by Greg Meyer, NJ Coordinator
Tri-State Transportation Campaign
November 1999The Sierra Club recently resolved to support a major initiative against sprawl. The resolution wasn't to protect open space, stiffen flimsy CAFRA regs, or slap impact fees on developers, however. It was to dig a tunnel. Each working day, about 88,000 commuters roll through the tunnel under the Hudson River to and from New York Penn Station. They ride on the Coast, Northeast Corridor, and Morris & Essex lines, the latter via new MidTown Direct service, and they transfer from the Raritan Valley Line. On rush-hour trains, 2000 to 3000 people stand every weekday. The situation will worsen when the new Secaucus Transfer station draws a projected additional 20,600 daily passengers. Planners estimate the existing two-track tunnel will reach its capacity of 25 trains per hour sometime between 2003 and 2010. The solution? To double the track capacity by boring a second tunnel.
Some argue the tunnel is an unnecessary boondoggle. With bilevel cars, efficient movements in and out of Penn Station, and continuing trains through to Connecticut or Long Island, they say, the capacity crunch can be managed more cheaply.
But in fact, NJ Transit's new bilevel cars will only add 25 percent more seats per train, while ridership is estimated to grow 54 percent by 2005. Inefficient yard movements are a product of tunnel geometry; the twelve tracks NJ Transit uses at Penn Station narrow to two tracks at the tunnel's mouth. Finally, running regional commuter rail through to points east of Manhattan, while a desirable goal, would not obviate the tunnel crunch and itself cost millions for trains compatible with both third-rail and overhead electrification.
What does this have to do with fighting sprawl? Two characteristics of sprawl are disinvestment in older communities in favor of leapfrog development and dependency on the car as the sole means of getting around. Improving access to and from New York - and by extension, communities along the NJ Transit rail system -increases transit's competitiveness and catalyzes reinvestment in the communities it serves.
Consider this: MidTown Direct started offering a one-seat ride to Manhattan in 1996. According to a NJ Transit survey, 22 percent of the line's new riders moved to the Morris & Essex corridor because of the service, and local officials cite spectacular increases in adjacent real estate valuation after it began. In Morristown, with help from NJ Transit's "transit village" program, apartments will rise opposite the train station on a site now occupied by a parking lot. New residents might otherwise be purchasing tract mansions on ex-cornfields. Many communities along New Jersey's rail lines are already quintessentially transit-oriented and ripe for revitalization. Better rail service is one way to enhance their attractiveness. One unaddressed concern is the possible environmental impact of more underwater burrowing. That will be a focus of the Environmental Impact Statement due to begin in March 2001, and indeed deserves examination. But it is too early to pass judgment on the issue now.
A bottleneck at the Hudson River will put rail service at a competitive disadvantage, echoing the waking nightmare we see at the road tunnels every day and giving urban employers impetus to relocate to greenfields in Hunterdon County, if not Pennsylvania. By building the tunnel that bottleneck will be removed.