1999 is turning into a record year for sports facility proposals in the New York area. In January, New York Mayor Rudolph Guiliani unveiled his ideas for a domed football stadium and a new Madison Square Garden on the West Side of Manhattan. In recent weeks, three competing proposals have emerged in New Jersey for a replacement for the Continental Airlines Arena. These plans have ramifications for the transportation networks providing access to the sites, and all of them have raised doubts about the supposed benefits of building them.

Ball parks and arenas have characteristics that make them difficult for either private or public transport to serve effectively. These facilities sit empty most of the time, yet generate large crowds just before and after events. Yankee's owner George Steinbrenner has consistently complained about traffic congestion around his stadium. At the Meadowlands, it can take over an hour just to drive out of the parking lots after a game at Giants Stadium or a concert at the Arena. Rail lines can handle large crowds, but special purpose rail facilities may be hard to justify if they see only occasional use. In Los Angeles, for example, a Red Line subway station for the Hollywood Bowl was dropped from the original plan.

Mayor Guiliani made a surprise announcement during his State of the City address, and offered a plan for a football stadium, presumably to be used by the New York Jets, to be built over the Long Island Railroad yards west of 11th Avenue and south of 34th Street. A new Madison Square Garden (the fifth building with that name since the mid-19th Century) would rise on an adjacent site. To provide transit access, Guiliani proposed an extension of the #7 subway line from 41st Street and Seventh Avenue to about 33rd Street and 12th Avenue.

There are a numbered of unexpected aspects and unanswered questions in Guiliani's proposal, one of which is the sudden disappearance of the New York Yankees as a factor on the West Side. After pushing for several years for a new Yankee ballpark, Guiliani has now, without explanation, switched to the idea of a football stadium to lure the Jets back to New York. (The Jets now have a lease at Giants Stadium that runs until 2008.) Also interesting is the possibility of Cablevision, the present owner of Madison Square Garden, taking over the management of a public-private partnership that would run the new complex. During the mid-1980s, Gulf&Western, then owner of the Garden, also proposed a new arena on the far West Side, but decided to renovate the existing facility instead. Now Guiliani believes that a new office building or hotel on the present Garden site (33rd Street and Eighth Avenue) would generate more tax revenue to help build the football stadium. It would be ironic if the same real estate values that doomed the old Penn Station also result in the demolition of one of its successor structures after only thirty-two years.

Mayor Guiliani has built his reputation as a crime-fighter, and has not been known to speculate much about new subway lines. He has given some support to jitney vans in the outer boroughs, but mostly his transportation concerns have been in attacking jaywalkers and reckless cab drivers. His interest in extending subway service is based on his vision of the West Side complex, not on a concern about the many unmet transit needs in other parts of the city. Even if a football stadium and new Garden join the Jacob Javits Convention Center around West 34th Street, it is difficult to predict whether these places will be used frequently enough to justify expensive underground construction.

In New Jersey, the Continental Airlines Arena is now considered obsolete by its two tenants, the New Jersey Nets of the NBA and the New Jersey Devils of the NHL. The New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority is considering tearing down the building and replacing it with an updated version, bolstered by retail and entertainment development. Each team, however, has its own favorite for a new location. The Devils are interesting in a new arena built right over the platforms of Hoboken Terminal. Although this site provides access by NJ Transit and PATH, it is located in one of the most congested parts of Hudson County. Hoboken Mayor Anthony Russo has admitted that automobile access would be needed too, and he seems to be tying the feasibility of the new arena to the Bergen Arches highway. The Newark site proposed by the Nets and backed by Newark business and political leaders (including Mayor Sharpe James) is just southwest of Penn Station. The new basketball arena would be part of a 40-acre complex that would include a soccer stadium, hotels, and retail development. Although this location seems to have fewer transportation problems than Hoboken, it would require the demolition of numerous 19th and early 20th Century buildings housing small businesses and about 300 residents. It is a painful irony to see a city with so many vacant lots and underutilized buildings considering the destruction of a viable community.

Perhaps instead of wondering how to lure teams to their cities, the leaders of New York, Hoboken, and Newark should consider why their constituents are skeptical about these plans. In the 1950s, baseball teams began a game of musical chairs, and this has spread to professional football, basketball, and hockey. Now cities routinely offer large direct and indirect subsidies to get new teams or to steal existing teams from other cities if there is not enough major league expansion to go around. This has resulted in some absurd situations: Indianapolis got the Colts football club to move from Baltimore, so Baltimore offered a deal to snatch the Browns from Cleveland. Cleveland, in turn, lobbied the NFL for a new team that will have the old Cleveland Browns name and identity. When in comes to transportation planning, priorities are being turned around. New roads and rail lines become essential to feed the needs of the teams, while existing transportation hubs are valued for their ability to support new sports complexes. In New York and New Jersey, there hasn't been much accounting of the benefits to be gained from these plans, or of the liabilities to be imposed on residents and commuters.

In Queens, the Mets want to stay where they are, although they want to replace Shea Stadium with a post-modern facility based on the old Ebbetts Field but with a retractable dome and a roll in/roll-out field. This place may be named for Jackie Robinson, although he never played for the Mets; he did, however, play in a stadium that sort of looked like the one the Mets want to build. Although it is not certain what kind of incentives Mayor Guiliani will offer to help construct the new field, at least an extension of the Queens end of the 7 train will not be necessary.

On May 11 the New Jersey Nets officially announced that they wish to move out of the Meadowlands for the proposed arena in Newark.. The Devils still seemed committed to their plan for Hoboken, but Governor Christie Whitman stated that New Jersey would provide financial support for only one site. At the moment the Nets seem to have the upper hand, as the Newark site would be easier to build on than the one in Hoboken. If there is any compromising to be done, it will probably have to done by the Devils. One thing seems certain: the Continental Airlines Arena, all of 18 years old, is doomed.