(The following article by Judy Rife was posted on the Times Herald-Record website on March 17.)
NEW YORK — NJ Transit’s plan to build a new Hudson River rail tunnel and train station in Manhattan won another critical approval yesterday.
The New York Metropolitan Transportation Council formally endorsed the Trans Hudson Express Tunnel and amended its long-range plan to include it. Transit shorthand now calls the project THE Tunnel.
“This vote is a very significant milestone and demonstrates that the region is unified in support of THE Tunnel as a project of regional significance,” said George Warrington, NJ Transit’s executive director, after the meeting.
The $6 billion project will supplement Amtrak’s 100-year-old tunnel to Pennsylvania Station and give a one-seat ride to Midtown for tens of thousands of commuters from New Jersey and Orange and Rockland counties in New York.
“I’m fully in favor of it,” said Rockland County Executive Scott Vanderhoef, who made the motion. “It’s very important for us in Orange and Rockland counties, and it’s important for Stewart Airport in the long term, to have this kind of access to Manhattan.”
Vanderhoef said he continues to support Metro-North Railroad’s proposal to build a new commuter rail line through the Tappan Zee corridor and considers it equally important to the future of Orange and Rockland counties. That plan would offer a one-seat ride to Grand Central Terminal.
The council’s action clears the way for NJ Transit to obtain approval from the Federal Transit Administration to begin preliminary engineering for the project, also known as Access to the Region’s Core, or ARC.
The FTA requires NJ Transit to have the support of the council and its counterpart, the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority, for the project since it includes two states.
The council’s members include New York City, Long Island, and Westchester, Putnam and Rockland counties. The council and the authority are among the hundreds of federally-mandated metropolitan planning organizations throughout the country that are charged with overseeing transportation planning and spending.
The authority endorsed ARC last year, shortly after NJ Transit and the Port Authority completed the draft environmental impact statement and sought to begin preliminary engineering.
Dan Stessel, a spokesman for NJ Transit, said public hearings will be scheduled on the draft statement in a matter of weeks, as soon as the FTA finishes reviewing it.
Although NJ Transit and the Port Authority don’t have all the money in place to pay for the project yet, construction is scheduled to begin in 2009 and to end in 2015.