When news broke late yesterday of the city’s very preliminary plans to extend the 7 train to Secaucus, New Jersey, everyone was taken by surprise including, it seems, MTA Chair and CEO Jay Walder. In remarks to the press after this morning’s MTA Board meeting, Walder said that Bloomberg officials told him of the plan only “hours” before The Times broke the story. For its part, the city said it had not yet involved MTA officials in its talks because, as Michael Grynbaum put it, “the idea remained in its infancy and that the discussions had not progressed to a point where other agencies would be consulted.”
For his part, though, Walder, speaking as a transit technocrat, embraced the idea. He called it “very exciting” and expressed his belief that the transit system for the New York Metropolitan region must transcend state borders. “One of the things that it really says to us is that the region continues to look at the importance of public transportation to further the economic growth and the prosperity that we want to see,” he said.
Still, we shouldn’t start counting down the days until the MTA readies a tunnel across the Hudson. In addition to the planning challenges, the authority stressed how the dollars for such a project just aren’t there, and the MTA won’t begin the process until other capital plans are realized first. “There is no money,” Walder said, “in our capital program for any megaprojects except the three we have under way.” Until the dollars materialize, this extension will remain a tantalizing idea on paper only.
46 comments
You need to get in touch with Steve Lanset “Transportation Issues Coordinator” & “New Jersey Sierra Club” who appears to be the brains behind this.
From a “lead agency” point of view, there’s no reason why the MTA should be the driving force behind this. There’s nothing wrong with Bloomberg re-floating the idea or in Walder voicing his support, but the main beneficiary would be New Jersey being able to get passengers into midtown Manhattan by a far more direct route than the current Hoboken transfer. So now that the idea is back out for discussion, officials across the river are going to have to be the ones who take the lead in taking it to the next level, if they want the plan.
Something is very wrong here. From 2003 to 2006 the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council performed a Southern Brooklyn Transit Investment Study costing $6 million. Through numerous community outreach meetings, people were asked to suggest long range capital transportation ideas to the MTA and DOT regarding all forms of passenger and freight transportation. There was no shortage of ideas including the Nostrand and Utica Subways and reactivating the severely underutilized Bay Ridge LIRR route which operates one freight train a day by turning into light rail.
The MTA responded that they did not envision any new capital monies over the next 30 years, so all ideas were rejected. Similarly, DOT also refused all ideas that were suggested. The only recommendation coming from the study was that new ferry service would not be economical to operate. So naturally the City went ahead with a few trial ferry services anyway. The result: $6 million down the drain, not counting the countless hours invested by well-meaning citizens.
Now someone comes along and suggests an extension of the Flushing Line to New Jersey and now its on top of the list after Second Avenue Subway, #7 extension to 34th Street and East Side Access.
Ben you are correct. The needs of New Yorkers in the outer boroughs who have been waiting 50 years for subway extensions should come before the needs of New Jersey.
Amen. I distinctly remember that study.
What do the Hudson Yards have that southern B’klyn doesn’t? Wealthy, inscrutable, powerful real estate interests with the Mayor’s ear who’ll make enormous sums when their property values increase. And all of it rebranded as economic development.
and tax dollars roll in that benefit all
Real estate taxes from the CBD account for %70 percent of the city’s funding.
Yeah. And unless you believe Bloomberg’s
liesstrategic misrepresentation instead of your lying eyes, you’ll see the extra real estate taxes will never cover $2.1 billion in construction cost.Right. So let’s just sit still have what we have and not bother to build again, shall we?
Nevermind that the population is going to increase and more commercial space will be needed 10, 20 years down the road.
Lets just try to build a bunch of train lines to places in the outer boroughs who don’t want stuff built in their backyards and would never tolerate it because they are in love with their cars.
Oh, and BTW, the model of building new subway lines to up-and-coming areas to spur real estates and economic development has work all over the world, including NYC.
Who says the outer boroughs don’t want subway extension? That was not the reason they were never built. You are just Manhattan-biased. The “City” is not only Manhattan.
More fair to say is most people want them, but a minority of NIMBYs and other interest groups make it impossible – on top of whatever structural difficulties already exist.
It works in cities where building a kilometer of subway costs $250 million. In New York, where it costs $1,500 million, it’s not as useful.
People could just take the existing lines. Higher crowding is bad, but compared to multi-billion pricetags for small extensions, it’s not that big a deal.
I agree, but better cross-Hudson links are probably a regional need, not just a NJ need or a NY need.
