The issue is all the unknown unknowns under ground. Nyc is a maze of underground infrastructure, much of it ancient, orphaned tunnels and wire and pipe, and whose builders aren’t even around anymore. There isn’t even a unified map, they’re just starting to collate and digitize what fragments they have, but, this being ny, it’s a slow, tedious process full of red tape, inter factional dick measuring, government incompetence and refusal to talk to anyone in another office of the same department, let alone outside agencies or industry.

I’ve been saying for years that we need a single, central, searchable database for everything under our feet here. Something we can collate into a 3d cad map.