Subway to Secaucus

Could the future route of the 7 train take it across the Hudson River? (Via The Wall Street Journal)

By dropping word of his support for a Secaucus-bound 7 train this week, Mayor Michael Bloomberg reminded us once again of his ability to draw a spotlight. With New York and New Jersey transit advocates largely despairing over the lack of transit on the new Tappan Zee Bridge, Bloomberg seemingly us a bone with a show of support for the 7 plan. If anything, the timing has helped restart the debate over the practicality, feasibility and intentions behind the plan.

On Wednesday, after The Post’s story made the rounds, the Mayor faced the New York press corps and went on the record with some support for a trans-Hudson rail crossing. “We want better transportation from here to all the markets, all of the places that people live that want to come into this city to work and to shop and have their entertainment,” he said. “This is something where the economics seem to make some sense. The subway extension is on budget, on time pretty much, coming down the West Side, and you could probably continue it over. There are some economic arguments that it would be justified and that we could work with New Jersey and the federal government and the state government here to get some money to do it.”

For now, we don’t know what the Parsons Brinckerhoff report will say. It’s still only a preliminary report and only those in the city government have seen it. When it’s released, we’ll have a better sense of the road ahead. Right now, though, if Bloomberg is serious about getting such an ambitious plan off the ground, he’ll have to work fast to secure funds for an environmental impact study and the project itself. He has 26 months.

Already, we’re seeing some of the benefits and challenges this project face come into view. Over at WNYC, Andrea Bernstein gathered some info. For starters, the city believes it could put together a broad coalition of funding partners that would include the city and state, New Jersey, the Port Authority and the MTA. That is, apparently, news to those entities.

The MTA is facing a set of very familiar problems. With Joe Lhota coming in, the new CEO and Chairman has a directive from Gov. Andrew Cuomo to cut costs and save money. The current capital plan has no leeway for funding such a project, and the MTA would rather see through the Second Ave. Subway before it looks to New Jersey. So far, MTA officials have tried to distance themselves from this idea. Noting that the MTA has no cash, a spokesman told Metro, “We’re focusing on the three capital projects we have now.” Transit officials said yesterday they would have no comment until the engineering study is released.

Beyond that significant obstacle, the city and PB are reportedly bullish on the popularity of such an extension. Initial estimates say the 7 extension would draw around 125,000 riders per day, thus significantly increasing crowding along the 7 line throughout Midtown Manhattan. Somehow, the IRT Flushing line stations would have to handle increasingly large crowds. In a similar vein, though, the ridership estimates show how this project would be a draw for the real estate business. As Alon Levy noted via Twitter, sending the subway through Hoboken and to Secaucus would be “a bonanza for developers.” Construction companies and landowners on both sides of the Hudson — and especially those at Hudson Yards — would be thrilled. A subway that passes under Hudson Yards from both New Jersey and the rest of New York would vastly increase the area’s popularity.

Still, despite this seemingly rosy outlook, the challenges are immense. Early reports say it could cost less than ARC as the tunneling requires no new Manhattan terminal. Rather, the MTA would simply start digging west from the tail tracks of the 7 line extension near 26th and 11th Ave. Some estimates, however, peg the cost at as much as $10 billion. With federal ARC dollars long since disbursed, any funding from DC would have originate from a new effort to drive transit dollars to the region, and this 7 line extension would just be one more megaproject competing for bucks.

Furthermore, what of the rolling stock and IRT-sized subway cars? Even though the 7 comes equipped with 11-car sets, capacity is limited by width. In an ideal world, it might make more sense to send a spur off the 8th Ave. line with its spacious IND cars to New Jersey. Bu we live in a world of practical realism. With a development at Hudson Yards spurring the discussion, the Mayor will focus only on the 7 line. Its tail tracks bring it close to New Jersey, and mighty political forces are lining up behind it.

Yet, for all of this talk of support from Bloomberg, a reticent and reluctant MTA and a project that doesn’t even have a public scoping document yet, we’re likely jumping the gun. Maybe the Mayor can deliver billions of dollars and a firm joint commitment to this project while somehow drawing a cost-conscious MTA on board. Maybe he can placate constituents throughout the five boroughs who would rather spend transit dollars on improving interborough rather than interstate access. Maybe he just won’t care about the politics because he’s a lame duck and wants a legacy. It wouldn’t be the first time Bloomberg has pushed through something he wants more than anyone else.

