Archive for ARC Tunnel
Sep
30
DOT, New Jersey come to terms on ARC dollars
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s been almost a year since New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie canceled the ARC Tunnel and made a move to keep the federal dollars explicitly earmarked for the project. After months of wrangling between the government and Christie’s high-dollar attorneys, the two sides have come to an agreement, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said this afternoon. In the final settlement, New Jersey will return $95 million to feds while spending a significant portion of the rest on DOT-approved projects.
Per the DOT press release, the federal government will recover all of the $51 million in New Starts money provided to New Jersey for the ARC Project, and those funds will be made available to other areas for transit projects. The other $44 million were provided to New Jersey via the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and it will be returned to the U.S. Treasury. Furthermore, New Jersey must spent around $128 million it has from the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality project funds on transit-related projects that DOT approved and reviewed. I guess the remaining funds — approximately $48 million — will remain with the Garden State.
“We appreciate the support and encouragement of Senators Lautenberg and Menendez in reaching an agreement that is good for the taxpayers of New Jersey, but also helps to improve infrastructure in the state,” Secretary LaHood said. “I thank the governor and his legal team for reaching this agreement.” Now how about that Gateway tunnel or the 7 train to Secaucus?
Sep
09
ARC dollars officially moved to NJ’s Transportation Trust Fund
Posted by: | CommentsIt was but a mere formality, but the New Jersey Turnpike Authority voted this Wednesday to redirect $1.25 billion originally slated for the ARC Tunnel to the state’s ailing Transportation Trust Fund. Instead of support rail expansion, the money will now go toward a turnpike widening project, various road maintenance plans and, if any is left over, New Jersey Transit’s capital plan.
As Mike Frassinelli from The Star-Ledger noted, “The move allows Gov. Chris Christie to boost the state’s Transportation Trust Fund that pays for road and bridge repairs and transit services, while at the same time keeping his pledge not to raise the state’s comparatively low gas tax.”
While the move had been announced by Christie some months ago, the state’s pro-rail contingent were none too pleased. “This toll revenue was supposed to be used to build a desperately needed trans-Hudson tunnel for New Jersey commuters,” Sen. Frank Lautenberg said in a statement. “Using this money as a slush fund for other transportation projects is a disservice to New Jersey residents facing congestion on our roads and seeking access to more jobs and more trains in and out of New York.” The trans-Hudson future — whether it be the Gateway Tunnel or an extension of the 7 to Secaucus — remains to be seen.
Jun
13
In NJ, proximity to rail becomes alluring
Posted by: | CommentsA few days ago, UBS made headlines when it announced its interest in moving back to Manhattan. While the cynical among us wondered if this was just a ploy to gain more favorable tax breaks by playing Connecticut off of New York, company sources claimed the move is necessary in order to attract young talent. Stamford, after all, isn’t exactly a happening city for good minds right out of college.
In New Jersey, a different story is unfolding: Transit-oriented development has become all the rage. Dana Rubinstein reports in The Journal today:
As New Jersey slowly emerges from the economic downturn, its office market is beginning to transform into one concentrated around train stations. Businesses have been leasing space in areas served by train stations at a higher rate than those only accessible by car, according to real-estate firms. The trend reflects demographic shifts and higher gasoline prices as well as changes in worker priorities.
For example, businesses are beginning to recognize that many employees care less about living in sprawling estates and more about living in diverse areas with restaurants and entertainment within walking distance, notes Robert Puentes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program. “All these things are starting to add up and companies are very attuned to it,” he says…
The average vacancy rate in so-called transit hubs in New Jersey was 14.7% in the first quarter of this year, compared with 29.7% in areas not considered transit hubs, according to real-estate brokerage Jones Lang LaSalle. The report defines transit hubs as the 40 million square feet comprising office space in Newark, Elizabeth, Jersey City, Hoboken, Paterson, East Orange, New Brunswick, Trenton and Camden, Morristown and Metropark, all cities with rail service.
