(The following article by Jonathan Miller was posted on the New York Times website on August 12.)
SECAUCUS, N.J. — It was just a few years ago that New Jersey Transit’s executive director would try to explain — to anyone who would listen — the wonders of building another commuter train tunnel under the Hudson River. And every time, he would see eyes glaze over.
“People would say, ‘Great idea,’ ” George D. Warrington, the executive director, said in a recent interview. “ ‘Maybe my grandchildren will see it.’ ”
But a series of events in the last few weeks have made it more likely that it will not just be grandchildren, but their grandparents, too, who will see the completion of what is being called the Trans-Hudson Express tunnel, which would link New Jersey with Midtown.
The 9.3-mile project would cost an estimated $7.2 billion, create as many as 44,000 jobs and more than double the number of trains that cross the Hudson River during rush hour. Gov. Jon S. Corzine of New Jersey says the second rail tunnel, with its target completion date of 2016, is “vital to the state’s economic future.”
The first action to brighten the project’s prospects came last month when the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey committed up to $2 billion toward the tunnel’s completion — a move that would have been considered highly unlikely several years ago.
Weeks earlier, the Federal Transit Administration authorized $82.5 million to conduct preliminary engineering. And two weeks ago, the New Jersey Transit board approved preliminary work on the reconstruction of an aging bridge in the Meadowlands that is vital to the tunnel project.
In a potential side benefit to New York residents, said one high-ranking Port Authority of New York and New Jersey official who declined to be identified, the authority has begun talking about help to finance a project in New York that would link Grand Central Terminal to the Long Island Rail Road.
All of which, leaders in both states say, means the project has reached a turning point.
“The big hurdles will be technical — like tunneling — rather than political,” said Jon Orcutt, the executive director of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, an advocacy group. When asked, on a scale of one to 10 (10 being the highest) whether he thought the tunnel would become a reality, he said, “I think we’re around 7 or 8.”
Just how the tunnel project was rescued from the scrapheap of grand ideas is a decade-long tale of cross-state rivals laying down their swords and embracing the realities of regional economics, and of a Democrat-controlled state convincing a Republican-dominated Congress of the economic necessity of the costly project.
For the last 96 years, one two-track tunnel has run under the Hudson River into Pennsylvania Station in New York, and now carries 40,000 commuters a day. During peak travel hours there are about 23 trains, including Amtrak, coming and going through the tunnel, and a second tunnel — that would end 100 feet below 34th Street below the basement of Macy’s flagship store — would bring that number to 48. The project would create a loop south of Secaucus Junction, giving riders on the Bergen, Main and Pascack Valley Lines a direct ride into Manhattan without having to switch trains in Secaucus or Hoboken.
The plan’s most forceful advocate has been Mr. Warrington, a former president and chief executive of Amtrak, who was appointed to run New Jersey Transit in 2002. Almost immediately after taking the job, he began trying to resurrect the notion of a second tunnel, taking over the stalled initiative that had been started by the Port Authority.
Along the way, he persuaded the Port Authority’s chairman, Anthony Coscia, to get behind the project.
Together they began proselytizing among politicians, real estate developers and business leaders in New York, contending that the entire region and not just New Jersey would profit from building a second tunnel.
It was hard finding believers.
Kathryn Wylde, president and chief executive of the Partnership for New York City, an advocacy group for New York businesses, says this is the first project since the 1962 agreement to build the World Trade Center in which New York and New Jersey seem to have come together. There had been tension between the two states over New Jersey trying to lure businesses across the river.
“It reverses a generation in which we were accusing New Jersey of piracy,” Ms. Wylde said in a recent interview, “but it represents the reality of post-9/11 New York, that we are trying to keep businesses in the region.”
In addition, both New York senators, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles E. Schumer, have endorsed the project, as has Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.
The solidarity was crucial in persuading federal authorities to take the project seriously.
For Mr. Coscia, the project returns the agency to its roots and a mission that he said “we have sometimes not lived up to.”
“If our mission is to move people between two states,” he said, “adding another lane to the Lincoln Tunnel won’t do it.”
He and others point to studies that suggest the greatest growth in the area will come west of the Hudson. “An increasing proportion of our workforce can only afford to own a home in New Jersey, and have basically relocated there,’’ Ms. Wylde said. “Twenty-five, thirty years ago the safety valve was Long Island, twenty years ago it was Rockland and Orange. Last decade, it’s been New Jersey and even Pennsylvania.”
Governor Corzine is perhaps one of the project’s highest-profile advocates. As a United States senator in 2005, he took what most observers say was a crucial step when he helped insert language into a transportation bill stipulating that the secretary of transportation “shall give strong consideration to the project for a full funding grant agreement.”
And as governor, Mr. Corzine has promised that New Jersey will commit at least $500 million to the project. Some New York officials, once hostile to the tunnel project, now laud it, and, transportation officials say behind the scenes, are using it to exert pressure to deliver projects that are perceived as more beneficial to the city and state.
In a speech before the Regional Plan Association in May, Eliot Spitzer, the attorney general who is running as a Democrat for governor of New York, strongly hinted that several projects in New York should be worthy of Port Authority money, including the Second Avenue Subway line and a link from the Long Island Railroad to Grand Central Terminal.
For now, it seems like the Port Authority is willing to go along. When asked about the worthiness of such projects, Mr. Coscia agreed that the $6.3 billion Long Island Rail Road project, called East Side Access, was worthy of financing.
“I think East Side Access is a very strong project, and I can see the Port Authority consider participating in it,” he said. “If you look at East Side Access and the tunnel, it’s two sides of the coin. They’re literally different pieces of the same project.”
Another Port Authority official agreed with Mr. Coscia, but scoffed at another favored project of New York politicians, a link to Kennedy Airport from Lower Manhattan, calling it “ridiculous.”
As for the tunnel project, finding the $5 billion or so needed to complete the project remains the primary obstacle.
While the federal government could finance about 60 percent of the project, New Jersey’s financial difficulties have been well-documented, and the state’s Transportation Trust Fund, the pot of money that goes toward highway repairs and that narrowly averted bankruptcy this year, will need a more permanent fix down the line.
In addition, it is unlikely that the Port Authority will spend its $2 billion without getting any return on such an investment. Mr. Warrington said that he has suggested a financial arrangement in which the Port Authority could share revenue with New Jersey Transit from commercial and retail development at the proposed Moynihan Station at 34th Street, which New Jersey Transit would control.
“This is a conceptual offer that we’ve made,” he said, “and it’s more than reasonable to allow the Port Authority to participate in any of those commercial opportunities.”
Transit advocates warn that with so many big-ticket items planned, a fare or toll increase may be necessary for Port Authority-owned properties, although agency officials say the $2 billion committed thus far to the tunnel project is within the agency’s resources.
For now, optimism remains high, but Mr. Corzine warned against assuming the deal is sealed. “The die is not cast yet,” he said. “We’ve made real progress. New Jersey is putting its dough down and you see what the Port Authority’s doing. We still have hurdles to overcome and we will continue to make the case very strongly that this is a project of crucial regional and national significance.”