New Jersey Transit unveils ARC plan to mixed reviews

New Jersey Transit’s Access to the Region’s Core (ARC) plan aims to reduce passenger backlogs like this at Penn Station.

By Chris Lombardi

To Tom Schulze of New Jersey Transit, the agency’s $7.4 billion Access to the Region’s Core (ARC) Project is a logical, long-planned next step. To Lewis Coletti of the Building Trades Employment Organization, it’s a job-generator that’s long-overdue, “probably 10 years too late.” To Christine Berthet of Community Board 5, it’s a “a great proposal that does not go far enough.” But to critics like George Haikalis of the Institute for Rational Urban Mobility and Albert Papp, Jr., of the New Jersey Association of Railroad Passengers, the project is what Papp called “a second-rate solution for a first-rate problem.”

All these voices, and more, filled the Great Hall at the Fashion Institute of Technology last Tuesday to talk about ARC’s just-released draft environmental impact statement, which was commented on by more than 100 people at what was the last of NJT’s six public hearings on the statement.

The agency’s presentation included the geology of the Trans-Hudson Express Tunnel (“T.H.E. Tunnel”) and its two new commuter rail tracks, statistics on NJT’s passenger capacity both before and after the tunnel opens in 2016, and the design of a proposed new station deep below Macy’s on 34th Street.

Most of those commenting agreed that the tunnel itself was necessary, given the strain on the current commuter rail system, as well as auto traffic gridlock on both sides of the river. But many differed as to what should happen when the trains come to Manhattan, with some holding out for a regional-rail approach that would divert half the passengers to Grand Central Station, and others raising questions about terrorism, and still others decrying the feared disruption caused by the seven-year-long construction phase. The advanced stage of the project, including $2 billion in recently approved funding from the Federal Transit Administration, gave the proceedings an aura of inevitability, but local residents and transit riders still felt free to ask for more clarity.

As Philip Craig, of Upper Montclair, N.J., said at the hearing’s closing, “The devil’s in the details.”

The hearing began with Ruby Siegel of Transit Link, NJT’s management consultant on the proposal, and NJT’s Tom Schulze, the ARC project director. They outlined the recent history of the ARC proposal, which entered the development phase more than five years ago and was adopted at the end of 2005 by all the area transit agencies. The need, they said, is urgent: The commuter rail system is already at capacity, carrying nearly 40,000 passengers each rush hour and stressing the 100-year-old tunnel and platforms, while auto and bus traffic congestion worsens daily. The core goals of the ARC Project, Siegel added, are to increase capacity for new train passengers, offer “one-seat rides” to more passengers who currently have to transfer in Hoboken or Secaucus, and relieve both overcrowding and traffic congestion. NJT estimates that after the tunnel is completed in 2016, 35,000 fewer cars will enter the city each day,

As Schulze explained, “T.H.E Tunnel” is actually shorthand for two tunnels along the Northeast Corridor, which would arrive and empty out in a new terminal at West 34th Street, just below Macy’s: a “deep-cavern” station far below Penn Station, with an upper platform level approximately 95 feet below street level, and a lower platform level at 135 feet below. Siegel stressed that with 21st-century technology, commuters could get to street level just as fast as they now can at Penn. The station’s six entrances are all substantially uptown from the current Penn Station and the new Moynihan Station at 31st Street, while the deep-cavern stations will extend almost two full blocks, from Eighth Avenue to Sixth Avenue and Broadway.

Overall, Siegel said, the project would nearly double the number of trains crossing the tunnel from 23 to 48, and increase the passenger load by 70 percent. She ended the presentation by outlining a number of environmental concerns, such as air quality, wetlands and habitats, and by describing NJT’s proposals to mitigate any negative impacts.

After NJT’s presentation, supporters chimed in quickly, with business leaders united in support.

Dan Bederman, of the 34th Street Partnership, called a potential 30-minute decrease in commute time “huge for our building owners, who are looking to fill their buildings,” while Ed Ott, of the Central Labor Council, and Lewis Coletti, of the Building Trades, stressed the 10,000 construction jobs and 1,000 “jobs in place” estimated to be created by the plan. Thomas Zapf of Macy’s delighted in how the tunnel might decrease his own commute and decrease the parking hell both endured and created by his customers. Local elected officials then chimed in: State Senator Tom Duane, an early endorser, sent a statement saying: “This project makes sense on so many levels”; he was speaking, he said, of “my constituents who live in an around the Lincoln Tunnel.”

Danielle Decebo, from City Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s office, mainly spoke of the 35,000 fewer drivers. “Anyone can see the exiting tunnel is near capacity,” she said, adding that “far too many drivers treat streets and roadways as access roads.”

But critics of the project, like transit planner George Haikalis, of the Institute for Rational Urban Mobility, and Jefferson Chase, of Trip-to Work+, a nonprofit transportation think tank, stood to question both the project itself and the agency’s claims about its proposed benefits.

“This project is a stark pronouncement of the collapse of regional planning in New York City,” said Haikalis, who served on the now-defunct Tri-State Transportation Planning Commission in the 1980s and now urged a regional-rail approach, akin to systems in Tokyo and Philadelphia. The deep-cavern station, he said, is a dangerous, multi-million dollar waste of time; he instead urged a plan that NJT had developed and rejected, where the second of the two tunnels would never enter Penn Station but instead run directly to Grand Central Station, since an estimated 40 to 50 percent of NJT passengers are headed to the east side of Manhattan.

Chase endorsed Haikalis’ approach and belittled those at the hearing who’d recited the same statistics as the presenters. “Listening to the supporters, I find myself listening to a constant recitation of your [NJT’s] press release,” he said. Chase questioned the plan’s claimed benefits to present NJT riders, most of whom don’t work within walking distance of Penn Station, and also raised anti-terrorist concerns about adding 35,000 potential new passengers so close to the current station.

New Jersey Transit officials told Chelsea Now that NJT had already gone to the transportation committees of Community Boards 4 and 5, and “they’re very supportive.” Asked about the option of extending service to the east side, they said it was a good idea, but just not now. “That’s the next step,” said spokeswoman Penny Hackett. “Right now we’re trying to break a bottleneck, and get more tracks and more platforms—and more cars off the streets.”

But while local residents at the hearing endorsed the goal of cars off the streets, that hardly erased their concerns about the havoc that construction of the tunnel and station would wreak on the neighborhood. Christine Berthet, of Clinton-Hells Kitchen Pedestrian Safety Coalition, asked that NJT think creatively about how to minimize the traumas of the projected 80-month construction period (about seven years).

“This all happens at the same time as the Number 7 [subway] extension, and the M station construction,” said Berthet. “Our neighborhood cannot absorb all this at the same time.” She also suggested that the agencies involved ban all vehicles that are not high-occupancy vehicles from the Lincoln Tunnel, and that in general they needed to go beyond the careful vision outlined in the proposal and the environmental impact statement.

“It could be bolder,” she said. “We’ve now heard here various ways it could go further.”

Berthet, who also serves on C.B. 4’s Transportation Planning Committee, also pointed out that the projected increase in capacity for a project slated to open in 2016 doesn’t come near satisfying even the passenger levels already projected for 2025 by the same transit agencies.

“If it’s already at capacity when it’s finished,” said Berthet, “that’s not acceptable.”