It’s not on the top of any list. Jay Walder had nothing to do with what the MTA said in 2006, and it’s highly unlikely that he’ll have anything to do with how the MTA spends its capital dollars 20 or 30 years from now.
All he’s saying is that it’s an interesting idea (which it is), but that his agency can’t afford to pay for it right now (which it can’t). He certainly didn’t make any commitment for the future. He did, however, open the door for others to provide the funding.
He did say it would be considered after the projects that are under construction were completed. He made no mention of other needs or past proposals like the JFK link to the World Trade Center, extension of the Second Avenue Subway to Brooklyn, or outerborough subway extensions that were never killed but put on indefinite hold. I interpret that as “the top of the list”.
And some people have forgotten about a line that was already started and then stopped — the Southeast Queens line.
No federal money has been guaranteed for the outer boroughs. The feds had offered to fund 3 billion for a new NJ to NY tunnel, and the Port Authority offered another 3 billion.
So that’s why the 7 train extension to NJ gets such high priority. Who is going to fund an expansion or reactivation of the LIRR to Bay Ridge? Federal officials give priority to projects that will have lots of passengers, such as LIRR to Grand Central, Second Avenue subway, or a 7 extension to Secaucus, Nj.
The cost per rider of reactivating the LIRR Bay Ridge branch would be 4-10 times lower than that of sending the 7 to Secaucus. Costs drop like a stone when you don’t need a new tunnel.
and how many people would use it? Plenty would use the 7 extention
76,000 commuters traveling twice a weekday each. Of those, 32,000 would be new subway riders; the rest would use it instead of their present subway route.
You don’t believe a Utica or Nostrand Line would be heavily utilized? In fact one of the reasons a Utica Avenue Line wasn’t built was because it was thought that the line would become too overloaded along Eastern Parkway because it would be so heavily utilized along Utica Avenue.
“It was thought”? One would hope that a subway line extension would attract ridership! The MTA would be grossly negligent if it built a new line without first making sure that enough capacity remained for existing riders.
I read it in a report describing the Utica Avenue Subway. It was really saying that some of the IRT ridership along Flatbush Avenue would be diverted to the BMT and along Eastern Parkway to the IND on Fulton Street where there was capacity. Not a horrible scenario. The other possibility of course would have been to build it off the IND line instead which even would have been more expensive.
Except the IND line has actual capacity issues and the IRT line doesn’t.
love the map
http://www.subwaytosecaucus.com/Test.html
Gary showed me that map last night. It’s hilarious. The 7 line extension to New Jersey is a plan on a piece of loose leaf somewhere.
Well, what’s worse? A good idea on some loose leaf, or a bad idea that cost millions$ to explore in a neatly laid out and bound report? We get a lot of the latter in this region. :-p
Hey Everyone
I don’t know why you are all so down on this idea. It wasn’t like ole Bloomy sprang it up on everyone out of the blue. It was born from the ARC’s demise and the funding scheme that went with it. The city tried to pitch projects such as the the second avenue subway for federal dollars and came up short. Thus, came this plan to extend the subway using the federal funds that were meant for the ARC. Everyone that reads this blog could name probably 100 projects that they would rather see, but what makes this project different is that it has a better shot at getting the federal funds that were largely meant for a similar goal.
Secondly, all this talk about the tunnel being only meant for NJ is short sighted. Tunnels from Brooklyn to Manhattan don’t only benefit a single borough. Greater regional connectivity means more business and commerce for both sides of the river. Having a subway connection to NJ would be a boon for many parts of Manhattan, and real estate development in both Manhattan, Queens and NJ
Thirdly, it is equally as short sighted to assume that the subway extension into NJ would simply remain a stub. New Jersey has been trying for years to build up transportation options the areas around New York (see Hudson-Bergen light rail), once the extension is complete it would more than likely be expanded upon into with greater time.
The problem is that this is not regional connectivity. It wouldn’t unite the transportation systems, because the fares are intended to be separate. The transfer at Secaucus is likely to be quite nasty, involving multiple stairways or elevators. In addition, the TOD in the area sucks, which means that off-peak the line would be deserted.
Again, by itself it’s not a horrible project. Unlike ARC Alt P, it does make transportation better. But it comes at a cost that’s simply too high. $5.3 billion for an tunnel crossing a major river is simply too much.
In Istanbul, they’re building a much more complex underwater tunnel for $2.5 billion, uniting the commuter systems on the European and Asian sides of the city in the process. Although Turkey has lower wages than the US, it also has lower labor productivity; for difficult engineering projects, these cancel each other out, so that developing countries generally don’t get things for less money than developed ones. For example, high-speed rail construction in China costs more than in most European countries.