At the same time, asking rents in transit hubs were higher, averaging $27.43 compared with the rest of the suburban market’s $23.51, according to the Jones Lang LaSalle report. Since 2009, more than 20% of all leasing has occurred in the transit hubs, compared with 15 percent before 2009. Further, of the 52 leases larger than 100,000 square feet signed in New Jersey since 2008, 22 of them were in transit hubs.
Panasonic recently made headlines when it decided to move from Secaucus to Newark. While the decision has been driven, in part, by a generous tax credit, company officials say accessibility played a role in the move as well. “We have literally 1,000 people driving cars every day,” Peter Fannon, a company VP, said. “The key element for us, which really brought the focus back to Newark, were the environmental benefits, specifically the ability to be in an urban center where there are housing, restaurants, hotels, and most importantly, mass transit facilities, all within a three- or four-block radius of our new location.”
With these trends emerging and with policies in place to encourage hub-based growth and transit-oriented development, it would be an ideal time for New Jersey to move forward with a plan that will greatly improve trans-Hudson commuter rail access while cutting down travel time. Unfortunately, private businesses and state leaders aren’t seeing eye-to-eye. As development policies and economic realities push TOD, the ARC Tunnel plans, which will look more and more necessary as time passes, remain dearly departed.
Jun
03
The rising costs of disputing ARC dollars
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The fight for ARC dollars has long outlasted the project.
It’s been nearly nine months since the ARC Tunnel met its untimely demise, and still New Jersey and the Feds are fighting over the money. Gov. Chris Christie wants to keep the earmarked dollars and apply them to the state’s other underfunded transportation projects while the Feds, unhappy that the Garden State unilaterally pulled the plug on the largest public works project in the country, just want the dollars back.
The legal fight, which isn’t over yet, is starting to cost the state, and while the numbers are ticking ever upward, there is a rationale behind the battle. In a fairly nuanced piece from The Star-Ledger, Salvador Rizzo looks at the economics behind the legal challenges. Of the costs, he writes:
Gov. Chris Christie’s fight with the federal government over abandoning a train tunnel under the Hudson has already cost New Jerseyans more than $1 million in legal fees and interest, records show.
For a month, Christie has been vowing to appeal a decision from the Obama administration ordering the state to repay $271 million for abruptly pulling out of what was the largest public works project in the country.
In the meantime, interest on New Jersey’s debt is adding up at the rate of $225,000 a month. In addition, bills from Patton Boggs, the Washington law firm hired by Christie in December to fight his battle, have averaged another $300,000 a month, invoices obtained by The Star-Ledger show. The interest on the $271 million, which began accruing on April 29, could be frozen by a federal judge once an appeal is filed, but neither the governor nor Patton Boggs has said when the case will be brought to court.
New Jersey’s transit advocates aren’t quite sure what to say about the expenses and mounting interest. “Christie is not arguing about dollars and cents. He’s saying they don’t owe anything, and he’s on unsound ground,” ARC advocate Martin Robins said. “I suggest we should be talking in terms of collaboration and reduction in the debt that he owes and that he caused by the stomping of this project.”
Yet, even if there’s a small chance — say ten percent — that New Jersey could keep the money, it’s a fight worth pursuing for some time. As with the MTA’s dispute over the TWU raises, if New Jersey believes it has a fighting chance, it could spend dollars on lawyers up to the point of recovery. So if there’s a 10 percent chance of keeping the entire $271 million, legal economics would dictate expenses of $27.1 million.
In fact, some advocates think the state may be able to keep some of the money. As the former head of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign said to The Star-Ledger, attorneys from Patton Boggs are making “some persuasive arguments.” Some — but not all — of the stimulus money going into the tunnel project had been awarded before the ARC-specific grants were signed, and Christie might be able to keep those funds.
