If this were an article about runaway transit costs and how planning and construction could change to reduce costs, that might be useful. They get completely lost in the weeds arguing about why the project wasn't useful -- that doesn't fly here where people actually use the thing.

Do you commute into/regularly travel through Manhattan? I can tell you that being able to access different subway lines as a direct transfer from LIRR, or direct between LIRR and MNR is useful. Absolutely, it should it have cost less and happened much sooner, but the article does very little to examine the why and how in detail.