Last Friday, a "double-stacked" freight train that had been switched onto the wrong side of the Hudson slammed into the 153^rd Street bridge over the Hudson line in the Bronx. The early morning derailment disrupted other freight traffic and snarled the Metro-North morning commute.

A Conrail operating error was the obvious immediate culprit, but the crash highlighted the systemic and institutional problems blocking expanded use of freight trains to ease truck traffic and reduce business and consumer costs in New York City and Long Island.

A track segment designed specifically to keep freight trains off of commuter lines and allow them to move more easily down the Hudson and into the Bronx' Harlem River and Oak Point yards, or over the Hell Gate Bridge into Queens, Brooklyn or Long Island was all but finished in April, 1997. Known as the Oak Point Link, the project's sorry history has been emblematic of official inattention to and bungling of alternatives to moving goods in trucks. The 1.9-mile track project has taken almost 20 years to move from drawing board to real infrastructure.

Now the finished track has lain idle for 17 months while the agreement on constructing the final switches and track links has bogged down between the NY State DOT and the operators of the Harlem River Rail yard. The acquisition of Conrail has also required that new operating agreement be worked out with the new railroads that will be operating into the city.

If the Oak Point Link had been open last week, the Conrail wreck probably would not have occurred. The Link has higher bridge clearances than the Metro-North route. At any rate, commuter service would have been spared a major disruption.

The Democratic nominee for governor, Peter Vallone, blamed the Pataki Administration for the project's delay and the crash. Some news coverage, however, botched the story as a dispute over "track quality" and missed the point about the Oak Point Link.

Politics aside, it seems as though the rail freight units in the region's transportation agencies, with the possible exception of the Giuliani Administration's NYC Economic Development Corp., are not under firm marching orders to get things done. This summer's collapse of the agreement to bring the Staten Island Railroad line back into service in S.I. and Union County NJ is further evidence of rail freight's third class treatment by transportation managers. The Port Authority and NJ DOT now have only 30 days left to put together a deal that will keep Union County from opposing the project outright.

Regarding the Oak Point Link, NYSDOT Commissioner Joe Boardman should personally conduct the remaining negotiations and supervise his agency's progress until trains are actually running on the not-so-new track. NJ Transportation Commissioner John Haley (a Port Authority Commissioner) could also play a big role in saving the Staten Island Railroad and beginning to move the region toward a more balanced and efficient freight system.