May 17, 2004

An open letter to government officials of the following communities:

Emerson, Hillsdale, Montvale, Old Tappan, Oradell,
Park Ridge, River Edge, Westwood and Woodcliff Lake

New Jersey Transit's Pascack Valley Line, formerly the New Jersey and New York Railroad, was largely responsible for the early development of your communities. Had there been no railroad, your communities would still be farmland and would not have turned into the suburban bedroom communities they now are.

Based on 2003 figures supplied by New Jersey Transit (NJT), stations located in 7 of the 9 communities above had average daily boarding of 1,604 passengers. This was before the opening of Secaucus Junction, which allowed transfer to the rest of the NJT rail network and facilitated a 15-minute saving in travel time to New York.

One of the shortcomings of the Pascack Valley Line has been that it is a "commuter" railroad in the strict sense of the word -- one-way traffic -- toward New York in the morning; from New York in the evening; no weekend service. In order to provide full-day, two-way service, NJT proposed to build four sidings so that trains may pass each other on the right-of-way. These sidings were supposed to have been in operation in the year 2000. It is now 2004 and because of frivolous lawsuits such as the one filed by your communities, the siding project will not be able to be completed until sometime in 2007.

The "red herring" being promulgated in this lawsuit is the specter of mile-long freight trains filled with chemicals along the Pascack Valley Line such as freight trains along the West Shore line. This will never happen here. There are no freight customers anywhere along the line that use chemicals. Unlike the West Shore which is a through railroad, the Pascack Valley Line dead-ends in Spring Valley, N.Y.

The other argument is totally specious and is a typical NIMBY (Not-In-My-Back-Yard) tactic: "We won't be able to get our emergency equipment from one side of town to the other because a train will be blocking the tracks." It's very strange that in the 19 communities along the North Jersey Coast Line, communities such as Red Bank or Spring Lake, that see up to 69 trains on a typical weekday, there has never been a reported case of emergency equipment not being able to cross the tracks because of a stalled train.

THIS LAWSUIT HAS NO MERIT. It only acts as an impediment to progress. The citizens of Pascack Valley deserve all-day, two-way and weekend service. They deserve the right to be able to take a train into New York for an evening at the theater. Working mothers and fathers who currently use the train should have the right to know that if there is a family emergency, they can get home at 11:00 a.m. or 1:00 p.m. instead of having to wait until 3:00 p.m. or later. Persons from other communities who have friends or relatives in the Pascack Valley should be able to travel to these communities by train.

This lawsuit filed by the above 9 communities, in addition to depriving hundreds of its own citizens of a real railroad, also deprives other New Jersey communities along the Pascack Valley Line who are not party to the lawsuit. The lawsuit also impedes interstate commerce as NJT is under contract with Metro-North Railroad to provide service to citizens residing in the New York communities of Pearl River, Nanuet and Spring Valley.

Would the communities who filed this lawsuit file a lawsuit against the New Jersey State Department of Transportation to have Kinderkamack Road turned into a one-way street southbound in the morning and northbound at night, or Route 4 turned into a one-way highway eastbound in the morning and westbound at night. The very notion is ludicrous -- just as ludicrous as this specious lawsuit against New Jersey Transit to maintain a one-way railroad.