(Newsday posted the following article by Joie Tyrrell on its website on June 5.)
NEW YORK — The four tunnels that carry thousands of Long Island Rail Road commuters to New York’s Penn Station each day were built 95 years ago.
And while that city access over the years has provided hundreds of thousands of jobs generating millions of dollars for the Long Island economy, those tunnels have pretty much remained the same.
“Here we are in the 21st century, almost a hundred years later, and we haven’t really significantly expanded this system, which has proven to be the economic engine of the metropolitan region,” said MTA Executive Director Katherine Lapp.
Now, with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority facing a mountain of debt, planners worry that the agency won’t be able to expand the system and economic growth will stagnate.
East Side Access, the LIRR’s link to Grand Central Terminal, is expected to lead to 375,000 new jobs and recoup $120 million annually in lost time, less crowding and added reliability when it is complete, planners and the MTA say.
And, construction of a third track along the railroad’s main artery from Queens to Hicksville could provide a direct route for the more than 120,000 workers who now commute, mostly by roads, to Long Island from the city.
The MTA had asked for $7.9 billion to expand the system — including East Side Access, the Second Avenue Subway in Manhattan and a rail link from JFK to lower Manhattan — but received only $2.5 billion. That, coupled with the agency’s skyrocketing debt payments, has left transit construction projects facing an uncertain future.
“Eventually you are just going to run out of room for growth in the economy,” said Christopher Jones, vice president for research for the Regional Plan Association, an independent, not-for-profit organization based in Manhattan. “It would hurt job opportunities for everyone. Everybody relies on the transit network … even if you don’t take the Long Island Rail Road.”
Jon Orcutt, executive director of Tri-State Transportation Campaign, said studies have shown that every $10 million invested in transit expansion projects yields $30 million in business sales and creates around 300 construction and other jobs.
A dream for the past 40 years, East Side Access would allow New York to add 280,000 new jobs in Manhattan by 2020, and 95,000 more in Long Island City, where East Side trains will stop, according to the project’s environmental review.
It’s a $6.3 billion project that is awaiting federal funding to proceed. But MTA officials said recently it could be delayed beyond its projected 2012 completion date. And, if the proper funding can’t be secured, MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow said the MTA will be forced to abandon the project. Hardly enough to cover the costs of one expansion project, the MTA is also counting on voters passing a $1.5 billion bond in November that would contribute to all expansion costs.
Jobs aren’t the only way to measure a project’s impact. Time, planners say, really is money. By 2020, East Side Access is expected to serve an estimated 167,500 average weekday riders with 15,400 new daily riders. It would save up to 22 minutes of travel time each way, according to the Regional Plan Association. Planners there also estimated that it would help ease road congestion on Long Island, lowering the daily vehicle-miles of travel by 312,000.
“We can’t pave our way out of a congestion problem. We need to get more people onto trains,” said U.S. Rep. Tim Bishop (D-Southampton).
Congestion costs alone, including travel delays and fuel expenses, cost the metropolitan area $6.8 billion in 2003, according to an annual study of cities nationwide by the Texas Transportation Institute.
“It means that businesses are likely to locate elsewhere because the transportation costs are not as high. Increasingly as congestion becomes worse, transit is the option that businesses are looking to,” said Kate Slevin, spokeswoman for the Tri-State Transportation Campaign.
By 2025, commuting capacity will need to expand to accommodate 33,000 to 107,000 more workers entering central Manhattan during the morning rush hour to keep the economy from stagnating, according to Rudin Center for Transportation Policy & Management at New York University.
“New York City relies on Long Island for a skilled workforce … and Long Island relies on New York City for much of the income that flows into the Island,” the RPA’s Jones said.
But while planners agree that an expanded transit system is vital, the question remains of how to pay for it.
Citing finances, LIRR officials recently deferred construction of a $190 million train storage yard east of Huntington on the Port Jefferson line that would have extended electrification on the Port Jefferson line and added more trains in the rush hours. LIRR planners said it was expected to draw about 2,500 additional passengers by 2020. It was bitterly opposed by residents worried about noise, environmental issues and the affect on their property values.
But when faced with a limited budget, the railroad deferred plans to build the yard and instead chose to focus on construction of the third track along the Main Line from Bellerose, Queens, to Hicksville. In addition to adding the track and more service on the Main Line, the project also would mean the elimination of five grade crossings in Mineola, New Hyde Park and Westbury and substantial station rehabilitation along the Main Line.
The Long Island Association, the Island’s largest business group, ranks the “Main Line Corridor Improvement Project” as the top transportation project for the region. Local economists say it would allow Long Island firms to draw workers from the city eastward. About 122,000 commute from the city to Long Island and many of them drive, said Mitch Pally, the LIA’s vice president of government affairs.
“It is almost impossible to take a train in the morning,” Pally said.
More than $202 million is included in the MTA’s capital program for the first phase of the project to construct the track from Queens to Mineola. The railroad will hold public hearings on the project later this month. It is expected to face fierce public opposition from neighboring communities worried about noise and increased train traffic.
According to the RPA, there are tens of thousands of jobs located within range of seven of the busiest stations on the LIRR. For example, there are 62,500 jobs located within close distance to the Farmingdale train station.
“It will give employers a larger labor pool that they can draw from,” Jones said, “and in a period where Long Island is going to find it increasingly difficult to add new housing and new workers to the economy, this is an important competitive issue for employers on the Island.”
Today, six of the seven busiest stations have wait times of at least 90 minutes for eastbound commuters during the morning rush hour.
“There is a certain amount of the job market that wants to go to Long Island,” said Beverly Dolinsky, executive director of the LIRR’s Commuter Council, a rider advocacy group. “You have to have some alternative to the congestion.”
By having more than two tracks on all of its lines, Metro North, the MTA’s other commuter railroad, was able to provide reverse service and has shown significant growth in that area with 134 percent more riders reverse commuting in 2003 compared to 1990 when only 4,980 commuted northward daily from Manhattan and the Bronx.
Top destinations include the well-to-do communities of Greenwich and Stamford, Conn., where employers are seeking workers.
“It is difficult to draw from the immediate area for jobs that are not very high scale jobs and yet they have a very big pool of perfectly good viable employees” in the city, said Dan Brucker, a Metro North spokesman.
Tom McGinty and Joshua Robin contributed to this story.