(The Star-Ledger posted the following article by Joe Malinconico on its website on March 31.)
NEWARK, N.J. — Abandoned for decades, a sloping tunnel veers from Newark’s main subway line, winding its way 25 feet below Raymond Boulevard.
Halfway through the dank passage rests a discarded railroad snowplow, its wheels rusted to the tracks. A concrete wall marks the tunnel’s end.
Sometime in the coming months, construction crews will dig their way down from Mulberry Street and bust through the tunnel walls, building a crucial segment for the city’s new one-mile subway extension.
The $225 million extension when completed will connect Newark Penn Station, which serves NJ Transit’s Raritan Valley, Northeast Corridor and North Jersey Coast lines, with the Broad Street Station, which handles commuter trains on the Morris and Essex and Montclair-Boonton lines. Officials expect more than 6,500 people a day to make the 10-minute trip.
But for the next two years, the construction will worsen traffic problems in downtown Newark. For one year, the project will close a one-block section of Mulberry Street from Raymond Boulevard to Park Street.
“Nobody wants to see a street closed, but we’re working with the city to come up with a traffic diversion plan,” said state Transportation Commissioner Jack Lettiere. “These temporary inconveniences are really going to produce major benefits in the long run.”
Beyond the new 850-foot tunnel, most of the rail link will be built above ground and will require additional street closings as the project progresses. In tandem with the new railroad tracks, transportation officials are widening McCarter Highway between Raymond Boulevard and Route 280 and moving the road 100 feet closer to the Passaic River, partly to make room for the trains.
The first closures are expected by the end of spring, officials said.
Currently, NJ Transit provides buses between Penn and Broad Street stations. But during rush-hour, when the area is choked with traffic, the bus ride can take more than 20 minutes.
Officials said they the link will prompt several thousand commuters to stop driving into Newark and start taking mass transit.
For example, right now, mass transit is inconvenient for someone who lives in Chatham and works at the Gateway complex near Penn Station, officials said. The train from Chatham only runs to the Broad Street Station.Once the extension is build, that person will be able to take the Morris and Essex line to Broad Street and then the subway over to Penn Station. The subway connection also will provide a better link to Newark Liberty International Airport trains and Amtrak trains, which only run from Penn Station.Officials said the tunnel would be the first section of underground railroad built in New Jersey in more than six decades. Engineers estimate construction crews will dig up as much as 40,000 tons of soil, enough to fill 4,000 dump trucks.Instead of carving the passage from below ground through the existing tunnel stub, officials determined the project would be $20 million cheaper if a 45-foot-deep trench was dug from street-level along Mulberry Street. From the bottom of the trench, workers plan to make a concrete box with walls two-feet thick for the train passageway, said NJ Transit’s deputy chief engineer, Glenn Ridsdale. Then, they will dump the soil back on top of the concrete box and rebuild the street above it.
Officials said the abandoned tunnel, which was last used decades ago, provides a convenient connection between the new project and the existing city subway line.
“If we had to do this from scratch, it would have been inordinately expensive,” project manager Kurt Kauffman said.
The one-mile rail link will include a stop at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. Trains also will stop at Newark Bears and Eagles Riverfront Stadium when baseball games and other events are held there.