(The following article by Sewell Chan was posted on the New York Times website on December 20.)
NEW YORK — Job growth in the New York metropolitan region will stagnate without a major expansion of commuter rail and subway access to Midtown and Lower Manhattan over the next 20 years, according to a report to be released by New York University today.
The study calls for construction on a magnitude not seen in nearly a half-century. The rail and traffic configuration that links Manhattan with other boroughs and the suburbs has not changed substantially since the third tube of the Lincoln Tunnel opened in 1957.
“Expanded transportation capacity is of vital importance to enable future economic and employment growth in the Manhattan central business district,” according to the report, prepared by the university’s Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management.
The report argues that four rail projects could relieve the crowding that has already begun to discourage riders from using subways and commuter railroads.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has announced its support for two of the projects: the development of a Second Avenue subway and a Long Island Rail Road connection to Grand Central Terminal. The authority’s plans for expansion, however, have been greeted by silence in Albany.
The report recommends that new rail tunnels be dug under the Hudson River to Pennsylvania Station and under the East River to Lower Manhattan. The total cost of the four projects could be as high as $32.6 billion, the report states.
“We’ve gone through 40 years where we’ve really forgotten about the significance of building new capacity,” said Rosemary Scanlon, an author of the report. (The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, which connects Brooklyn and Staten Island, was completed in 1964.) “All of the major cities in the world seem able to grab hold of what they need to expand and grow. We seem to be myopic about it.”
Ms. Scanlon, a former state deputy comptroller for New York City and a former chief economist for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said there had been not been major investment in the region’s transportation infrastructure since Gov. Hugh L. Carey initiated financing for a general revitalization of the subway system. Since 1982, Mr. Carey’s last year in office, the authority has spent $40 billion on restoration and maintenance of its transit network.
The other author of the report, Edward S. Seeley Jr., said that New York has been unique among American cities in the resilience of its downtown core.
“We’ve had suburbanization in the region, as in all regions, but during the same time, the relative strength of Manhattan as an employment center and as a generator of personal income has grown,” said Mr. Seeley, who retired in 1997 after a career at the Port Authority and the city government. “It’s become more dominant. This is not a centrifugal region like Los Angeles.”
Employment in the central business district, defined as all of Manhattan below 60th Street, is expected to increase an average of 0.8 percent a year, according to the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council, a government-sponsored planning forum that includes city and state agencies, along with officials from five suburban counties.
Assuming growth of only 0.6 percent a year, Ms. Scanlon and Mr. Seeley found, the business district would have 2.3 million jobs in 2025, 285,000 more than it did last year. Those workers would make 560,000 rush-hour work trips a day, an increase of 69,000 from last year.
The increase would amount to 51 additional subway trains – each with a full 1,400-passenger load – entering Manhattan each day.
Because the report calls for increased rail access, and not vehicular traffic, its recommendations are unlikely to be controversial among neighborhood advocates and environmentalists concerned about preservation of public space. But its call for major public investment – at a time when the state faces rising education, health care and pension costs – may be unrealistic.
“We have to ask ourselves what’s the price if we don’t do these projects,” said Elliot G. Sander, the director of the Rudin Center and a former city transportation commissioner. “New York risks the possibility of having a real ceiling on the economic growth of the financial capital of the country.”