(The following story by Martin B. Cassidy appeared on the Stamford Advocate website on March 29, 2009.)
STAMFORD, Conn. — While hashing out transportation stimulus funding for the region this winter, U.S. Rep. Jim Himes pushed for a freight rail tunnel under New York Harbor.
With traffic clogging Interstate 95 and other roads throughout the region, the long-deferred idea of a tunnel between New Jersey and New York should be prioritized for its promise to move millions of tons of freight off trucks and onto rail cars, said Himes, D-Greenwich.
“I’ve always believed that it is a very important project, and I’ve always believed it is on way too slow a burn,” he said. “It is a very high priority for me. And the people in Fairfield County pay too high a psychological and economic burden from congestion in the state.”
This summer, Himes and U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., who represents Manhattan’s Upper West Side, plan to join forces to seek funding for the tunnel when legislators hammer out a new version of the five-year Surface Transportation Infrastructure Reauthorization Act, which expires in September.
Both point to a 2004 environmental impact statement commissioned by the New York Economic Development Corp. that found the underwater route could eliminate up to 1 million vehicle trips from New York City’s roads a year, and similar numbers in Connecticut and Long Island, N.Y.
“There is basically 50 years of catching up to investment in rail freight in the whole area that needs to be done over a period of time,” Nadler said. “Clearly, in terms of congestion on I-95, it would be very important to Connecticut, but it won’t help much if some one in Connecticut doesn’t look at what the options for a rail freight terminal up there are.”
With the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey putting millions into the century-old idea of the tunnel, Connecticut officials said they hope the renewed push will fast-track the project,.
The Port Authority recently started a $15 million environmental impact study on the project out of $100 million federal appropriation. The study includes an analysis of expanding freight rail to carry commercial goods in the region.
Of the goods now moved between New York and New Jersey, 95 percent travels by truck. That freight movement in the New York-New Jersey region will increase by 70 percent in the next 20 years, said Steve Coleman, a Port Authority spokesman.
To jump-start an effort to expand freight movement across the harbor, last fall the Port Authority spent $16 million to purchase a Jersey City, N.J., facility that is capable of launching barges loaded with freight-filled rail cars, Coleman said.
“Freight movements is a critical issue that we consider to be a matter of common sense,” he said.
A route linking Connecticut to the nation’s rail system is long overdue and moving a large share of freight traffic from trucks to rail cars is one of the most plausible solutions to congestion, said Joan McDonald, commissioner of the state Department of Economic and Community Development.
McDonald, who was transportation vice president for the New York Economic Development Corp. until 2006, said population growth will worsen commercial traffic on all area highways.
Population growth in New York City alone is expected to grow by 1 million by 2030, McDonald said, causing a potentially crippling spike in freight traffic into the city’s road system.
“Building a tunnel under New York Harbor would relieve a lot of the truck traffic, particularly on I-95,” said McDonald. “I think it is a great project for the entire region.”
The proposed tunnel route would link the Greenville Railyard in Bayonne, N.J., to Long Island Rail Road terminals at either 51st or 65th Street in Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, N.Y.
From there, trains could travel north on the LIRR’s Bay Ridge line over the Hellgate Bridge, meeting spurs of Metro-North Railroad’s New Haven, Hudson, and Harlem lines, according to a plan for the study.
Currently, efforts to convert truck to rail freight are hampered by the lack of a convenient rail connection, said Floyd Lapp, director of the Southwest Regional Planning Agency, which coordinates transportation planning for 14 Fairfield County towns. The closest rail crossing between Connecticut and the western United States is in Selkirk, N.Y., a detour of more than 240 miles, Lapp said.
Although the cost of the tunnel is daunting, Lapp said relying on trucks to carry the majority of goods through Connecticut will worsen gridlock, said Lapp, who supported the tunnel concept while a transportation commissioner in New York City in the 1990s.
“This is something I am a very big advocate of, seeing as it would remove a large number of trucks off the road which would improve and reduce congestion while improving the carrying capacity of freight,” he said.
The concept of the tunnel dates to 1893, when the Pennsylvania Railroad proposed building the tunnel. It re-emerged as a major goal for the newly formed Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in 1921 but was abandoned by the 1940s.
The project gained new momentum during the tenure of former New York City Mayor Rudolph Guiliani, who worked with Nadler to get the New York City Economic Development Corp. to initiate a tunnel study.
Earlier this decade, the project met strong opposition from Brooklyn residents, and doubts about its costs compared with the benefits, Nadler said.
Connecticut Department of Transportation officials have said there is scarce room for additional freight on the New Haven Line and said many rail bridges would need to be raised to allow freight travel. Kevin Nursick, a DOT spokesman, said the agency was open to exploring the idea of rail freight but does not have an official position on the proposed tunnel.
“Wherever feasible and practical it is worth taking advantage of our rail infrastructure to ease roadway congestion not just in terms of carrying passengers but for freight as well,” Nursick said. “The details are very important in any proposal.”
McDonald said she recognized engineering restraints and community reluctance but said a plan could be worked out.
“Any major public works investment, whether it is a road, bridge or freight tunnel, you have to deal with the communities that it passes through,” McDonald said. “There are engineering constraints but in the end it will be a huge plus to the New York metropolitan region.”