(The following story by Judy Rife appeared on the Times Herald-Record website on March 19.)
NEWARK, N.J. — The $7 billion project that will give Orange County, N.Y., commuters a one-seat ride to Midtown isn’t exactly a sure thing yet, but NJ Transit’s already got 200 people working on it.
“We’re recruiting the world’s best people,” said Art Silber, NJ Transit’s project manager. “We just got a terrific guy from Singapore who’s worked on eight tunnels.”
Silber and other NJ Transit employees will come to New York to visit Orange and Rockland counties this week to brief the public on the project, known as Access to the Region’s Core, or ARC, as part of the draft environmental impact study process.
The project would result in the construction of a new commuter rail tunnel to Manhattan and a new terminal beneath 34th Street, adjacent to Pennsylvania Station, to boost the capacity of Amtrak’s overcrowded 100-year-old facilities, and would position NJ Transit to accommodate future demand for access to Midtown.
More trains, multilevel cars
The new tunnel will allow NJ Transit to funnel trains from seven more rail lines into Midtown, including the Port Jervis and Pascack Valley lines, and eliminate the need for thousands of commuters to transfer at Secaucus Junction.
In bald numbers, NJ Transit will be able to run 48 trains an hour into Midtown through the two tunnels, versus 23 today through Amtrak’s alone. Multilevel cars will allow these trains to carry more people, and longer platforms and better access to the street will allow these people to get out of the station more easily and quickly.
Silber and NJ Transit’s consultants began preliminary engineering on ARC six months ago, after the Federal Transit Administration authorized the project to advance to that step. The joint venture includes Parsons Brinckerhoff, STV and DMJM Harris/AECOM.
At the same time, NJ Transit is advancing several other projects that support ARC. Consultants are designing a dual-mode locomotive that can be switch from diesel to catenary power to carry trains through the new tunnel. Others are working to convert 140 acres of brownfields into a yard for 40 new locomotives and 200 new train cars.
And yet others are plotting the overhaul of the Portal Bridge, a bottleneck of a swing bridge that carries Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor over the Hackensack River and into the existing tunnel.
The final environmental impact study will be submitted to the FTA before the end of the year. Then, the agency will decide in early 2008 if ARC is a go — and if it is worthy of the maximum amount of federal aid, usually 40 percent.
The Port Authority has already committed $2 billion to the project as a partial solution to congestion on its Hudson River crossings. NJ Transit will have to conjure up the rest.
Regardless, Silber is confident that the first trains will travel through the 4.5-mile tunnel in 2016.
“The governor (of New Jersey, Jon Corzine) wants a shovel in the ground in 2009, and we’re going to be ready,” he said.
ARC briefings
• 6 p.m. – 8 p.m. tomorrow in the community room of the Palisades Center Mall in West Nyack
• 6 p.m. – 8 p.m. Thursday in the legislative chambers of the Orange County Government Center in Goshen
Copies of the draft environmental impact study and comment forms are posted at www.accesstotheregionscore.com. Public comment on the project will be accepted through April 10.