Hey, Mayor Bloomberg: You don’t write? You don’t call? Not even a 10-cent text? That’s downright un-neighborly!
The day after news broke that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is weighing a proposal to link a subway line to New Jersey, officials on this side of the Hudson were still in the dark about what the proposal entails.
On Wednesday, the New York media reported that Bloomberg is exploring plans to extend the No. 7 Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) subway line to the Frank R. Lautenberg Rail Station in Secaucus. Later reports suggested the extended line might also include a stop in Hoboken.
The plan is reportedly outlined in a four-page brief that has been seen by few outside Mayor Bloomberg’s office, including New Jersey state legislators and other local officials.
“If it’s real, I think it’s a great idea.” – Michael Gonnelli
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Under the proposed plan, which is still in its preliminary stages, the extension to New Jersey would cost about $5.3 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal, and could be funded with the $6 billion in federal and state dollars that had been set aside for the Access to the Region’s Core (ARC) train tunnel project, which was killed last month by New Jersey Gov. Christopher Christie.
“If it’s real, I think it’s a great idea,” said Secaucus Mayor Michael Gonnelli last week. “We have a lot of people in town who commute into the city every day. So, if this happens it would give them another transportation option. But it would have been nice for them to notify us before this hit the news.”
Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer took a different stance, saying, “One of the things I love about Mayor Bloomberg is he’s very spontaneous. But I think everyone [in New Jersey] is extremely interested to learn more about this. I think it would be a phenomenal opportunity for the City of Hoboken.”
Zimmer added the plan could spur job growth and alleviate traffic congestion around the Holland and Lincoln tunnels.
Speaking from the New Jersey League of Municipalities annual conference in Atlantic City on Thursday, Zimmer said she has already set up a meeting with New York City’s Department of Transportation and has reached out to Gov. Christie “to let them know we are extremely interested in doing everything we can to make this happen.”
Assemblyman questions price tag
New Jersey State Assemblyman Vincent Prieto (D-32nd Dist.), a member of the Assembly Transportation Committee, said Thursday he has asked Committee Chairman John Wisniewski (D-19th Dist.) about getting details of the proposal.
“The first thing we need to see are the details. I would love to see the details,” Prieto said. “Obviously, any alternative to the ARC tunnel would be something we need to look at, especially for the [Northern New Jersey] region, because NJ Transit has said in the next 20 years we’re going to need double the rail capacity. So, this is something we’re going to need to look at closely.”
While open to the idea of an MTA line coming to Hudson County, Prieto added that a few reported details raised some concerns, most notably the price tag.
The $5.3 billion reported cost to extend the subway to New Jersey is, Prieto notes, just under the $6 billion the federal government and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey had committed to the ARC project. He wondered last week whether New York needed all of these resources for the New Jersey extension, or whether the city planned to use it to fund some of the No. 7 work that’s already underway.
Should the No. 7 extension plan move forward, Prieto said he hopes, “that they will be able to use some of the environmental reports and impact studies that were already done for the ARC tunnel project. Those are some of the preliminary groundwork things that can hold up a project for many years. So when we get more details about what they’re planning to do, that’s something else I’ll be interested to see. I would hope they’re not talking about starting from scratch when it comes to that kind of information.”
Andrew Brent, a spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg, did not respond to a request for a comment Thursday morning.
Assemblyman Ruben J. Ramos Jr. (D-33rd Dist.) of Hoboken said in a statement: “An improved mass transit system can bring improvements to our quality of life and economy. While there are major hurdles that would need to be overcome to complete the subway extension plan, I applaud the efforts of Mayor Bloomberg in bringing this idea to the public dialogue.”
Christie scuttled the ARC in October, 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.
E-mail E. Assata Wright at awright@hudsonreporter.com.