NJ-ARP testimony for the Assembly Budget Committee
March 28th 2008 09:10 am
Following is NJ-ARP’s testimony before the Assembly Budget Committee.
Testimony of
Albert L. Papp, Jr., Regional Director and Secretary
National Association of Railroad Passengers
and
Director and Recording Secretary
New Jersey Association of Railroad Passengers
before
The New Jersey Assembly Budget Committee
March 26, 2008
My name is Albert L. Papp, Jr. I am a Regional Director and Secretary of the 24,000 member National Association of Railroad Passengers (NARP), headquartered in Washington, D.C., and a Director and Recording Secretary of the New Jersey Association of Railroad Passengers (NJ-ARP).
The matter I would like to address is one of particular urgency and concerns New Jersey Transit’s (NJT) plan to build two complimentary and symbiotic megaprojects costing a total of $9 billion to augment trans-Hudson regional rail capacity to midtown Manhattan.
Called “Access to the Region’s Core” (ARC) and the “Portal Bridge Capacity Enhancement Project” (PBCEP), NARP and NJ-ARP strongly believe these two projects as now configured by NJT will not serve the best interests of 21st century regional and intercity rail riders.
Specifically, since the state Senate and Assembly have the “Power of the Purse Strings,” we are requesting that before any sparse state money is authorized and appropriated for these twin megaprojects, they be re-examined in light of a less expensive - but more effective - option that would eventually allow a rail connection to be constructed between New York’s Pennsylvania Station and Grand Central Terminal and permit Amtrak access to both Manhattan stations. Joe Clift will detail that proposal in his testimony.
“Access to the Region’s Core” was conceived in the mid-1990s under the sponsorship of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey with co-sponsorship by the state rail operating agencies. The original purpose of the project was to tie the tri-state metropolitan area together and permit interoperability between the region’s operating transit agencies - NJT, Metro-North Commuter Railroad, and the Long Island Rail Road. The project’s scoping document explained that 70% of all midtown Manhattan job sites were within a 10 minute walk from Grand Central, but only 36% from Penn Station, hence the original concept of connecting these two stations. Therefore, the keystone of this effort was to be the construction of a rail link between Penn Station and Grand Central; however, after NJT became the “lead agency” under the McGreevey administration, that element of the plan was eliminated.
In its present form, this once regionally comprehensive plan has devolved into nothing more than a six track “deep cavern” annex to New York Penn Station beneath 34th Street for use only by NJT trains. Additionally, because of the June 2007 deletion of a previous switching facility on the New York side of the Hudson River, Amtrak trains will be forever precluded from using the new trans-Hudson rail tunnels under normal operations.
Despite clear evidence to the contrary in the 2003 Major Investment Study (MIS) “Summary Report” by the study team, NJT decided to reject the long sought after Manhattan Penn Station to Grand Central Terminal rail connection. The MIS concluded that such a rail link would have cost the least to build and operate, attracted the most riders, and diverted the greatest number of motorists of three final alternatives studied. But NJT dismissed (incorrectly in our opinion) this logical choice.
To make matters worse, the only public document that was published in this regard was a 31 page “Summary Report,” hardly adequate, we opine, for a multi-billion dollar undertaking. In order for the ARC Regional Citizen’s Liaison Committee (RCLC) to accurately compare the pluses and minuses of the three finalists, we asked for the lengthy background evaluations of each. However, despite numerous and persistent requests, both verbally and in writing, we continue to be “stonewalled” in our requests to obtain this important data under the guise that such information was only in “Draft” form and therefore not releasable to the public. This statement - by the NJT Project Director - was put into the public record as recently as February 27th of this year at the RCLC meeting held in Newark. If the RCLC is to be effective, this information is vital; yet NJT continues to obstruct its acquisition.
We take particular issue with this tepid response. In our opinion, we feel that since this is a public project, and paid for with public funds, the public is entitled to see and analyze the results of this effort. We hope you will concur.
Therefore, NARP and NJ-ARP request the Committee to actively intervene with New Jersey Transit and the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to secure the release of these crucial documents.
We hope you will take our views under advisement and stand ready to meet with you to more fully explore the ramifications of the ARC and PBCEP on the region’s, the state’s and the nation’s transportation infrastructure.
Thank you.
stuw6 responded on 28 Mar 2008 at 9:52 am #
Awesome response by Albert Papp. Now, in thirty years, when the powers that be make the ill-informed decision to not connect GCT with NYP, those of us still living can say, “We told ya so!”