Ultimately, though, this still feels like wrangling over a missed opportunity, and as one former Port Authority official said, Christie was awfully quick to cut bait. “Only the governor felt that the entire burden would have fallen on the state of New Jersey,” David Widawsky, the PA’s one-time lead on the ARC Tunnel, said. “Over the course of the many years of construction ahead, these kinds of things could have been worked out.”
May
02
FTA: NJ owes ARC millions and interest
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A schematic of the ARC Tunnel's Manhattan terminal. (Click to enlarge)
In a 52-page decision released on Friday, the Federal Transit Administration has determined that New Jersey must repay all of the $271 million the state had spent on the ARC Tunnel project before Gov. Chris Christie canceled the project this fall. Furthermore, if the state fails to pay the money soon, the FTA will begin to charge interest on amounts due at a steep rate. To fight this ruling, Gov. Christie, who has already spent close to $1 million on legal fees, could appeal the ruling in federal court.
Both The Record and The Times reported on the ruling this past weekend, and I’ve embedded the document along with a letter from Ray LaHood, the Secretary of Transportation, below. The ruling explores why New Jersey is legally obligated to return the funds and is appealable. The federal courts would have jurisdiction over the matter. Essentially, though, this move raises the stakes in the fight over what was to be the country’s largest public works project.
Patrick McGeehan from The Times had more:
In a letter to New Jersey’s senators and representatives in Congress, Ray LaHood, the transportation secretary, warned that his department had “many tools under the Debt Collection Act to recoup the lost federal taxpayer funds, including withholding future state funding from a wide variety of sources.” But “in consideration of the current economic challenges burdening New Jersey,” Mr. LaHood added, he hoped to “develop a workable payment schedule” and avoid having to resort to those collection methods.
Mr. LaHood should not expect to find a check in the mail any time soon. Mr. Christie, who was in Massachusetts on Friday to speak at Harvard University, declared in January that “we are not paying the money back.” Kevin Roberts, a spokesman for Mr. Christie, said the governor’s staff would “review the decision before determining next steps moving forward.” One option is to sue the department to try to stop it from seeking to collect, but Mr. Roberts would not say if a lawsuit was being considered.
In the meantime, interest on the debt will pile up quickly. The federal government currently charges interest at a rate of 1 percent a year, which in this case amounts to more than $50,000 a week.
According to LaHood’s letter to Senator Frank Lautenberg, the crux of the matter concerns Christie’s representations to the FTA in previous years. Despite rising cost estimates in early 2010, the Governor pledged full support for the ARC Tunnel in meetings with LaHood in February, March and April of last year. Six months later, the project was off, and LaHood could not convince Christie to change his mind, and LaHood took a hard line against Christie in the letter.
“Any notion that the potential for cost growth constituted new and emergent information when the Governor made his decision is simply not accurate,” he wrote.
For now, the FTA is still willing to work with New Jersey to make the repayment process as painless as possible, but Washington’s patience is limited. “In consideration of the current economic challenges burdening New Jersey and all other states, I am not pursuing these collection methods at this time in the hope that we and the state of New Jersey can develop a workable payment schedule,” the secretary said.
Despite taking a hard line, LaHood bemoaned the fate of the ARC Tunnel, and right now, its legacy is one of a legal fight that isn’t over yet. “The purpose of my efforts,” LaHood said of his meetings this past fall, “was to avoid the very circumstances in which we now find ourselves: no jobs, no congestion relief, and an enduring debt whereby New Jersey must return $271 million to the Nation’s taxpayers.”
After the jump, read the letter and FTA decision. Read More→
Apr
29
In Xanadu did Gov. Christie a state-supported pleasure-dome decree
Posted by: | CommentsWhen New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie killed the ARC Tunnel project, he did so in the name of fiscal responsibility. Cost overruns for the project, based on FTA estimates, could have ranged from $1-$5 billion, and while the FTA noted that better project oversight would have kept those costs within a reasonable range, Christie, to gain a name for himself, torpedoed a project that would have brought $4 billion in federal money to the state and provided for 44,000 jobs as well as faster rides for nearly every city-bound Jersey commuter. It was, needless to say, a big blow to the area’s transit progress.