For now, enjoy the proverbial ride. This project has had more legs than it ever should have, and maybe one day the next stop on a Secaucus-bound 7 line will be across the river in New Jersey.

Could the 7 trains, seen here in Flushing, be bound for Secaucus, New Jersey? (7 trains galore by flickr user SpecialKRB)

When it comes to transit planning, the concept of legacy is a dangerous one for New York politicians. Instead of finding new funding sources or promoting transit investment that improves the current system based upon need, politicians prefer something flashy that will carry their names well beyond their term-limited time in the New York arena. That is, after all, one of the reasons why Mayor Bloomberg is funding the 7 line extension to the Hudson Yards area while the Second Ave. Subway struggles to move beyond Phase 1.

Now, the Mayor is poised to push forward on a plan to extend the 7 line westward, past the boundaries of New York City, under the Hudson River and to Secaucus. It would be a monumental project with a price tag today of around $10 billion and a construction time of ten years. It would represent the first extension of the New York City subway to areas outside of New York City. With various stakeholders — including the city, New Jersey, the Port Authority, the federal government and the MTA — it has the potential to be a complicated project, but according to a report in the The Post, the mayor wants to get it off the ground before he leaves office in 2013.

This tale began last November when the city, without notifying the MTA or anyone else really, floated a plan to send the 7 to Secaucus as a potential ARC replacement. The move would provide a one-seat ride from New Jersey to midtown and would further spur growth at the Hudson Yards area. The city paid Parsons Brinckerhoff $250,000 to conduct a feasibility study, and apparently, Bloomberg likes what he’s seen from the preliminary report.

Calling this subway extension “a heck of a lot better” than the ARC Tunnel, one source in the Bloomberg administration said things could move forward quickly. “This is a really good project,” the source told The Post. “The mayor wants this.” Whatever Mikey wants, Mikey gets.

The Post has more:

Mayor Bloomberg is pushing forward with a proposal to extend the No. 7 train to New Jersey and get the project locked in before he leaves City Hall in two years…Although noncommittal in public, Hizzoner is now a fan of the concept and is looking to announce the next planning steps in the coming months, sources said. Bloomberg would then be able to go public with a formal proposal by the end of 2012, in a bid to get the New Jersey-bound No. 7 tunnel on track by the close of his third term, Dec. 31, 2013…

The next steps in the process are a full business plan and environmental-impact study, which have not yet been commissioned. During his weekly radio appearance on WOR Friday, Bloomberg didn’t reveal his enthusiasm for the project, saying only, “If there’s money for it and it makes sense, I’d certainly support it.”

But yesterday, Bloomberg spokeswoman Julie Wood sounded a more optimistic note: “Since we began exploring this idea, we continue to think it has a lot of potential as a way to cost-effectively improve regional transportation and also create thousands of jobs.”

Officials in the Christie administration and the Port Authority are working with City Hall on the No. 7 concept, but insist that the mayor take the lead. Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak said yesterday, “We have been intrigued all along by this as a potential alternative.”

The issues, of course, focus around the money. Where will anyone find $10 billion for the project? Would the Port Authority be involved in a cross-Hudson project that uses MTA services and rolling stock? What would New Jersey contribute? How would New York City fund such an expansion — and should the city even be looking at an out-of-state subway line when so many routes within the five boroughs could use the attention?

For their part, MTA officials were silent on the news. Speaking after the MTA Board meeting this morning, Transit president Thomas Prendergast didn’t offer up too much. “We have to see what results of the study are,” he said. “It would be premature to comment on it.”

Ultimately, as The Post notes, though, this move is all about Bloomberg’s legacy. Moving forward with such an ambitious project would cement his place in the annals of city history. He would be the mayor who delivered the subway to New Jersey. Yet, whether we need this subway extension, whether the dollars are there and whether they could be better spent remains to be seen.

A rough sketch of the proposed 7 line extension to Secaucus. (Via The Wall Street Journal)

In writing yesterday about the city’s nascent plan to extend the 7 train to Secaucus, New Jersey, I touched briefly on those who stand to benefit the most from the plan. As with the current iteration of the city-funded 7 line extension, real estate interests — in particular, those of Related who are in line to develop the Hudson Yards — have the most riding on this project. By connecting a new mixed-use center with both New Jersey and the popular 7 line, Related would be able to draw thousands of people to an area of the city that’s currently among the least transit-accessible in Manhattan.

In fact, on Monday night, before the story broke in The Times, Stephen M. Ross, the CEO of Related, endorsed this project in a conversation with Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood. “I think it’s a great idea and it could save a ton of money,” Ross said to The Times.

