FRA Certification Helpline: (216) 694-0240

(The following story by Lalita Aloor Amuthan appeared on the Home News Tribune website on January 25.)

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. — Officials from South Brunswick and Monroe discounted the results of a poll, commissioned by Monmouth and Ocean counties, which stated that county residents backed the Monmouth Junction route of the Monmouth-Ocean-Middlesex commuter rail line.

“Middlesex County has 856,000 people. Please don’t do a survey of 200 people and tell me that it is valid,” said South Brunswick Mayor Frank Gambatese. He added that only 49 percent of the 200 people surveyed in Middlesex County responded to the poll.

“I’d like to know who these people are because they certainly did not contact anyone in South Brunswick, Jamesburg or Monroe, which are the towns through which the proposed rail is going,” he said.

Three routes are being considered for the MOM line that would begin in Ocean County and run north through either Red Bank, Matawan or the Monmouth Junction section of South Brunswick.

North Brunswick’s push for a transit village designation — as well as township commuters and from nearby — could benefit from the presence of the added rail line, Mayor Francis “Mac’ Womack believes.

North Brunswick TOD Associates, LLC, which bought the 212-acre Johnson & Johnson campus in summer 2006, has conducted several feasibility studies for a transit village there. That plan has received cautious but steady backing from township officials.

While Womack said he is not aware of any detailed study addressing how the MOM line would impact the projected transit village, he said that increased train volume on the MOM line could increase the need for a a train station in the township.

“Not knowing the full details of either the MOM line or the fully built-out transit village in North Brunswick, we don’t think it would have an adverse effect,” Womack said Thursday afternoon. “If anything it would probably increase the need for viable transit train stops along the Northeast Corridor.”

Still, Monroe Councilman Irwin Nalitt said the Monmouth Junction line, which goes through Middlesex County, is the worst of the three rail lines proposed as it adds 17 miles to the route, tens of millions of dollars to the cost, and doesn’t pick up enough riders on a daily basis to justify the costs.

“By passing through Monroe and Jamesburg and avoiding Red Bank and Matawan they are adding 22 minutes to the ride,” he said.

Gambatese said it doesn’t make sense that commuters have to travel 13 miles west to go north.

Interest in the Monmouth Junction route spiked in December with higher projected ridership figures for it: 27,450 daily trips, followed by the Matawan route with 24,050 and Red Bank with 16,800, according to NJ Transit figures, using the proposed second Hudson River tunnel to New York.

Nalitt said he didn’t trust the results of the polls. “We don’t know who they contacted and where they did their survey.”

He said that Monroe has been against the MOM line from the very start when the projected cost for the line was $263 million. “Today the projected cost for the line is about $750 million, and conditions as far as ridership haven’t changed significantly.”

Gambatese said by the time it gets approved, the cost of the MOM line could very well be a billion dollars and that there is no way the state of New Jersey could afford to spend that kind of money on a rail line.

He said the proposed line would displace a lot of people in South Brunswick and disrupt the quality of life for others. “We are going to have to knock down homes to build this train line.”

Nalitt said Monroe has four grade crossings with about 180 buses crossing the tracks daily and having this new line would pose an increased safety risk for the buses.

“So long as the surveys are commissioned by Monmouth and Ocean counties, the results are going to be skewed,” Gambatese said.