It’s been a few months since we’ve heard much about the city’s nascent plans to send the 7 line to Secaucus. In October, we heard reports that Mayor Bloomberg will push to get the $10 billion extension off the ground before he leaves office in 2013. It would be his shining transit moment and could transform cross-Hudson commuting.
But what if sending the train to Secaucus is only half of a good idea? Maybe the 7 should cross the Hudson, but maybe it should have a different 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 subway to Newark Airport or even Hoboken, a major hub for New Jersey Transit service that is even closer than Secaucus.
This week, for Crain’s New York, Previdi trumpets a refined idea: The 7 should go to Hoboken instead of Secaucus. He writes:
There are three important reasons to consider Hoboken over Secaucus. First, extending the No. 7 to Secaucus would take 21,000 feet of construction, while Hoboken Terminal sits only 9,000 feet away, which would incur billions less in construction costs.
Second, Hoboken Terminal is a huge facility with plenty of spare capacity. It sits on 50 acres, has 17 platform tracks and is used by only 32,000 passengers a day. By comparison, New York’s Penn Station sits on two blocks, has 21 tracks and is used by over 500,000 passengers a day. It has no spare capacity. Third, the original ARC project was designed to double NJ Transit’s rail ridership—Secaucus is not capable of accomplishing this without major track changes. Only two tracks lead into Secaucus from Newark, which is why it is a major choke point on the Northeast Corridor.
Mr. Bloomberg’s initial response to the canceled ARC project would work brilliantly in Manhattan because it uses spare capacity on the No. 7 to avoid building a station under Macy’s. By the same token, Hoboken has spare terminal and track capacity and is much closer to the 7 than Secaucus. Marrying Hoboken Terminal and the 7 would cost half as much as the other projects, or less.
As the finer points of the engineering study for the plan to send the subway to Secaucus have yet to be released, it’s tough for me to pass judgment on Previdi’s idea. It’s worth noting too that Hoboken already has a subway system in PATH that connects to Manhattan. I can say however that Previdi presents an intriguing competing plan. He is very much in support of the mayor’s pet project, but he wants to see something realized that will help with New Jersey Transit’s capacity problems. Ultimately, that might be too tall an order for a subway extension, but if someone is going to sink $10 billion into a trans-Hudson tunnel, it must deliver returns.
It’s been 15 months since Gov. Chris Christie torpedoed the ARC Tunnel. At the time, as Previdi notes, he promised to “consider more reasonable solutions to meet NJ Transit’s goals.” Maybe throwing New Jersey’s support behind a subway extension will be considered a more reasonable solution, but maybe the 7 can’t do as much as the region wants and needs. Still, if this project is to move forward, we must consider all possibilities, and Hoboken is indeed out there, awaiting its attention and perhaps a subway stop too.
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