Okay, strike the $2.5 billion part for the Istanbul tunnel. I’ve looked more and seen numbers ranging from $1.5 to $4.1 billion. The one that looks the most credible to me is $3.5 billion (link).
I’m sure the costs are too high still, but it’s got to do more than cross a major river. It probably has to cross the Palisades to get to Secaucus, and the proposal appears to include ~$0.5B-$0.8B (let’s just account for everything in billions, like my income if next year keeps looking like the second half of this year: $0.000018B) for that overpriced station they suddenly really need. That’s probably what attracted Bloomberg to this in the first place; suddenly he has a politically expedient way to save money across the board and get federal funding for an interstate project that everyone from Walder to LaHood to Christie might find attractive. But included in that ~5.3B, provision for whatever stations might be needed on the NJ side besides the Secaucus one – it would be stupid to skip Hoboken (PATH/HBLR) or Weehawken (HBLR, at least) and at least one other stop is probably called for further inland.
I agree the Secaucus transfer will suck, probably by design, but wasted trips could perhaps be reduced by making it express- or local-only during off-peak times. I never used it, but I’m told Secaucus is already a rather miserable place.
Also, don’t you think you’re being a little over-dramatic about alt P? I realize it was far from ideal, but it’s not like it didn’t have the potential to move several hundred thousand people a day faster and closer to their workplaces, and it at least would have meant somewhat smart transfers to get to Midtown East, albeit the uptown extreme of midtown east. From what I can tell, the main reason this 7ext2.0 is better is alt P meant a two-seat transfer from Midtown West to get where most people need to go, while this serves Midtown East and Midtown West with one transfer at Secaucus.
It’s not really over-dramatic. Alt P doesn’t add any service that couldn’t be done today. At approximately zero cost, they could tear down the faregates at Secaucus, remodel the station to make the transfer there nicer, and time the transfers as far as practically possible (which isn’t a lot). At the same time, it would increase operating and maintenance costs more than it would increase ridership and revenue. There’s plenty of standing room on NJT trains, and there could be even more standing room if the trains had their vestibules widened.
The only advantage of ARC is the ability to serve more destinations, i.e. Alt G. The actual tunnel given present service plans would be like building a relief subway line in Southern Brooklyn.
Maybe, but this is bi-state and has a hope of being seriously funded. And would certainly see ridership. And probably makes way more sense than ARC as ARC existed.
Of course. That kind of attitude is public transport in NYC, and to some extent the whole USA, is ruled by petty fiefdoms. It’s terrible policy. I’ve had people get outright indignant when I suggested simple solutions, like extending LIRR and NJT beyond Penn – as if it would be tragic for one state agency to serve people in another state.
This I don’t know about, but it may not matter. I’d be curious to know what other stops on this extended Flushing line would/could exist. Just going to Secaucus is nice, but it might not mean much off-peak usage. Going beyond to some other population center would be interesting – the capacity would certainly be there, given Queens’ population density.
The Palisades might make any simple cut and cover stations in populated parts of Hudson coastal areas north of Hoboken difficult at best. Possibly that area from Weehawken to Fort Lee was only settled because the automobile made it possible.
The area between Weehawken and Fort Lee is very dense, some parts more so than New York City itself.
Eh, I wouldn’t say that. ~12k people/mi² seems to be about the max, and Edgewater (which straddles them on the water’s edge between Fort Lee and Weehawken) is less than that. Behind North Bergen there isn’t much. But sure, that’s a medium dense NYC neighborhood.
Either way, it’s probably ripe for transit, but the terrain isn’t very rail friendly sadly.
I was thinking of Cliffside Park and Fairview. Though they’re slightly less dense than I thought – Cliffside Park is at 9,000/km^2, a little less than NYC.
The hill terrain sucks for low-cost transit. The Northern Branch and the West Shore Line could be mildly useful further north, though. At about one tenth the present construction costs, it would make sense to build a circumferential subway in Jersey from the bridge to Jersey City or Newark going north-south under the Palisades – but that’s a very, very long-term plan.
Ah, that makes sense. But if you say Cliffside has 23.8k/mi², you’re saying the entire population of Cliffside has 23.8k people. It’s only a square mile. Transit-worthy, but hardly a self-contained unit.
I get the sense that any serious rail investment by NJ will need to wait until at least 2014 thanks to this Christie cretin.
