (hence use in bulk in aircraft)<p>Second, how does regular steel fare better than stainless steel in a corrosive environment? The article says the stainless steel started to corrode from the welds, which is fair enough, but wouldn&#x27;t regular steel just corrode wholesale?

Wouldn’t it have been easier to test this with a few cars in different places rather than dump 1000?

&quot;Artificial reefs&quot; are typically an excuse by the tire industry to dump their toxic junk in the ocean, sometimes with public money. It&#x27;s not surprising at all that other actors with large pieces of junk have caught on. What a scam.

It strikes me as extraordinary that we dump so much metal - isn&#x27;t it easier to reprocess, than to extract new iron ore?

If the site didn&#x27;t change layouts and font size 5 times while I was scrolling it might have been a pleasant read.

This is literally the most stupid thing I&#x27;ve read this week. Not even believable a modern society allows something like this, and the even in recent history.<p>I hope every single person involved is deeply ashamed<p>&gt; It is important that we learn from these mistakes and improve the process<p>What process? For dumping trash in the ocean?

This reminds me of Splatoon 2’s deep sea metro. Can’t help laughing lol

TLDR; Hindsight is a bitch