The new Meadowlands facility and a new NJ Transit station will sit in a verdant paradise of North Jersey.
The Yankees aren’t the only team in town getting a new stadium with a new commuter rail station attached to the project. Great news came today that the Giants’ and Jets’ new Meadowlands complex will finally, mercifully, be New Jersey Transit-accessible.
The new Meadowlands facility had its grand unveiling today. The various pictures of the 82,000-seat make it look like another state-of-the-art sports stadium for the New York metropolitan area, but do we at Second Ave. Sagas really care about the look of the stadium? Of course not. We want the juicy transit information.
The Times comes through in today’s article detailing the project:
Just outside the stadium is the location for a railway station — which connects the Meadowlands to the Pascack Valley Line of New Jersey Transit — that is expected to be completed in 2009. The addition of the rail station is similar to the plan to bring a Metro-North stop to the new Yankee Stadium.
Hallelujah! No more endless waits at the Lincoln Tunnel trying to get to New Jersey in time for kick-off. No more mad dashes through the stadium in an effort to beat the traffic back to New York.
For thousands of Jets and Giants fans who live in New York and points east, we are saved from our cars. We’re finally getting New Jersey Transit access to our football teams. When this station is completed, all of the city’s big sports arenas — the Meadowlands, Yankee Stadium, Shea Stadium, Madison Square Garden — will sit next to commuter rail stations. As Gary of Brooklyn Streets noted, some good will come out of a stadium plan. And that is great news for us rail fans.
8 comments
[…] the Jets and Giants. The Stadium, set to open in 2010, will house 82,000. But more important is the New Jersey Transit station sitting right next to the stadium, and that means no more driving through traffic to get to football […]
Praise Jebus! Good news indeed.
frankly… i wish they would solve the daily subway crisis for us commuters before thinking about an occasional game…
i mean… we have to deal with crowded or delayed trains like almost every single day… but sports games dont come that often…
so i would recommend spending the money for important infrastructural repairs or better service… after all, we pay $4 (round trip) every day for the subway… we should get what we deserve to get (that is better service)
by the way… i know this is New Jersey Transit… but the same point could still be applied to them. they could spend their money on building the Trans Hudson Express Tunnel or ease the lives of New Jersey residents who commute daily to the city to work…
F Express: The MTA doesn’t run NJ Transit. So we’re talking about apples and oranges here. I see your point, but the money we spend on the subways doesn’t go anywhere near this project. It would be great to see a new Hudson River crossing for trains, but we’ll take the small victories as they come as well.
Pascack Valley line, grrrreeeat. Might as well hook it up to the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail. I guess I’ll still be carpooling, since I’m pretty sure there’s not enough capacity to handle any reasonable amount of traffic into Hoboken on the Pascack Valley Line. They’d need to run dozens of trains to make this a reasonable option (remember NJT trains don’t carry nearly as many sardines, I mean people, as NYCT subways, nor can they have the same headways).
F Express, it will be at least a decade before the Trans-Hudson Express Tunnel is completed. You can’t expect that to be the only New Jersey Transit improvement over such a long period of time. Given that a new stadium is being constructed, now is the right time to provide mass-transit access to the Meadowlands. By reducing traffic throughout the tri-state area, the station will be a benefit to everybody, not just those who attend events at the stadium.
Slappy, I wouldn’t demean the Pascack Valley Line, which was the only reasonable route. New sidings have recently been constructed along the line that will allow bi-directional traffic. Though there isn’t yet a one-seat ride from Penn Station, I’m sure they’ll time the connections at Secaucus to offer a competitive alternative to driving. There is plenty of capacity at Hoboken Terminal, especially given that most of the events will be at times that do not coincide with the weekday rush.
I could be wrong, but I believe much of the money is going to be coming from the New Jersey Sports Expo Authority (NJSEA), with more coming from the Port Authority.
The now $175 million cost for the project is absolutely dwarfed in comparison to the $7.2 billion price tag for THE Tunnel.
The project, at least originally with its possible phase II, was planned to be used in coordination of the possible reactivation of the West Shore line.
[…] the Jets and Giants. The Stadium, set to open in 2010, will house 82,000. But more important is the New Jersey Transit station sitting right next to the stadium, and that means no more driving through traffic to get to football […]