The Real Estate Board of New York has also embraced the idea, and this influential group is now lobbying hard for fast action. “Every developer I’ve spoken to thinks it’s a terrific, simple idea,” REBNY President Steven Spinola said. “They all think it will be wonderful…“It sounds like a real solution [to the cross-Hudson capacity problems]. You’re able to provide the transportation needs, yet at a substantially lower cost.”

I’ve written before about the way transit advocates need real estate interests but need to be wary of them, and that certainly applies here. You won’t see REBNY advocating for a Nostrand Ave. subway or the Triboro RX plan which will lead to improvements but not of the same potential that we see here.You will see them advocating for a 7 line extension when the benefits to their interests are obvious. They have the political clout though to be heard in Washington, City Hall and Albany, something with which advocates have not been overly successful lately.

The real estate lobby isn’t the only one embracing this plan. Both the Daily News and New York Times editorial boards supported this project today. “The benefits,” says the News, “would include expanded bistate rail capacity, a potential easing in auto congestion and a spur to growth on the West Side and construction of a new No. 7 station at 42nd St. and 10th Ave.”

The Times highlighted how this seems to be a natural extension of the 7 line. “What makes the Bloomberg concept intriguing is that much of the drilling for this subway tunnel is already being done in Manhattan,” the Gray Lady says. “For the other tunnel that was scrapped by Governor Christie, known as ARC, the biggest cost would have been for a new corridor deep under Manhattan’s Far West Side. ARC’s total cost was edging up to $11 billion before it was canceled. ‘ARC-lite,’ as some city officials are calling the Bloomberg tunnel, has an estimated cost of about $5.3 billion.”

A rougher sketch of the proposed 7 line extension to Secaucus. (Via Subway to Secaucus)

Now, while Bloomberg’s proposal has garnered headlines, it’s not the first time the idea of a subway to Secaucus has been floated. A few years ago, Ralph Braskett and Steve Lanset put forward their Subway to Secaucus proposal, and it appears that Bloomberg has drawn from it. Questions remain concerning funding. Will the feds pay for this subway extension?

According to various transit advocates, if the feds do fund part of this project, it won’t be with ARC Tunnel money. “The $3 billion has disappeared,” the RPA’s Jeff Zupan said to the Daily News. “They’re not going to turn around and say, ‘okay, you have a better idea now, we’ll give you the money.’ It’s not going to happen.”

Federal officials believe that the FTA will not work too hard to keep this money in the northeast because of anger over Christie’s decision-making process. Rather, it will go to other New Starts projects, and one Daily News source said that the odds are “slim to none” that the Secaucus subway will get ARC money.

Mayor Bloomberg though remained hopefully that other money could find its way to this grand idea. “It’s very early,” he said, “but we’re certainly talking to Gov. Christie’s office, to Governor-elect Cuomo’s office, to the MTA, to Ray LaHood and his people.”

It’s going to take a lot of talking to get this ambitious plan off the ground.

Could the 7 trains, seen here in Flushing, be bound for Secaucus, New Jersey? (7 trains galore by flickr user SpecialKRB)

Fantasy subway maps have long been a passion of Internet railfans. Beyond imagining a city with a Second Ave. Subway that reaches from the Bronx to Brooklyn or a fully-realized IND Second System, I’ve seen maps with the Triboro RX line, various cross- and inter-borough routes and service shot past terminals in Queens to airports and neighborhoods underserved by the subway. Every now and then, someone proposed building out the 7 line to a cross-Hudson terminus in New Jersey, but that idea is generally concerned too fanciful and far-fetched to be a reality. Until now, that is.

With the ARC Tunnel dead, federal dollars out there for the taking and the need to expand cross-Hudson River rail offerings still a pressing one, the city is working on a plan that would send the 7 line under the river to Secaucus, New Jersey, The Times reported this evening. This project would include money for a stop at West 41st St. and 10th Ave. and would extend the subway westward from 34th St. and 11th Ave. to Secaucus Junction in the Garden State where passengers could connect to and from New Jersey Transit. It would, as Charles Bagli and Nicholas Confessore wrote, “extend the New York City subway outside the city for the first time, giving New Jersey commuters direct access to Times Square, Grand Central Terminal and Queens, and to almost every line in the system.”

Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office acknowledged the idea but noted that it’s only a thought on paper. “Extending the 7 line to New Jersey could address many of the region’s transportation capacity issues at a fraction of the original tunnel’s cost, but the idea is still in its earliest stages,” spokesman Andrew Brent said “Like others, we’re looking at — and open to discussing — any creative, fiscally responsible alternatives.”

Bagli and Confessore offered up more on the details, which stem from an internal memo produced by the Hudson Yards Development Corporation:

Like the project scuttled by Mr. Christie, this proposed tunnel would expand a regional transportation system already operating at capacity and would double the number of trains traveling between the two states during peak hours. But it would do so at about half the cost, an estimated $5.3 billion, according to a closely guarded, four-page memorandum circulated by the city’s Hudson Yards Development Corporation.

Unlike the old project, the new plan does not require costly condemnation proceedings or extensive tunneling in Manhattan, because the city is already building a No. 7 station at 34th Street and 11th Avenue, roughly one block from the waterfront. In July, a massive 110-ton tunnel boring machine completed drilling for the city’s $2.1 billion extension of the No. 7 line from Times Square to the new station.

Still, the proposal faces a number of daunting political, financial and logistical hurdles in an era of diminishing public resources. Mr. Christie, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Governor-elect Andrew M. Cuomo of New York would have to agree to make the tunnel a high priority and work in lock step to obtain the city, state and federal funds needed to make it happen.

On a practical level, this project, which I’d almost label a pie in the sky, faces numerous hurdles. First is the matter of $5.3 billion. Bagli and Confessore note that it “no longer seems possible” for the city to secure the $3 billion in federal transportation money New Jersey sacrificed when Gov. Chris Christie canceled the ARC Tunnel. At the least, the city will have to compete with everyone else in American for the dollars.

For this project to work for the city, New Jersey would have to kick in some money as well, but Christie seems intent on using the $3 billion he pledged to the ARC Tunnel for other state transportation projects already on the table. “The issue again will come down to what will Governor Christie say,” Jeffrey Zupan of the RPA said to The Times.

Both New York and New Jersey would have to engage in an environmental impact study as well, but Bloomberg hopes to use those developed for the ARC project. Bloomberg has yet to present the plan to current Gov. David Paterson or Governor-elect Andrew Cuomo. Paterson is said to be “intrigued” by this idea, according to one aide. “Getting cars off the road, reducing congestion and providing another access point for commuters between New York and New Jersey is going to benefit the region from a job-creation and development standpoint,” Lawrence Schwartz said to The Times.

On a certain level, I’m wary about this plan. It’s definitely thinking big, and the city needs to be thinking big. As far as transit is concerned, we stopped thinking big seventy years ago, and a direct subway connection to New Jersey would be a boon for the city. But other than the increased capacity an additional tunnel would bring, the subway isn’t the modality best suited to achieve that goal. The four-mile distance isn’t prohibitive for a subway, and as PATH has shown, it’s certainly possible to maintain a cross-Hudson rail line. A subway connection via Secaucus Junction doesn’t add the same value commuter rail tunnels with a multi-track terminal would.

Cynically, I want to say that this project seems designed to further support the real estate interests working to develop the Hudson Yards. Already, New Jersey commuters have to take New Jersey Transit to reach the subway, and they can get the 7th or 8th Ave. lines at Penn Station. This plan would simply mean that they would still have to take NJ Transit to reach the subway and would have to suffer through additional stops and a potential transfer before reaching midtown. Without a true one-seat ride, the time-saving benefits of the ARC plan are lessened.

Ultimately, I’d rather see the city pledge $5.3 billion to subway improvements in underserved areas within the five boroughs before it starts to look outside for expansions. Staten Island as well as areas of Queens and Brooklyn need subway routes, and the non-Manhattan connections between the outer boroughs need to be beefed up. As far as fantasy subway maps go, looking toward New Jersey would be last on my wishlist even if it’s first on the city’s.

That said, I can’t discount the importance of thinking big. Plans like these just aren’t proposed any longer, and if the city can figure out a way to make it work economically while ensuring the feasibility of this plan from a transportation standpoint, by all means do it. Even if it the impact isn’t as deep as that of the ARC Tunnel would have been, a 7 line subway extension to Secaucus would do wonders for cross-Hudson travel.

New York’s politicians have recognized that reality, and if they can build support, this idea could being to move forward. “This is a bold idea that must be given serious and immediate consideration,” Sen. Chuck Schumer said. “Building the ARC tunnel and extending the 7 line for a second stop are both critical to growing the New York economy for the coming decades, and I will fight to deliver any available federal funds to make that happen.”