(The following story by Larry Higgs appeared on the Asbury Park Press website on July 25, 2010.)
ASBURY PARK, N.J. — Can two rail agencies share a set of new tunnels under the Hudson River to midtown Manhattan and save billions of dollars, instead of building separate tubes under the Hudson River?
A New Jersey lawmaker and a group of rail advocates are asking Amtrak and NJ Transit officials to find a way to share a set of new tunnels between them to save money, after Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor Master Plan called for construction of its own set of new tunnels to Penn Station.
If built, Amtrak’s tunnels would join NJ Transit’s planned Access to the Region’s Core tunnels, on which minor construction has begun on the New Jersey side, and the current tunnels built by the Pennsylvania Railroad 100 years ago and used by commuter and Amtrak trains.
The federal government would pay the lion’s share for Amtrak’s tubes — expected to cost an estimated $10 billion — and $3 billion toward the $8.7 billion the NJ Transit plan to build a tunnel and deep station under 34th Street in Manhattan. The NJ Transit project is scheduled to be completed by 2018.
“We should work with Amtrak. There needs to be more cooperation between these organizations,” said state Sen. Michael Doherty, R-Warren. “There is a long tradition in the train industry of everyone having their own equipment and being reluctant to cooperate and share facilities.”
Doherty, a member of the state Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee, questioned NJ Transit officials about the tunnel project at an April hearing on the state transportation budget.
“The new administration needs to look at being more cost effective,” said Joseph Clift, a retired Long Island Railroad planning director and member of the Regional Rail Working Group, which supports designing the NJ Transit tunnels to go to Penn Station. “The idea is we want to do a cost effective job and force the two agencies to work together. We may be reaching that point.”
In 2009, then-Gov. Jon S. Corzine signed an executive order requiring the state comptroller to provide oversight for the 25 tunnel project contracts and to assess contractor performance.
Doherty said he wants to meet informally with NJ Transit officials and Clift’s group to discuss the project.
Amtrak pursued its own tunnels in late 2008 after NJ Transit determined that building a connection between its tunnels and Penn Station would be too costly. In May, Amtrak released the latest Northeast Corridor Master Plan, a 180-page super laundry list of projects for the rail line between Washington and Boston — the nation’s busiest — to deal with aging infrastructure and a predicted increase in riders over the next 20 years.
That plan includes new Hudson River tunnels, which likely wouldn’t be built until at least 2030, Amtrak spokesman Clifford Cole, Amtrak said.
“As currently envisioned, Amtrak will not share” the NJ Transit tunnel or the 34th Street Station, “except potentially in severe emergency situations,” Cole said. “The proposed new station is a stub-end station, which is not well suited to Amtrak operations.”
Most Amtrak trains that run through the East River tunnels continue north to Boston or are stored in the Sunnyside Yard in Queens, he said.
“We’ve coordinated with them (Amtrak) all along. Our engineers have met with them,” said Paul Wyckoff, NJ Transit tunnel project spokesman. “Our (tunnel) was designed to meet Amtrak standards so they could run their equipment in through it. Was it (sharing the tunnel) discussed? Yes. Is it possible? Yes.”
Wyckoff said that the Access to the Region’s Core project has been coordinated with Amtrak, which is NJ Transit’s landlord on the Northeast Corridor tracks.
Amtrak officials said there is hope for future sharing.
“It is theoretically possible at some future date to extend the (NJ Transit) tunnel through 34th Street to Sunnyside in Queens,” Cole said.
But that is subject to many conditions, including funding, land and right-of-way acquisition and potential interference with other structures, he said. Amtrak’s proposed new tunnels would be shared with NJ Transit, Cole said.
Federal officials said they aren’t going to arrange a shotgun wedding between the NJ Transit and Amtrak tunnel projects.
“We’re not doing anything on this currently,” said Robert Kulat, spokesman for the Federal Railroad Administration, which signs off on major Amtrak projects. “We’re not pushing this.”
The Access to the Region’s Core project is under the jurisdiction of the Federal Transit Administration, while Amtrak projects are under the Federal Railroad Administration. In 2008, FRA officials tried to broker a compromise and expressed reservations that Amtrak couldn’t use the NJ Transit tunnels after NJ Transit officials deemed that a connection to Penn Station wasn’t feasible.
In June 2008, FRA officials wrote to then FTA Administrator James Simpson (who is now New Jersey’s transportation commissioner) about the issue.
“I was never comfortable with the loss of the connection to PSNY (Penn Station),” said Joseph Boardman, FRA administrator, in a letter to Simpson. “I would like to suggest that the FTA engage NJ Transit.”
NJ Transit re-evaluated the issue at the FRA’s request, but ruled out a connection because of environmental constraints during construction, high costs and a steep grade from the tunnels to Penn Station.
Then-Amtrak president Alex Kummant wrote in an April 2008 letter to NJ Transit that Amtrak would have to build its own tunnels because the “ARC tunnels . . . now provide sole benefit to NJ Transit, and that a new Amtrak tunnel “will be necessary to construct in lieu of connecting to the ARC tunnels in Manhattan.”
The first conceptual plan for Amtrak’s tunnels, paralleling the existing tunnels, was in a September 2008 master plan.