SECAUCUS – The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday morning that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is exploring plans to extend the No. 7 Metropolitan Transit Authority subway line to the Frank R. Lautenberg Rail Station in Secaucus.
At present, the subway line is already undergoing a major extension from Times Square to 34th Street and 11th Ave.
Under the proposed plan, which is in preliminary stages, the extension to Secaucus would cost about $5.3 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal, and could be funded with a portion of the $3 billion in federal dollars that had been set aside for the Access to the Region’s Core (ARC) tunnel project, which was recently killed by New Jersey Gov. Christopher Christie.
The governor abandoned the ARC project last month, arguing that its $8.7 billion price tag was too expensive.
The ARC would have doubled rail capacity to New York City, thus easing overcrowding on current NJ Transit and PATH service to Manhattan, and would have given many New Jersey commuters the opportunity to get into the city without having to make transfers along the way.
The ARC would have been paid for using a mix of federal and state funding.
The federal government had committed $3 billion to the project, as had the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The State of New Jersey was responsible for $2.7 billion of the project, plus the lion’s share of any cost overruns, which could have cost anywhere from 1.9 billion to 4.8 billion.
Gov. Christie argued that the project was too expensive and that state can’t afford to pay its portion of the ARC. – E. Assata Wright