Yesterday, we learned just how far the limits of Christie’s fiscal “responsibility” stretch. With a Super Bowl on tap for the Meadowlands in 2014 and an ugly hulk of colorful panels known as Xanadu sitting on the turnpike, unfinished and broke, Christie’s administration has promised $400 million in subsidies and tax breaks to Triple Five, the Mall of America owners, if they finish the project. The group will have to spend up to $2 billion to do so, will give the ugly structure a new outside and will call it American Dream@Meadowlands.
Transit advocates in New Jersey are feeling the sting. As TM Brown at Radials notes, Christie has made what is essentially a political decision to fund private development over a public works project. While the ARC Tunnel commitment could have been more substantial, it also promised more federal dollars and greater economic benefits for the state. “It seems,” he writes, “almost inappropriate in a time of forced and severe austerity for millions of Americans that Gov. Christie has decided to fund what amounts to a temple to profound consumption and, just a year before, defunded a project that would have improved life and finances for millions. Though if people are happy with the defunding of the ARC tunnel, they can always go skiing in Xanadu.”
Mar
11
ARC legal fees beginning to mount
Posted by: | CommentsAs Gov. Chris Christie fights with the federal government for the right to keep $271 million earmarked for the ARC Tunnel, the state’s legal bill is beginning to mount. After just one month on the job, D.C. firm Patton Boggs had billed New Jersey Transit $330,000 for the effort. “NJ Transit’s budget contains funds for legal and other such expenses and this will come out of that,” Paul Wyckoff, agency spokesman, said. “There are hundreds of millions of dollars at stake here. This is certainly, we feel, worth the best legal effort we can produce. Patton Boggs is a highly regarded, highly professional firm that is working to save state taxpayers money as efficiently as possible.”
New Jersey politicians who have fought with Christie over the ARC cancellation since Day One again lobbed grenades toward the governor. “I’m not suggesting the state shouldn’t have counsel. I hope the state wins,” John Wisniewski, chairman of the state assembly’s Transportation Committee, said. “But $333,281 — there are lots of good lawyers in New Jersey that don’t charge $485 an hour.”
If New Jersey thinks it has a valid case to make for those federal dollars, the state has every right to employ outside counsel to do so, and Wisniewski has every right to complain about the fees. Ultimately, though, if they get to keep any of the $271 million, the $330,000 a month will be but a drop in the bucket. Still, the attempts to keep the money seem to be garnering more attention than the efforts to build a new cross-Hudson rail tunnel, and that’s not helping anyone in the region.
Feb
24
To cross the Hudson, a one-seat ride & a 3rd plan
Posted by: | CommentsMore one-seat rides means a more crowded tunnel.
In addition to increased cross-Hudson capacity, one of the primary benefits New Jersey commuters would have derived from the ARC Tunnel concerned travel speeds. As New Jersey Transit, its equipment and its lone Hudson river crossing are configured, riders along the Raritan Valley and North Jersey Coast Lines do not enjoy one-seat rides into New York City. Through a combination of equipment upgrades and capacity increases, commute times would have dropped and property values would have increased.
With ARC off the table and its replacement years or even decades away, New Jersey Transit officials are trying to deliver on that one-seat promise without a new tunnel. Earlier this week, NJ Transit Executive Director James Weinstein pledged that he would work to make the one-seat ride a reality along the Raritan Valley and North Jersey Coast Lines. Larry Higgs from the Asbury Park Press offers up a little bit more:
In both cases, NJ Transit officials will go forward with equipment purchases that were part of the Access to the Region’s Core (ARC) tunnel project, canceled by Gov. Chris Christie in October over concerns about cost overruns the state would have had to absorb. “One of the issues is acquisition of more bilevels,” Weinstein said. “There are 100 on order and we’ll go forward with that.”
