Those stations in the Poconos require much more careful work — it would be important to locate them at existing areas of high development (there are a frightening number of commuters already driving from the Poconos to NYC, apparently), and not so as to encourage more development.

But it’s really very important to restore intercity rail from the Twin Tiers to NYC — this will take cars off the highways. And the Lackawanna Cutoff route is the only way to make that rail a remotely reasonable speed.

The New York metro area has one of the lowest densities in the world, and the largest land area. It should promote higher density on existing urban land, not further sprawl.

Get the new cross-Hudson “THE” tunnel done faster
Build the Cross-Harbor Rail Freight Tunnel
Re-establish passenger train service to Scranton and Binghamton via the Lackawanna Cut-Off
Rebuild the parallel routes that can take some pressure off the Northeast Corridor.
Fix the Haverstraw Tunnel and rebuild the West Shore Line for passenger service.

This railfan didn’t need to think too hard before deciding that Obama-Biden is better for passsenger rail than, say, McCain-Young, McCain-Jeb Bush, or McCain-DeLay.

But the Moynihan Station project will provide little if any real benefit to local, regional or national transportation. It is merely a shopping mall being built around a railroad station. It will replace some portions of the existing ghastly NYP, but will provide no additional trackage, platforms or connections.

It is, or will be, one more example of public assets – Amtrak’s station, the USPS’s facilities, and a huge volume of light, air and space presently reserved as a public asset via existing zoning regulations – to be transferred to private speculators, who continue to wax lyrical about the Late Great Pennsylvania Station and the Late Great Senator Moynihan, all the while cynically salivating over the assets they can acquire by manipulating the political system instead of having to buy such space on the free market.

New tunnels? New connections to areas underserved by transit? New signal system to speed existing service? New passenger rail equipment & facilities? No, no, no and no.

More gigantic buildings and more people using existing overcrowded transit lines? More chain stores & shopping mall culture? Higher commercial and residential rents? You Betcha!! And all of it clothed in that wonderfully warm, fuzzy, efficient-sounding phrase “Transit Oriented Development” – As if developers were ever interested in constructing their shopping malls and high-rise buildings far away from transportation facilities.

Public assets, particularly Public Transportation assets, and the efficiency they engender, should be conveyed carefully with an eye toward the synergy that development and transportation can engender when the two priorities are equally balanced.