The more I think about this plan, the more I like it. It, like the PATH, is another way into the city, offering both redundancy and a different NYC station. However, I sww two big problems with it:
1. I believe it will INCREASE, not decrease, car traffic in NJ. For a worker from the suburbs of NJ to the east side (GCT area), the 4-seat ride (car-NJT train-uptown subway-crosstown 7 or S) becomes a 2-seat ride (car to Secaucus-7 train). Some people will skip the commuter rail altogether.
2. The 7 now has a huge burden to carry, playing backup to both NJT and LIRR. If something happens at Penn (signal problems, Amtrak strike, or worse), delays would be sure to mount on the 7. A provision would be needed to turn trains around at Times Square (or 11th Ave) so as to not cripple the whole line if something happens in NJ. Brush fires are not too uncommon in the NJ swampland.
Operationally, there are union-related issues but hopefully they can be worked out. NYCT buses from Staten Island already go through NJ (though they don’t pick up or discharge passengers there), and NJT trains cross state lines into NY (and on the NE corridor, to a yard in Morrisville, PA). It’s not unprecedented.
Gov Christie needs to throw his support behind this early and loudly. If I were Mayor Bloomberg, I wouldn’t seriously think about it if there were a chance that the NJ gov would cancel it, like he did ARC.
Try five seats if you count the car trip: car to your commuter rail, commuter rail to Secaucus, Secaucus to Penn, Penn to uptown service, uptown service to crosstown service. With this extension, the trip can easily be cut to three.
This I doubt. The traffic on Amtrak and NJT combined should easily fit on the 7 and PATH combined. And the 7 will not be running over existing commuter RR infrastructure, as for now that would be illegal. (It would be ill advised anyway, in this case, given how busy the 7 is.)
If the Secaucus line was built with an eye on eventually extending it out to the Meadowlands (which could easily parallel the existing NJT rail line, the way WMATA does with the Red Line in Maryland), the parking area there could become a major weekday park-ride destination. That would take traffic off the final five-mile run along Route 3 and coming off the Turnpike into Manhattan.
You’d boost vehicle traffic in and around the sports complex, but traffic between there and Weehawken would decrease if you had an area where drivers could easily park and access the No. 7 train.
The transfer at Secaucus would be a dream compared to transfers from the proposed ARC or current transfers at Penn. The objections I’m hearing seem to be along the lines of this not being perfect. It’s not perfect. It would however be highly useful, provide a ton of redundancy to the current system, and do so at a very low cost if these figures have any thought behind them.
Considering how skeptical you were at the ARC Tunnel figures, I’m surprised you’re willing to believe this $5.3 billion so readily. As Alon would probably note, this tunnel to Secaucus should be built for such a relatively low figure, but based on the per-mile cost of both SAS and the 7 line, I’m almost inclined to say that the city is underestimating the cost by a few billion dollars.
I would say $5.3B is overkill, but probably involves more than the tunnel. This is transparently partly a ploy – a smart one, BTW! – to get the station at 10th Ave, so that explains somewhere below $1B of the figure. Stations are needed east of Secaucus, I would guess. Connections to HBLR and/or PATH (depending on the tunnel’s landing) would require a deep station given the proximity to the river. The Palisades necessitates a deep bore perhaps roughly a mile beyond the river.
Still, if regional leaders act quickly to secure the ARC funds from the feds an the PA’s share of ARC, it seems the project is $700M in the black if there are no overruns.
I have no idea if the figures are correct. They certainly aren’t figures drawn up after a serious design study! I do know that you’ll already have your station on the NYC side built, and you already have the Secaucus station built. There is no deep cavern station. Very few property takings on the NYC side. There is no need for a Bergen line loop track. You probably want a storage yard in NJ somewhere, probably smaller than the one you’d use for ARC.
Here is a thought experiment: I understand that the tunnel configuration makes it harder to retrofit wider trains on the 7 line. But how about bi-levels? Most of the line is above-ground, and I wonder if you’d need to do any work in Queens or Manhattan to allow for a new generation of 7 cars with 2 levels?
Unless you plan on expecting anyone a standard deviation taller than average to crouch, I’m not sure bi-level would work on IRT dimensions with a height limit of maybe 12′. There isn’t much clearance of any sort in the Steinway Tunnels.
Regardless, bi-level isn’t effective on transit services where you need many doors, lots of standing room. and there are stations where dozens of people get in/out of each car at a time. Even if it were possible on the 7, it would mean longer dwell times and probably not much added capacity.
It’s a little different on commuter trains, where a bi-level might at least come close to doubling available seating.
Good point. NJT uses bi-levels quite extensively these days as a capacity enhancer, but you’re right that those cars are used on runs with few station stops, and with stops where there is a dominant passenger flow on or off at each stop.