(The following article by Joe Malinconico was posted on the Newark Star-Ledger website on March 12.)
NEWARK, N.J. — Much depends on the reopening of the dormant railroad bridge between Elizabeth and Staten Island.
The traffic-choked Goethals Bridge would handle about 150 fewer tractor-trailers a day when the rail connection opens.
Elizabeth residents would no longer have to put up with New York City’s garbage trucks rumbling through their streets.
And the Port of New York and New Jersey would gain a vital asset for handling the anticipated growth in cargo shipments over the next decade.
But all that has to wait, because the bridge — which is almost a year behind schedule — has not done well during recent testing.
“The delay has been too long. It’s starting to cause alarm over here,” said New York City Councilman Michael McMahon, chairman of the council’s committee on solid waste management. “The longer it takes, the worse it is for everybody.”
Most parts on the bridge — an old-fashioned vertical lift mechanism that originally opened in 1959 — are the same as in 1990, when it stopped operation, officials said.
Officials need to make sure there are no kinks in the lift apparatus; if the bridge were to get stuck in the down position, it would block traffic on the bay, and if it got stuck in the up position, rail freight would get stranded on Staten Island and be late for delivery.
That hasn’t been a problem during the preliminary tests, said Joan McDonald, senior vice president of transportation for the New York City Economic Development Commission, the agency that owns the bridge.
But several times during 40 test runs, the railroad tracks did not line up when the bridge was lowered, McDonald said. In those instances, within a minute or so, the bridge was raised and put back down in the proper position, she said.
“I don’t want to minimize this, but I don’t want to blow it out of proportion, either,” McDonald said.
This week, Conrail is sending one of its movable bridge experts to the Staten Island span to try to solve the problem with the track alignment, McDonald said.
Conrail officials, however, were reluctant to discuss the project, referring questions to the city agency.
“It’s their bridge and they’re in charge of the operation and whatever repairs are being made to make it functional for rail service,” Conrail spokesman John Enright said.
McDonald said she expected the bridge would be ready to start handling trains within four weeks.
That can’t happen too soon for Elizabeth residents. Since 1999, New York City has been sending the bulk of Staten Island’s garbage — roughly 1,000 tons per day — by truck to transfer stations on Julia and Front streets in Elizabeth. That’s about 130 truckloads.
Elizabeth officials tried to stop New York’s garbage from coming, but lost the case in court.
“We’re had complaints about odors and spillage,” Mayor J. Christian Bollwage said, “but I don’t recall any vehicle-to-vehicle or vehicle-to-pedestrian accidents.”
Meanwhile, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has been anxious for the rail bridge to open and ease traffic on the Goethals Bridge.
Not only would the garbage trucks stop using the Goethals Bridge, but so would hundreds of tractor-trailers that haul freight each week from the New York Container Terminal in Staten Island, official said. The Port Authority estimates the rail bridge would take 40,000 trucks from the Goethals during the first year of operation.
The reopening of the dormant bridge is so important to the Port Authority that the agency picked up most of the $160 million price tag for the project, which also includes laying new tracks, installing signals and building a rail yard.
The rail bridge also is vital to expansion plans at New York Container Terminal (NYCT). The company is spending $350 million to build a new berth, which would increase the number of cargo ships it could handle at one time from three to four. Without the rail connection, the terminal would not be able to move the additional cargo from the docks quickly enough.
NYCT already has sent about a dozen of its longshoremen to learn how to operate the locomotives to run the freight from the docks to a Conrail yard nearby. Company officials say they may be the only longshoremen on the East Coast to have such training.
For at least the first month, however, only two garbage trains — one empty, one full –will be allowed to use the bridge, officials said. It may takes weeks or months before the freight trains start running across the Arthur Kill, McDonald said.
Also, once trains start using the bridge, the Coast Guard will conduct its own test for at least 90 days to measure its impact on maritime traffic. During that time, the bridge will be limited to one opening in the morning and one in the afternoon, with the timing based on the tides of the bay, said Coast Guard spokeswoman Martha LaGuardia.