The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation is launching a $5 million study of Long Island Railroad access to lower Manhattan. The project is heavily billed as "JFK airport access," but the project is largely about building a new tunnel under the East River from the LIRR Flatbush Avenue terminal to the transit hub being planned downtown. The airport connection comes from the soon-to-open JFK Air-Train, linking the airport to LIRR’s Jamaica hub.

But the LIRR Atlantic Avenue branch to Flatbush sees close to 150 trains per day (counting both east- and west-bound trips) even without the Manhattan connection, so it’s doubtful airport travelers would ever make up anything close to a majority of the project’s riders. Moreover, most business travelers flying to NYC land at LaGuardia. International flights predominate at JFK, but it’s unclear yet how many lower Manhattan-destined globe-trotting business flyers the $2-$5 billion plan would serve.

The study is to last until April. It will look primarily at the Brookfield Properties plan to appropriate a subway tunnel to provide the Flatbush-downtown link (dubbed "grand theft subway" by city transit advocates), and at a new tunnel.

A recent LMDC transportation report made much of the importance of suburban commuter access to lower Manhattan, and continued the fixation with LIRR access. But the report could only point to a population growth forecast for Suffolk County to justify the expensive link. Other suburban and NYC areas like the Hudson Valley, Queens and Staten Island saw very strong growth during the 1990s, but the report does not address them. Meanwhile, the Long Island economy is evolving away from its former focus on Manhattan employment ― the last economic upswing saw runaway job growth and labor shortages in Nassau and Suffolk Counties.

A Regional Plan Association analysis of likely trip times on a LIRR-downtown line suggested that time savings for commuters could be small. That’s because many riders would have to switch at Jamaica, and because subway connections from Penn Station bring many downtown commuters closer to their jobs than the direct commuter rail trip would (see MTR #393).

In any event, the study adds to the enormous grab-bag of big, expensive transportation projects New York claims to be planning. A Crain’s overview of planning projects in play in January put the total near $60 billion. The list included the Second Avenue subway and the Grand Central-LIRR link, the two big projects that are formally included in the MTA’s capital program. The NYC Partnership’s Kathryn Wylde told Crain’s, "If we end up with everyone going with a different priority, we will not get very much."

Some have claimed that the various big-ticket items are not in competition, because they can be funded from different revenue sources. Mayor Bloomberg appeared to blow a hole in that argument recently however, saying in a radio interview that the city could do only so much at once, and picking the West Side #7 subway extension as his top project (he discussed it in context with the Second Avenue subway and cross-harbor freight tunnel ― MTR #420).

For New York to enter a federal transportation funding authorization season with a clear big-project priority is nothing new. Since federal law changed in 1991 and opened the door to significant new funding opportunities for mass transit projects, New York has barely begun to expand its mass transit system. New York is still catching up with decades of underinvestment in its huge mass transit system. But its inability to focus on clear expansion priorities, both since 1991 and going forward, is striking nonetheless.

Opposition Growing to LIRR Link Favored by Downtown Business (November 25, 2002)

Mayor Says 7 Train Ext. Will Compete with Other Projects (June 16, 2003)

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