A rough sketch of the proposed 7 line extension to Secaucus. (Via The Wall Street Journal)
As the city’s plan to extend the 7 line to Secaucus gains support from the real estate lobby and, nominally, from N.J. Gov. Chris Christie, this far-fetched idea has stayed in the news for a few weeks. As intriguing as a cross-Hudson subway tunnel would be, the dollars aren’t there yet. Whether they ever will be remains to be seen, and many in the outer boroughs would rather see spending on underserved areas of New York City before the subway crosses state lines.
Today, The Times, which first broke the story nearly two weeks ago, has some reader feedback in the form of letters to the editor on Bloomberg’s plan. Let’s see what people are saying.
The first letter comes from Spero T. Leakas, a New Jersey lawyer. He writes:
Considering that Manhattan is the commercial hub of New York City and the metropolitan region, why would the subway system extend 20 or so miles east of the region’s center into Queens but not extend at all west?
From a transportation perspective, the region is currently a very unbalanced scale, and I am very happy to see that this is seriously being discussed.
Municipal or state boundaries are no excuse for not uniting a region’s populated areas into one cohesive transportation system. Under the proposal, the areas of Hudson County, New Jersey, are certainly worthy of having the No. 7 line.
Bob Previdi, a former planner with Transit, supports the measure from a transportation point of view. “The line,” he says, “should either continue on to Newark, where it can link to passengers from the Morris and Essex and Raritan Valley lines, and Newark Liberty Airport as well, or the tunnel should go to Hoboken. Hoboken is closer than Secaucus and is the second major hub for New Jersey Transit service.”
Michael Rogovin, another former Transit planner, says the 7 line extension idea is “deeply flawed.” He writes:
Trains bringing commuters from Queens already discharge huge crowds into stations at Grand Central, Fifth Avenue and Times Square, beyond the capacity of these stations to efficiently handle the volume of people. The extension of the No. 7 train to the West Side that is already under construction will add to these crowds.
Adding thousands of New Jersey commuters to the same narrow platforms and limited stairs, ramps and escalators (with little or no chance of expansion at these stations), would create unbearable crowding and a safety nightmare.
Rogovin believes increasing capacity at Penn Station should remain the primary objective for any cross-Hudson rail tunnel. Using the subways to achieve the ends of the now-deceased ARC Tunnel should be a last resort only.
Right now, there’s no firm proposal for the 7 to head to Secaucus, and the money isn’t in place. But if it keeps people talking about ways to solve a problem, perhaps it can become a real possibility for increasing trans-Hudson rail capacity.
25 comments
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: PATH, not the subway, should be extended from 33rd Street, connect to the Javits 7 stop, and then to Weehawken and Secaucus. PATH’s job is to connect NJ and NY; the subway’s purpose is to connect parts of New York City. This leaves the 7 room for further southward extension, eventually connecting to Lower Manhattan or even Staten Island.
I hear what you’re saying about the differing functions between PATh and the subway, but it’s basically physically impossible to extend PATH north from 33rd St. The IND and BMT tunnels are in the way.
Ben is entirely right that it’s not physically possible to extend PATH beyond its current 33rd Street terminal.
Beyond that, no transit planner has ever suggested that the 7 would go into Staten Island. It simply does not work from either a geography or an engineering standpoint.
If Staten Island ever gets subway service, it would probably need to be through the Narrows — the original plan from decades ago.
Rogovin’s comment doesn’t make sense to me. It’s true that those stations are crowded, but the crowds come from the opposite direction. The eastbound #7 platforms at Times Square, Fifth Avenue, and Grand Central, are not particularly busy in the a.m.; and likewise, the westbound platforms in the p.m.
Even more bizarre is his comment that: “The extension of the No. 7 train to the West Side that is already under construction will add to these crowds.” As it now stands, the only additional “crowds” will be those boarding at one extra station, on Eleventh Avenue. Who exactly would that be? It will be many years before that location is the source of any kind of crowd.
…except that in Manhattan the eastbound platform and the westbound platform are the same platform. Times Square, Fifth Ave and Grand Central on the Flushing line have island platforms.
I agree with Marc Sheppard, Grand Central is not that crowded. Adding the #7 to Javits will not be an issue. Adding the train to NJ and it will – but all this would need is to add staircases. This is relatively simple to do and can be done.
NJ desperately needs an increase in capacity – and a direct link to GCT would be ideal. NJ also deserves to have Hoboken Terminal move more people then it currently does. The waterfront development would be greatly served by extending the #7 and offer access to all subways, Metro North and the LIRR (2016 ESA).
Turning Times Square into a three-track station might have been a good idea – maybe it’s too late now. There is a capacity advantage to Times Square right now. Two trains, a local and an express, can be held there, which gives an excellent opportunity to contain crowds all going in one direction. That capacity will be halved after the 7 extension happened.
34th Street-Hudson Yards is supposed to be a three-track station, so if there were a New Jersey extension running to the south/west of there, the set-up would be similar to the BMT Whitehall Street station, where the center platform over the years has been used to either short-turn N trains or as a terminal for the EE and more recently the W train. Depending on cross-Hudson passenger load, 34th Street could also be used for short-turning trains back towards Times Square and Queens.
That’s good I guess, but it leaves people waiting on platforms at Times Square instead of waiting in the relevant train to their destination.
Anything that increases rail capacity between New York and New Jersey is a good thing.
But New Jersey voters made their decision when they elected Christie – who, I shouldn’t need to point out, ran on a platform of cutting public spending. They are no more likely to pay their fair share for this than they were for the rail tunnel that he just killed.
