(The Philadelphia Inquirer published the following story by Frank Kummer on its website on July 28.)
Second of three parts
PHILADELPHIA — His colleagues called him “Apple Bill” because, as the only farmer in the legislature, he used to bring them baskets of fruit. But the late State Sen. C. William Haines was no country bumpkin.
The Burlington County blue blood carried off a political maneuver in 1996 that brought light rail to South Jersey – and completely rerouted the line.
Haines was the catalyst for turning a project intended to relieve the region’s traffic congestion into what he believed would be an economic development engine for Burlington County.
Approval of the rail line by NJ Transit within less than a year would become the final legislative success for Haines, who announced just before the vote that he was terminally ill.
Supporters of the rail line say Haines saved a project for South Jersey that was jeopardized by political pressures. Others say he succeeded only in placing it in a location where it is unlikely to thrive.
But if the line – which is due to open late this year – thrives or fails, it will be largely because of his and Burlington County’s political push to locate it where state planners had never envisioned.
As a result, the county is taking great pains to make the $1.1 billion rail line work as part of its plans to revitalize the Route 130 corridor – even though forecasts call for low ridership and little more than state planning advice to help spur redevelopment along the rail line through the river towns.
Though the 34-mile line will travel through Camden and Mercer Counties, 61 percent of it, or about 21 miles, runs parallel to the Delaware River in Burlington County. Seven miles run through Camden County and six through Mercer County.
The story of how the rail system came to its current location stretches back through decades and numerous studies and is told through thousands of pages of government documents and interviews with key players, past and present.
As first conceived in the 1970s and ’80s, a light rail system for South Jersey was seen as an extension of the PATCO High-Speed Line that would run from Glassboro in Gloucester County to Mount Holly in central Burlington County.
The chief goal was to reduce congestion along Route 42, I-295 and I-76 for commuters traveling to Philadelphia.
The Burlington/Gloucester Corridor Assessment, completed in 1993, set the groundwork for that new transit line.
The following year, engineers and planners from NJ Transit began a second assessment – the two-year, $4.25 million federally funded Major Investment Study. The goal was to design a line that would be supported by federal mass-transit funds.
The critical route would likely run from Glassboro to Camden, through Pitman, Mantua, Wenonah, Deptford, and other Gloucester communities. Though other routes were proposed, a second leg – considered less pressing – would run from Camden to Mount Holly through the rapidly growing central Burlington County municipalities of Mount Laurel and Moorestown.
At the time, Gloucester County officials wanted the line. Key Burlington communities, including Mount Laurel and Moorestown, did not.
Haines, a Burlington County native, believed passionately that South Jersey needed a mass-transit line. But he too objected to a line that would cut through Moorestown and his hometown of Mount Laurel.
Originally, Haines wanted the line to follow the center median of I-295 from Cherry Hill toward Mount Holly, according to Bill Naulty, a retired legislative aide to Haines. But moving overpasses and installing new track would have been too costly.
By December 1995, NJ Transit planners received a draft of the Major Investment Study. Not released to the public, that draft said the Glassboro-to-Camden leg was most needed and had the most ridership potential.
The study’s authors suggested Gloucester officials would quickly endorse the route. But the authors had strong doubts about any leg of a rail line getting approved through central Burlington County, where the line was “extremely controversial.”
Even before the draft was complete, residents and politicians in Moorestown, the money base for one of the state’s most stalwart Republican-controlled governments, had met in February 1994 and pronounced that a rail line would not run through their community.
The draft also suggested that a station be placed directly across the street from Hillsdown, Haines’ ancestral home, built in the 1700s on Mount Laurel land deeded to the family by King Charles II. The plan called for a suburban station with a large parking lot. Trains would pass every five to 10 minutes during rush hour. No one has suggested that Haines’ proposal to route the rail line along the river instead had anything to do with that proposed stop.
In February 1996, before a final version of the Major Investment Study was ready, Haines introduced a bill calling for a separate fast-track study “to examine instituting rail passenger service in the Route 130 corridor along the Delaware River communities.”
The Haines proposal marked the first time a river route was considered – and ignored years of careful planning by transit consultants.
Haines proposed that the line run on existing track used by Conrail, which was willing to sell its right of way. Lost in the rhetoric at the time was that NJ Transit already owned the right of way for 70 percent of the 19-mile rail line that ran from Camden along Marne Highway in the central part of the county.
NJ Transit eventually had to pay Conrail $67 million to use the separate river route for only a limited time each day – 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.
State Sen. Robert Singer of Ocean County, a Republican who also represents several towns in Burlington County, cosponsored the Haines bill, as did two Democratic legislators, one of whom eventually wavered in his support. Then-Assemblywoman Diane Allen and Assemblyman Francis Bodine, both Republicans representing Burlington County, introduced companion legislation.
Haines and local party officials had statewide pull, including leverage within the Whitman administration. Robert Shinn, a former Burlington County freeholder and assemblyman, had been picked by Whitman to head the Department of Environmental Protection. Glenn Paulsen, the county’s Republican Party chief, was – and still is – a counsel to the Senate GOP and a key fund-raiser and had been Whitman’s pick as vice chairman of the Delaware River Port Authority. Allen was on the rise and would later become a state senator and deputy Republican conference leader.
And Haines was chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee.
NJ Transit planners knew that the Haines legislation, which was approved by the committee within a week, dealt a crippling blow to plans for running the line into central Burlington County.