The first of 36 dual-mode electric and diesel-powered locomotives, which will be essential to providing one-seat ride service on rail lines now served by diesel locomotives, is scheduled to be delivered to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s testing facility in Colorado, Weinstein said.
“I don’t think anything precludes a one-seat ride,” he said. “We’re going forward with the dual-mode locomotives. There are issues we have to work out at some point to provide a one-seat ride.”
Beyond Higgs’ story, news reports don’t add much to this revelation, and I’m curious as to where it will go from here. The main problem is that the Hudson River tunnels cannot handle increased traffic, and if New Jersey Transit is promising new one-seat rides along certain routes, it will likely have to take away some river crossings from other routes. That’s not going to be too popular among commuters.
Meanwhile, an alternative to Amtrak’s Gateway alternative is making the rounds. As Higgs also reported earlier this week, New Jersey rail advocates have proposed yet another plan to build a tunnel. He reports:
The plan, outlined by Joseph Clift, a member of the Regional Rail Working Group and a past Long Island Railroad planning director, would put off building some of the more potentially expensive parts of the Gateway project to a second phase. As a first phase, the group proposed building a new two-tube tunnel, a new bridge next to the existing Portal Bridge and a second set of tracks on the Northeast Corridor line from Kearny to the Hudson River to relieve bottlenecks.
Gateway’s plans to build a “Penn Station South,” consisting of seven tracks and four platforms under Manhattan’s 31st Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues, would be deferred to a second phase under the group’s plan. That phase would include Gateway’s proposal to construct two new sets of tracks between the Passaic River and west of Secaucus Junction, a second set of platforms at that station and some new bridges.
“It is a much more accomplishable project,” Clift said. “You would have a project that is more affordable (to start) because all the Manhattan property cost (for Penn Station South) goes away.”
Funding would come from a variety of sources. New Jersey would reapply for the $3 billion in federal funds it sacrificed when Gov. Chris Christie canceled ARC while the Port Authority would contribute its billions as well. New Jersey and Amtrak would contribute money as well.
With all this talk though of replacement plans and one-seat rides, I have to wonder if too many cooks are stirring the cross-Hudson soup. New York is working on formulating a plan for the 7 line extension with New Jersey while Amtrak is requesting $50 million to start planning on NEPA work on their Gateway Tunnel. This third proposal throws yet another variable in the mix and could garner support from state officials in New Jersey. At some point, the region will need a concerted, unified and funded effort if cross-Hudson rail expansion is to be realized any time soon.
Feb
08
For NJ commuters, Gateway is no ARC
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A proposed track map shows how the Gateway Tunnel would lead into Penn Station South. (Click the image to enlarge.)
Editor’s Note: With the announcement that Amtrak would seek funding for a proposed Gateway Tunnel from New Jersey to New York City, one-time Second Ave. Sagas guest writer Jeremy Steinemann started a new blog called Gateway Gab. He’s going to track the progress of the Gateway Tunnel there, and he is allowing me to post some of his analysis here as well.
Yesterday, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie viewed the Gateway announcement as a vindication of his decision to cancel ARC, but as Steinemann explains in the post below, Christie is off base. From the cost comparisons to the benefits to his state’s commuters, Christie and his criticisms shouldn’t enjoy a moment in the sun, and although Gateway would help alleviate the congestion into and out of New York City, it doesn’t have the same impact for commuters as ARC would have. What follows is Steinemann’s analysis.
As part of yesterday’s announcement of the proposed Amtrak Gateway Tunnel, Senator Frank Lautenberg’s (NJ-D) office has released a comparison of the three trans-hudson tunnel projects: Gateway, the now-defunct ARC tunnel, and the 7 train to Secaucus. This nifty chart is available at Lautenberg’s website, but take a look:
If anything, the chart is a testament to just how beneficial the ARC Tunnel promised to be, noting, for example, that ARC promised to connect commuters to the subway lines at Herald Square. The biggest difference between the two projects, however, are the compromises that Gateway requires of NJ Transit. For passengers on trains from Bergen, Passaic, Rockland and Orange Counties on the Main-Bergen and Pascack Valley lines, Gateway will not provide the long-promised, one-seat ride to Manhattan (at least not at first).
