Last Thursday, the Port Authority board of directors approved the creation of a $50 million fund for new freight rail projects in New York and New Jersey. Each state garners $25 million to be spent on projects to be determined by state transportation and economic development agencies. Projects funded could include increasing clearance on the Bay Ridge Line in Brooklyn, improvements to the Harlem River Yard intermodal terminal in the Bronx, the construction of the Waverly Loop track to bypass a low clearance tunnel in Jersey City, and the expansion of the Oak Island Yard in Newark.

At the same meeting, the Port Authority board authorized the agency to pursue deepening the Kill Van Kull, the Arthur Kill and five other channels to 50 feet directly, leapfrogging plans to dredge to intermediate depths of 41 and 45 feet. The more aggressive schedule will allow the industry's largest ships - with capacity for 6,000 containers each - to begin utilizing NY Harbor seven years earlier, by 2009. The Port Authority estimates that accelerated dredging would reduce the $3.1 billion price tag for channel deepening by at least $800 million. Simultaneously, the board created a second fund with $60 million for the purchase and preservation of lands important to the ecological health of the harbor estuary. Port Authority officials told the NY Times they hoped the habitat and rail freight funds would temper opposition to the dredging plan.

The accelerated dredging schedule will speed the quadrupling of container traffic expected at the port within the next two decades. For transportation reformers and the region's communities, this adds even greater urgency to the need for significant investments in rail freight. Because 88% of all goods entering and leaving New York Harbor ports come and go by heavy truck, this level of port expansion stands to add tens of thousands of trucks to already clogged metro area roads.

Including the $50 million fund, the Port Authority's $1.8 billion port capital expansion budget designates a welcome $234 million for investments in rail freight that will expand and relocate Elizabeth Port's ExpressRail, build an intermodal terminal at Howland Hookand a rail cloverleaf that will link the reactivated Staten Island Railroad and the Chemical Coast Line, among other projects (MTR #324). 

However, regional rail needs dwarf these funds, and until the Port Authority and other agencies invest enough in rail and barge capacity to begin to balance the port access and egress picture, NY/NJ will remain North America's most truck-dependent major port.

Experts estimate that the additional track capacity, yard space, and clearance improvements on both sides of the Hudson needed to improve freight efficiency enough to significantly reduce truck dependence stands at $1 billion. A cross Harbor rail freight tunnel that models suggest will remove approximately 1 million trucks from regional roads annually is projected to cost at least $2 billion.

NJ Port Facilities Grows, Facilities Expand

PA, Elizabeth, Union County Resolve Dispute; Major Hurdle Crossed for NY-NJ Freight Rail
- July 2, 2001

Big Ships, Deep Water - July 24, 1998

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