At the Transportation Committee hearing on the Haines proposal, Burlington County officials announced that rail service along the river could become a key part of their revitalization project for 12 towns along the Delaware River/Route 130 corridor and that another study was necessary.
“Everyone’s eyebrows were raised,” said Jack Kanarek, NJ Transit’s senior director of project planning and development. “Suddenly this thing took on a whole new direction.”
NJ Transit was told that “the management responsibility, the planning, the forecasting, and the engineering would be managed by a group directly accountable to the [transportation] commissioner and taken out of the management chain of this corporation. It was a political decision,” Kanarek said.
River town governments in Burlington County began endorsing at least the concept of light rail before any of the studies outlining the impact had been publicly released.
Allen touted the line to local elected officials. She asked that they pass resolutions to endorse a study and the general concept of light rail.
Many did, with only a faint notion of what the line would entail.
Edgewater Park, where Allen lives, passed a resolution supporting the Haines study to “consider light rail passenger service.” Delran, Riverside and Bordentown all approved similar resolutions, in which a key paragraph was nearly identical, suggesting the measure was making its way town to town.
All focused on the potential to create jobs, provide improved public transportation, and bring an economic boost.
Other municipalities followed.
Haines used the resolutions from 15 towns as proof communities supported the line.
In late July 1996, NJ Transit released a bundle of three studies: the exhaustive Major Investment Study and an addendum of two other studies triggered by Haines’ legislation – about 500 pages in all. But the studies presented a line that was anything but a quaint trolley cling-clanging from one antiques store to the next.
Curiously, the new study pushed by Haines for the river route, known as Special Study No. 2, downplayed the development potential, though that was supposed to be a primary goal.
“Because the corridor already is one of high auto accessibility, the introduction of the rail by itself will not dramatically spur development or redevelopment at the station areas,” the consulting firms wrote in Special Study No. 2. “In fact, much of the new commercial and residential development in the region will continue to flow to locations easily served by the auto.”
Special Study No. 2 did note that the rail line “will provide a competitive boost” to towns along the route because they could offer more transportation options. Rail opponents in Gloucester County proved well organized and formidable, and elected officials there began to waver.
The day after the studies were released, Haines said there was enough money for only one leg of the Glassboro-to-Trenton line and announced he would vote for a Burlington County line along the river.
Coming from the chairman of the Transportation Committee and a key state Republican, Haines’ comment sounded a death knell for a Gloucester route.
Gloucester County was controlled by Democrats who held little power in the Whitman administration. In fall 1996, the freeholders rescinded support for the project.
Meanwhile, in Burlington County, some local governments were aghast when the light-rail studies began to circulate.
With their sleek European design, the trains could run at speeds of up to 60 m.p.h. Trains were to run at 15-minute intervals during peak hours among 20 stations strung along 34 miles of track. There would be 52 grade crossings, or one every 0.6 mile on average. Twenty-six of those street-level crossings would require flashing lights, and 12 would require flashers and gates.
One by one, municipal governments began wavering in their support, or pulling it altogether.
In Delanco, for example, township officials had thought the line would be “infrequently used by a trolley at slow speeds,” according to a resolution that rescinded the township’s support.
“The township committee believes that the feasibility study shows significant higher service levels contrary to the representations made by state officials,” the Delanco Committee wrote.
Allen’s community of Edgewater Park, as well as Burlington City, also pulled back. While Riverton and other towns maintained their pro-rail stance, public opposition was growing in key towns such as Cinnaminson and Palmyra.
But Haines, as one of its key leaders, had the Senate locked up for the river route through Burlington County. And by September 1996, he also had gained support of the Assembly after a persuasive group of anti-rail activists from Gloucester County vocalized their opposition to a Glassboro-Camden leg during two public hearings.
The Assembly Light Rail Transit Legislative Panel, led by Rose Heck (R., Bergen), announced its decision to support Haines’ river route, saying it did not want to push the line where it wasn’t wanted. The Burlington County opposition was smaller, with little time to organize, compared with grassroots opposition in Gloucester County.
Heck was also seeking a light rail line for Hudson and Bergen Counties.
“Apple Bill” Haines had all his political ducks in a row, needing only a key vote by NJ Transit.
On Nov. 25, 1996, Haines, suffering from cancer, announced his retirement.
The next day, NJ Transit voted, 5-0, to endorse the river route as the initial operating corridor of the Southern New Jersey Light Rail Transit System.
It approved a route for Gloucester County, but set no time frame for opening that leg.
Haines, and Burlington County, had won. The senator died the next month at age 68.
Earlier this year, Burlington County’s director of economic development, Mark Remsa, said in an interview it was the state’s choice, not Burlington County’s, to place the rail line along the river. He said it was a gift dropped in his lap that would help revitalize the Route 130 corridor.
Undeterred by low-ridership forecasts, Paulsen, chairman of the Burlington County Republican Party, said he believes that Haines, as well as other county officials, were visionaries for embracing a rail line that he says will not only help restore the river towns, but boost Camden as well.
Paulsen said that, unlike their Gloucester County counterparts, Burlington County politicians showed guts.
Some communities, such as Delanco, have made their peace with the line and are seeing economic development and new housing. In other communities, it’s still a divisive issue.
As for state officials, some still say they were outmaneuvered by Haines in their push to have the line placed in Gloucester County.
Says George Warrington, executive director of NJ Transit, who was appointed after the line was under construction: “This was all about Bill Haines.”