And the Federal bureaucracy does not trust Christie anymore either, so the only way this would happen would be if New York paid for nearly all of it.
I think we would be much better off talking about better service to Queens and Brooklyn.
There are three separate questions here:
1. From the perspective of regionwide planning, is a subway extension to Jersey a good idea?
2. For the specific purpose of increasing capacity between NJT and Manhattan, what is the best plan?
3. Who should pay for such an extension’s construction and for its operating losses?
It’s perfectly consistent to think that the answers to those questions are, respectively, “yes,” “not the subway,” and “Jersey.”
I disagree with the belief that the tunnel should go to Hoboken. Not only is that a longer extension, but the PATH already does that, and it’s certainly not overcrowded (relative to the 7)
I think we should expand PATH before we expand the 7: both east (from WTC as a crosstown service) and north (in both Jersey and in Manhattan, if that’s possible)
Also, in response to the suggestion to extend the 7 to Newark, wouldn’t it be easier to just extend the N and Q to LaGuardia?
it would be – at it has been attempted – but the community it would’ve affected shot it down.
Look at a track map. PATH is blocked; any extension on the Manhattan side is dead, dead, dead.
Rather than connecting PATH to the 7, why not connect the PATH to the 42nd Street shuttle? Loading gauge compatibility would be a non-issue. It would however require substantial reconstruction of the 6th Avenue line from perhaps 30th street until 42nd street. I would imagine that the billions previously allocated for ARC should be sufficient to cover the costs.
(1) Lower and extend the PATH tracks so they descend to cross below the Broadway line at 34th street, and ascend to above the existing 6th Avenue tracks at 41st street.
(2) Lower the 6th Avenue express tracks below the PATH extension, connecting to the existing tracks at 41st street and roughly 30th street.
(3) Build a connection from the PATH extension to the 42nd Street Shuttle at Bryant Park.
(4) Rebuild the 42nd Street / Bryant Park station as a 3-level station with PATH trains on the upper level, 6th Avenue line trains on the middle level, and 7 trains on the lower level. and
(5) Rebuild the 34th Street / Herald Square station as a 3-level station with Broadway line trains on the upper level, PATH and 6th Avenue locals on the middle level, and 6th Avenue expresses on the lower level.
(5) Integrate the fare structures and systems between PATH and MTA.
The 6th Ave express tracks would be pretty deep at 34th street, and cross-platform transfers would no longer be possible there (but would be retained at 42nd street.)
Track maps posted online indicate that the 42nd street line has four tracks (one of which is currently disused.) The two southern tracks could be used for the new PATH extension, while the two northern tracks could be used to retain the existing Shuttle service all the way to Times Square.
The problem with this is that for this cost, you might as well build ARC Alt G and provide the extra cross-Hudson capacity. You’d get more ridership this way – the reason people don’t already connect from the Erie Lines to PATH more is partly the lack of fare integration, but partly also the detours and slowness involved. Transit needs to be made faster than driving over the GWB to induce a large mode shift.
If PATH is blocked northwards, could it possibly be extended from Journal Square perhaps?
Sure, but where, and why?
To be honest, the ARC tunnel was a good idea. But the PATH needs to be updated. If the PATH ran along the BDF and 7 tunnels to Grand Central, so much could be accomplished. What they WANT is foe ALMOST-congestion at their stations. They want them to be fully used at all times. As for Staten Island… well A PATH to Perth Amboy through Staten from Grand Central would be nice. But those are big dreams.
For Alon’s Q’s: “No” “PATH, NJT, LIRR, Metro-North, and more Subway Access at BOTH GCT and Penn” “The Big Three, and Jersey”
The subway dosen’t go that fast. To get from Flushing to Times Sq it takes forever on the 7, and 15 on the LIRR. If Jersey wants a subway, make one themselves. And the PATH can extend some more,can’t it? Atlantic/Flatbush would be nice.
The No. 7 plan isn’t bad … if the bulk of the money towards the project doesn’t come from New York. The city/state should contribute some, since a bi-directional link to the Hudson Yards development would increase that project’s viability by making it pretty much a one or two-seat ride from most directions coming into Manhattan, but the obvious benefit would be N.J. commuters, especially for those coming in from the suburbs to the north and west of the city, who could bypass the Hoboken transfer to get into Midtown (and it would also benefit Metro North riders between Port Jervis and Suffern, so the MTA would get a small ancillary benefit from the route and a station at Secaucus).
Question: with the economy being less than stellar and the announcement of layoffs left and right, is ridership on trains, buses, ferries from NJ to NYC actually rising? Is is projected to go up, stay the same, or go down? Are NJ Transit, PATH, local and express buses and the PA tunnels/bridge to Manhattan really at capacity, especially compared to the NYC subway? I don’t ride NJT or PATH all that much, but when I do they don’t seem any more crowded than the MTA commuter lines or NYC subway trains and buses. Just curious.
It’s unbelievably frustrating to hear all this talk of expanding subway lines in every direction when one of the easiest ways of expanding capacity and improving access would be to simply merge NJT and LIRR so that they can offer through-service, and end the insanity of using Penn as a terminal station.
I realize this is more complicated than it sounds, since electrification standards are probably very different on each side, and getting both railroads under the control of the Port Authority would probably be very difficult. But that can’t be more complicated than a whole new tunnel and the NYC subway leaving the state.
Not a bad idea Jack. Penn is a station, not a terminal, and there’s no good reason why someone can’t take a train from Montauk to Trenton.
[…] destination. Last November, we heard rumblings of this thought as the region’s planners offered their opinions on the Secaucus extension. At the time, former Transit planner Bob Previdi suggested sending the […]