(The following article by David A. Michaels was posted on the Bergen Record website on July 19.)
BERGEN, N.J. — When New Jersey announced plans in 1994 to build Hudson County’s portion of the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail, there was a promise, but no deadline, for extending service to Bergen County.
There still isn’t a deadline. And the promise, some say, was broken.
Local advocates of light rail, that boxy and bustling electric trolley pushing its way up the waterfront, are still demanding it come to Bergen County.
At public meetings of NJ Transit, they argue that the agency has broken its word to extend light rail all the way to Tenafly. They plan to make the same argument to the Bergen County Freeholders at a meeting tonight.
“Promises were made to us, and promises were broken,” said Rose Heck, a former Assembly member from Hasbrouck Heights. “The people of Bergen County shouldn’t settle for anything less than they were promised.”
To Heck and her allies, “anything less” includes NJ Transit’s latest proposal to run a diesel engine, called a diesel multiple unit, from North Bergen to Tenafly. The trains would travel on the Northern Branch, a track on which the Erie Railroad once ran passenger trains each day between Nyack, N.Y., and Jersey City.
They also would require that passengers transfer from a diesel to a light rail train in North Bergen. Some critics complain the change could tack 10 to 30 minutes onto the journey.
Three light rail systems now stretch from Trenton to Camden, between North Bergen and Bayonne, and over the streets of Newark. But Bergen County, the state’s most populous county and perhaps the most reliant on automobiles, still awaits its rail line.
NJ Transit officials say they didn’t break any promises. An electrified, above-ground trolley no longer makes sense, they said, given their effort to connect Bergen County directly to Manhattan.
That plan turns on the ability of New York and New Jersey to fund and finish a massive public-works project — a second rail tunnel under the Hudson River that could eventually give eastern Bergen commuters a continuous ride into the city.
In a recent interview, George Warrington, NJ Transit’s executive director, said the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail was conceived at a time when regional transportation was splintered.
“There has never been a rational plan to connect the dots,” he said.
Heck and the New Jersey Association of Railroad Passengers, for which she lobbies, appear to face an uphill battle. An increasing number of towns and cities have endorsed the diesel units. The Bergen County Freeholders endorsed them last year.
“We need to stop having these roundabout discussions,” said Bernadette McPherson, the chairwoman of the Bergen County Freeholders. “If we don’t go in this direction, this is never going to happen.”
But Heck says that NJ Transit hasn’t given the Freeholders and council members the truth about diesel units. Light rail, they argue, would actually be more popular than diesel units and would earn more money.
A Bergen County light rail line would accommodate 23,500 passenger trips a day, according to NJ Transit. Diesel units would support 8,600 trips. With a tunnel connection to Manhattan, the diesel load would rise to 34,000 trips a day, NJ Transit officials said.
NJ Transit has previously said light rail construction would be more expensive – about $1 billion — because electrification drives up the price of the line. But officials said Tuesday that a diesel system that includes a connection to the new tunnel would cost more. They declined to disclose the latest estimate.
“At the end of the day, getting a one-seat ride to Manhattan would be more costly than light rail,” said Steve Santoro, chief of capital project management for NJ Transit. “But the jobs are in Manhattan. That is where people want to go.”
Heck’s group says there is no guarantee that a new tunnel — packed with commuter trains from all over New Jersey — would accommodate the smaller diesel units.
“I don’t think they’ll ever build the connector,” said Albert F. Cafiero, a former chairman of the Transit Committee of Bergen County. “And by the time they say they can’t build it, he [Warrington] will be out of the job.”
But some former county officials, disappointed with the slow crawl of light rail to Bergen County, believe diesel units are the last, best hope.
“I like electrified light rail, but ultimately, anyone from eastern Bergen wants to see a one-seat ride to Manhattan,” said Douglas Bern, a former Democratic freeholder who now leads the transit committee.
Warrington said Bergen County may have missed its opportunity for light rail because officials in different towns and cities argued over which route to endorse – north-south or east-west. The county eventually settled on the Northern Branch.
“The rest of the state was focused,” he said.
As a member of the Assembly, Heck championed light rail for New Jersey. She said NJ Transit’s opposition is difficult to fathom, given its embrace of light rail in other parts of the state.
“They tout this throughout the state,” she said. “Yet when it comes to Bergen, they throw mud at the idea.”