Furthermore, NJ Transit will have to coordinate operating control of the new tunnels. The current tunnels — technically known as the North River Tunnels — are controlled solely by Amtrak, whose trains take precedence over NJ Transit — wreaking havoc on the commuting schedule when an inter-city train is delayed. In contrast, ARC promised a set of tunnels operated solely by NJ Transit. The details of the Gateway operating arrangement are not clear, but improvements over the current arrangement are essential. Finally, as I noted yesterday, Gateway increases NJ Transit’s peak train capacity by only 13 additional trains, as opposed to ARC’s 24 additional trains.
The Gateway project, however, also includes a grab-bag of brand new items. Whereas ARC mentioned it as a possible future project, new access for Metro North at Penn Station is a full component of Gateway. In fact, a presentation on Lautenberg’s site promises capacity for six hourly trains on Metro North’s New Haven and Hudson Lines. The Harlem Line would not have access to the station.
In addition, Gateway’s new Penn Station South adds four new platforms serving seven tracks underground between 30th and 31st streets from 7th Ave. to just west of 8th Ave. Finally, Amtrak’s proposal also suggests extending the 7 train not westward but eastward from its future terminus at 34th St. and 10th Ave to Penn Station. It seems the cost of this extension is not factored into Gateway’s estimated price.
A critical benefit of Gateway, that is not being widely touted, is the system redundancy that the connectivity to Penn Station provides. The ARC tunnels were to be completely separate from the existing Penn tubes. If, for some reason, a train dies in one tunnel, as happens frequently now, the Gateway tunnels will provide a back-up. Due to the complicated nature of the train platforms underneath Moynihan station, however, it seems impossible for NJ Transit and Amtrak to utilize three of the four tunnels for peak-directional flow as the LIRR currently permits in its four tunnels under the East River.
The price comparisons between Gateway and ARC, reported at $13.5 billion and $10 billion respectively, are also misleading. The Gateway Tunnel also includes the Portal Bridge Replacement project, which ARC critics demanded should have been considered part of ARC’s total cost. Like ARC and the Portal Bridge projects, Gateway will double the right-of-way from Newark Penn Station to New York Penn Station from two to four tracks. Any changes to the connection between the Northeast Corridor and NJT’s Morris & Essex and Montclair Lines (located just west of the Portal Bridge) remain unclear at this time.
To view the full PDF presentation on Gateway, click here.
Feb
07
ARC the Third: Amtrak’s Gateway to New York
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Amtrak's Gateway Tunnel addresses many of the criticisms leveled at the ARC Tunnel.
Since Gov. Chris Christie first announced plans to put a hold on and then cancel the ARC Tunnel, New Jersey’s Democratic Senate delegation has been at odds with the state’s Republican executive. Senators Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez have criticized Christie for sacrificing $3 billion in federal funding as well as the opportunity to expand rail access to New York City. Today, the two Senators have announced a plan to achieve greater cross-Hudson rail capacity while working with Amtrak and bypassing Christie’s control entirely.
Enter the Gateway Tunnel. This tunnel that Amtrak believes will take ten years to construct could be another answer to rail crisis the ARC Tunnel had been designed to address. It is similar to ARC’s Alt G plan and modeled on numerous Amtrak studies. Based on numerous reports, it may cost anywhere from $10-$13.5 billion, and once or if completed, it will allow 21 more trains per hour — 13 New Jersey Transit trips and eight Amtrak trains — into New York. The dearly departed ARC Tunnel would have allowed 25 more New Jersey Transit trains into the dead-end deep cavern underneath 34th St.
