(The following article by David A. Michaels was posted on the Bergen Record website on August 1.)
BERGEN, N.J. — NJ Transit’s board of directors is expected to approve today a $40 million down payment for diesel trolley service for eastern Bergen County, a system that eventually would allow passengers to travel directly to midtown Manhattan, officials said Monday.
The diesel service would become Bergen County’s version of light rail, which has proven popular in Hudson County and spurred development along its waterfront. The original plans called for extending light rail to Bergen County, but NJ Transit thinks diesel-multiple units, or DMUs, better fit a plan to increase service between Manhattan and New Jersey via a new rail tunnel.
The board will approve the funding as part of NJ Transit’s $1.31 billion capital program for 2007, said Rich Sarles, NJ Transit’s assistant executive director for capital programs. The $40 million will be reserved for engineering and property acquisition along the Northern Branch, which would run between Ridgefield and Tenafly. Future capital programs are expected to include $75 million to $100 million for the $420 million project, officials said.
“Certainly this is pointing us toward the DMU project for the Northern Branch,” Sarles said.
That dashes the hopes of some light-rail partisans, who contend light rail would attract more passengers in the short term and earn more in fares.
Diesel-unit passengers who want to travel to Hoboken or Jersey City would have to transfer to a light-rail train in North Bergen.
Rose Heck, a former state legislator from Hasbrouck Heights, said the board is prematurely cutting off debate about light rail.
“It’s unquestionably a tactic on their part to promote something that is going to be much more expensive and much less of a benefit to passengers,” said Heck, who lobbies for the New Jersey Association of Railroad Passengers.
NJ Transit argues that light rail is preferable only in the short-term. A new rail tunnel to Manhattan, advertised to open in 2016, would make DMUs more popular than light rail. But NJ Transit would have to build a connection from the DMU terminal to the new tunnel, which would begin in Secaucus.
Sarles said NJ Transit would fund the DMU connection with future authorizations from the state’s Transportation Trust Fund. The connector would cost $800 million to $900 million.