(The Philadelphia Inquirer posted the following story by Jennifer Moroz on its website on October 9.)
PHILADELPHIA — Just one more month. That’s when New Jersey Transit officials say they will finally be able to announce a date for the long-awaited opening of the Camden-to-Trenton light rail line.
At yesterday’s NJ Transit board meeting, executive director George Warrington announced the agency was stepping up testing on the line. By the Nov. 12 board meeting, the testing of signals and other equipment and the training of operators should be 90 percent complete, said spokeswoman Penny Bassett Hackett.
“Mr. Warrington expects to announce an opening date at that time,” she said.
Warrington is expected to also announce a new name for the line, something that rolls off the tongue a little more easily than “Southern New Jersey Light Rail Transit System.”
Yesterday’s announcement is a small bone thrown by officials who for months have dodged questions about when the controversial $1.1 billion line, already more than a year behind schedule, would open.
At the line’s groundbreaking in May 2000, officials said it would be open by 2002.
Early this year, officials predicted a summer opening.
By spring, transit leaders were saying “in the fall.”
Then fall rolled around and still no word.
In an interview two weeks ago, Warrington said testing on the line was roughly 60 percent complete.
“My first priority is making sure we get it right, making sure all the bumps are out of the system and all the safety-related aspects are nailed down,” he said. “We won’t have a date until all that is done and is done right.”
When asked about how much notice the public might get, Warrington said simply: “There will be sufficient and reasonable lead time so everyone can be well prepared for the opening.”
Earlier this week, transit spokeswoman Lynn Bowersox downplayed a line in recent bond funding records that stated the rail service “is expected to begin revenue service in the first quarter of 2004.” She said it did not mean the line wouldn’t open before then.
“It’s a conservative financial statement to bondholders,” she said. “It’s not an operational forecast… it’s not meant to address anything about start-up.”
She would not say whether it was realistic for the line to open before the end of the year.
That officials haven’t set a definitive opening date is understandable to some, shocking to others.
“On one hand, I commend them for taking the time to make it safe, but on the other hand, gosh, it’s 2003 and we still don’t have light rail,” said Democratic Assemblyman Jack Conners, whose Seventh District would be served by the 34-mile corridor.
“I would suspect they’re afraid of announcing a date for fear of not making it,” said Donald Nigro, president of the Delaware Valley Association of Rail Passengers, a nonprofit advocacy group. “They don’t want to be wrong again publicly on this project.”
In addition to testing, officials said, workers were still putting the final touches on construction. The NJ Transit board yesterday also approved an additional $2.9 million to remove and dispose of soil the agency had piled alongside the tracks in Camden and Florence. Though state officials deemed the soil – excavated during construction of the line – safe, residents worried about the safety of low-level contaminants it contains.