NARP Blog

Monday, October 05, 2009

The first installment of an occasional blog feature reporting interesting news from NARP’s state-level cousins.

Maine: Gov. John Baldacci (D) presented a strong vision for the future of passenger trains in his state in the pages of TrainRiders/Northeast’s Summer 2009 issue of TrainRider. The Governor’s statement acknowledges the advocacy group’s hard work, calling it a “critical force in the December 2001 commencement of the Downeaster service.” “Without TrainRiders, there would be no Downeaster,” he proclaims, “and passenger rail service in Maine might be a dead issue even today.” Baldacci, who has ridden the Downeaster on various occasions, announced the state’s submission of pre-applications for Recovery Act high-speed rail funds to extend service north to Brunswick through Freeport, and to upgrade track on the existing line to increase speed. He also promised to seek extension of the federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ, pronounced SEE-mack) money on which Downeaster relies, and noted the legislation he signed to dedicate half of the revenues from the state’s car rental tax to an account for non-highway transportation projects. “I understand that all modes of transportation, including road, aid and water travel, require government subsidies to continue in operation,” Baldacci explains. “Passenger rail is no different, and should be treated no differently.”

New York: A bill has been introduced in the New York state legislature to establish a state Rail Authority, reports the Empire State Passengers Association in The ESPA Express (July/August). “The new public authority would be independent of the State Transportation Department and outside the normal budget process,” similar to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, an independent agency funded by both states that runs ferries, PATH trains, the tunnels and bridges across the Hudson into Manhattan, and the city’s bus terminal. The legislation intends the Rail Authority to be the operator of “an affordable high-speed rail network across New York State” and to finance incremental improvements to existing service. Funding for the Authority would come from a variety of public and private sources. Also noteworthy is that the bill stipulates that one of the members of the Authority’s 17-member governing board be “a member of a statewide rail passenger advocacy organization.”

New York: Also from ESPA comes news that the Finger Lakes Railway, operator of freight and excursion passenger trains in the west central part of the state, is advancing a proposal to extend Amtrak service to and from Geneva via Syracuse, using a currently out-of-service ex-New York Central line that splits from the CSX main line at Lyons. The company envisions an existing New York City-Albany Empire Service train being extended west to Geneva (home to 13,000 residents and two colleges), providing an early morning eastbound departure from Geneva and a late evening westbound arrival. Finger Lakes Railway will provide a station and overnight servicing facilities at Geneva.

New Jersey: Two major sports arenas around New York City, Yankee Stadium in the Bronx and the Meadowlands complex in East Rutherford, NJ (Home to the New York Giants and New York Jets (NFL football), New Jersey Nets (NBA basketball), New York Red Bulls (MLS soccer) and a horse racetrack), now have direct commuter rail service. As ESPA reports, the “Yankees - E. 153rd St” station on Metro-North Railroad’s Hudson Line, which opened on May 23, allows residents in the outlying areas served by all three Metro-North lines to go to Yankees baseball games and other stadium events without having to drive all the way into the Bronx, and has been well-used so far. Meanwhile, the Delaware Valley Association of Railroad Passengers (DVARP) announces that, on July 20, New Jersey Transit (NJT) inaugurated train service to the Meadowlands via a 2.5-mile branch of the Pascack Valley Line from Hoboken Terminal. Trains will only be run during football and soccer games, concerts and other large events at the Meadowlands, with a bus connection to all NJT lines at Secaucus Junction available for all other events there.

—Malcolm Kenton

Thursday, January 07, 2010

North New Jersey’s The Record ran a piece by Editorial page editor Alfred Doblin on December 21 of last year which offers a refreshing corrective to New Jersey Transit’s new interstate rail tunnels, planned to run under the Hudson River.

It’s no secret that NARP—along with a number of other groups, including the Lackawanna Coalition and the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club—has been a vocal opponent of this project, also known as the Access to the Region’s Core (ARC). Not because there is not a need for the tunnels. Rather, it is because the need to expand the rail capacity of the region is so dire; the New York City region remains one of the nation’s most congested train, automotive, and air transit hubs, and solutions are desperately needed. And with more than $9 billion in Metropolitan Transit Authority, New Jersey state, and federal funds needed to bring this project to completion, the stakes are too high to settle for not-good-enough.

Doblin does an excellent job of explaining why the ARC, as presently conceived, is not the solution (bold added):

The new tunnel under the river makes sense. Bringing more New Jersey commuters into Manhattan makes sense. Building a deep-tunnel train station a block from Pennsylvania Station and just footsteps from an existing PATH station makes no sense to the commuters who – well, commute.
...
New Jersey commuters will end up where they always have. NJ Transit cannot take its trains to Grand Central because it would have to bore below a massive tunnel supplying water to Manhattan. Until an additional water tunnel is operational, there will be no NJ Transit trains to Grand Central. This should be the deal-breaker for the project as planned. It makes little sense to expend billions and billions of dollars for a less-than-perfect solution.
...
The Hudson River tunnel project is monumental. But if it isn’t done right, it’s a monument to excess. The advocates for building it now, regardless of where it terminates, are not the everyday people who have to travel back and forth on the trains. Exactly where are the thousands of new commuters going to go after they arrive at 34th Street? Can all those new commuters be absorbed into the existing subway infrastructure at 34th Street? Not likely. It should be Grand Central or bust.

NJ Transit continues to award contracts—two and counting so far, adding up to hundreds of millions of dollars—and the window to correct the flaw of the deep cavern terminal is closing. Transit advocates will have to hope that Governor-elect Chris Christie is paying attention to the voices of reason.

—Sean Jeans-Gail

Learn more about NARP’s proposed fix for the ARC project.

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NARP blog

Hopping the Local: News from State Rail Advocacy Groups

Monday, October 05, 2009

Posted by Malcolm Kenton

New Jersey Paper Speaks Out Against Dead End ARC Alignment

Thursday, January 07, 2010

Posted by NARP

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