By Miri Ascarelli
Journal staff writer

It looks like a giant ditch. But in five years, city planners hope the abandoned Bergen Arches railroad tracks will be a four-lane roadway, linking Tonneile Avenue to the Jersey City waterfront. Just how the project will affect Hudson County was the focus of a news conference yesterday hosted by Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler; Sen. Frank Lauten-berg, D-NJ; Rep. Robert Menendez, D -Union City; and Hudson County Executive Robert Janiszewksi.

"Piece by piece, from the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail to the Bergen Arches, we are constructing an infrastructure for the new millennium, for the future generations who will travel the roads that we build," Menendez said. Officials hailed the planned Bergen Arches road as a way to relieve congestion on the overburdened State Highway and help residents heading Downtown avoid New York-bound traffic. An idea conceived in the 1980s, the Bergen Arches project is still very much in its preliminary stages. Cheryl Allen-Munley, who is in charge of road construction and planning for Jersey City, said it is too early to say exactly what the impact on city neighborhoods will be.

"We would like to show people what the possibilities are, who would be impacted," she said. "We don't know what that is."

So far, $26.5 million in federal funds have been secured to cover the cost of transforming the abandoned tracks into a roadway, but another $75 million in state and federal money will probably be needed to build connections to already existing roads, Allen-Munley said.

Planners also envision a connection with the yet-to-be constructed Secaucus Interchange, a l 1/2-mile road connecting the New Jersey Turnpike near the Allied Junction transfer station in Secaucus to Tonnelle Avenue in Jersey City.

A first step toward construction on the new Bergen Arches road came last month when the Jersey City City Council awarded a $65,000 contract to Fairfield-based HNTP Corp. to do a conceptual engineering study. But before any ground can be broken, the state must still do an environmental assessment and engineers must come up with a road design, Allen-Munley said.

"If we start construction in July 2002, that would be really good progress," she said.

When will it all be done? "I would like to say five years from now," Allen-Munley said. "That would be moving on a very expeditious path. And I think if we don't, it'll lose momentum again."

The road is expected to be a boon to the development of Jersey City's waterfront, which is currently hampered by a lack of road access, Allen-Munley said. Currently, the only east-west roadway to the waterfront is the already overburdened State Highway. The main artery to the Holland Tunnel, the State Highway is notorious for its rush-hour backups.

The Bergen Arches project will run parallel to State Highway. Planners hope it will draw off Hudson County traffic from the crowd bound for New York by creating new off-ramps at sections of the Pulaski Skyway and the New Jersey Turnpike Exit 14C ramps. Each lane will have a capacity of 1,500 vehicles per hour.

"What is preventing us from moving forward (on waterfront development) is the mobility issue - you can't get to the water-front," Allen-Munley said. "Here we are with this asset that we can't make the best of."

Tom Gallagher, director of the city's Department of Housing, Economic Development and Commerce, said the existing roads don't have the capacity to accommodate a full build-out of the waterfront, which he estimated could hold 16 million square feet of office space. Currently, there's just over 6 million square feet of office space there, he said.

And, by improving automobile access, developers would be able to market to a broader spectrum of tenants, Gallagher said. For instance, the city could court companies that are used to having automobile access in suburban locations such as Somerset County, instead of limiting their scope to Manhattan firms accustomed to relying on mass transit.

"It is consistent with state plans for growth: commercial sector growth should be concentrated in urban centers, and suburban centers should maintain open space," Gallagher said.