While the Gateway Tunnel expansion would allow fewer trains into the city, the new proposal addresses the biggest concerns ARC supporters — and opponents — had with the previous project. As Jim O’Grady for Transportation Nation and WNYC has reports, “Whereas ARC was supposed to terminate at platforms under Macy’s, a block east of Penn Station, Gateway would end a block to the south, nearer to street level. The block—West 30th and West 31st Streets between 7th and 8th Avenues—now mostly holds small businesses like restaurants, bars and a repair shop for musical instruments.” Metro-North too would be able to service the new Penn Station South. (For more from today’s unveiling of the Gateway Tunnel, check out this pdf.)
A satellite view of the New York side of the proposed Gateway Tunnel. (Via The Star-Ledger)
O’Grady had more on the early plans and the hopes that the Gateway Tunnel could usher in high-speed rail in the area as well. He writes:
A staff member for an elected official familiar with the project said Amtrak, which is taking the lead on the tunnel, would have to assemble properties on the Manhattan block to make it feasible. He said on the New Jersey side, Gateway would use a hole that construction crews had already started digging for the ARC Tunnel at Tonnelle Avenue near Secaucus…
An important part of the work would be to raise the Portal Bridge, a notorious bottleneck between Kearny and Secaucus over the Hackensack River. Trains must now slow to cross the 100 year-old bridge, or stop altogether while it is moved to let boats to pass by. A modernized bridge, along with a new tunnel’s added capacity, would speed up Amtrak’s service along the Northeast Corridor and help set the stage for future high-speed rail, should it ever arrive.
Meanwhile, Mike Frassinelli of The Star Ledger, who broke the story late last night, reports on how the Gateway Tunnel may conflict with New York City’s plan to send 7 train to New Jersey. The Senators and Amtrak are putting forward this proposal as an alternative to Bloomberg’s subway-based idea, and the federal officials hope to send the 7 not across the Hudson but to Penn Station. He writes:
Some transportation officials think the Gateway plan makes more sense than expanding the No. 7 subway line from New York City to Secaucus Junction, an idea floated over the last three months by the staff of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Under Amtrak’s best-case scenario, the No. 7 line would also be extended to Penn Station, between 31st and 33rd streets, two blocks west of the Empire State Building.
During the afternoon press conference announcing this tunnel, current Amtrak board member and former Port Authority head Anthony Coscia denied a conflict with the 7 extension. “Regardless of whether the 7 extension happens, in order for there to be high-speed rail in the Northeast corridor, Amtrak would still need to build this project,” he said.
According to Frassinelli, Lautenberg, the more vocal critic of Christie’s politicized move to block the ARC Tunnel, has been working with Amtrak since the fall. “New Jersey is facing a transportation crisis,” he said. “Our commuters are fed up with train delays that make them late to work and endless traffic that traps them on our highways when they want to be home with their families. When the ARC tunnel was canceled, it was clear to me that we couldn’t just throw up our hands and wait years to find another solution.”
By turning away from state-based solutions and relying instead upon a federal rail provider who would ideally use a mix of infrastructure dollars and private investment for this project, Lautenberg can effectively cut Christie out from the bulk of the decision-making. Although New Jersey and New York will likely be asked to add some money to the pot via New Jersey Transit and the Port Authority, if Amtrak takes the lead, it — and not New Jersey’s reticent governor — will be in charge of securing the finances and arranging construction.
Right now, as O’Grady notes, the parties have yet to figure out financing and haven’t set construction plans. Amtrak is requesting $50 million this week for an engineering study and hopes to rely on work previously completed for ARC. Even as questions remain, though, rail proponents who have recognized the cross-Hudson congestion are thrilled that Gateway is on the table even if it is ten years away.
“This is not ARC,” Martin Robins, director of Rutgers’ Voorhes Transportation Center, said to The Star-Ledger. “In some respects, it is a lesser project. But it is still a very significant project. There will be benefits that will reverberate throughout New Jersey. This can be a wonderful alternative.”
