NYC Economic Development Corporation staffers and consultants presented a summary of their assessment of the potential of a Jersey City-Brooklyn rail freight tunnel to an audience of transportation planners, freight industry representatives and elected officials in Newark last week.

A weak point of the planning that has gone into the tunnel project has always been its location in a New York City agency, rather than the bi-state Port Authority. However, the EDC and other backers of the project are reaching out increasingly to New Jersey leaders and interests. The tunnel’s environmental impact statement, which is reported to be nearing release, demonstrates considerable truck savings in New Jersey, because it obviously would divert NYC– and Long Island-destined cargos to trains from trucks that would otherwise cross New Jersey. Tunnel advocates say they have won the support for Congressman Robert Menendez, who represents Hudson County.

The North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority’s freight committee says it will investigate the project thoroughly and make a recommendation to the organization as a whole, but the NJ opinions that matter are those of Governor McGreevey and of the state’s U.S. Senators and Representatives.

At the meeting, the Association of NJ General Contractors announced that it had joined "MOVE NY," a coalition of interest groups that supports the tunnel’s construction. The group needs to change its name to become more accommodating of support from New Jersey.

Questions and comments at the presentation were primarily on points of information. However, a fair degree of concern was expressed about the freight tunnel competing with a new NJ Transit/Amtrak passenger tunnel from NJ to Manhattan — a project that is developing extensive support west of the Hudson.

The one marked note of hostility was sounded by a representative of Jersey City Mayor Glenn Cunningham. He released a letter at the meeting that labels the tunnel study as "nothing more than a bad public relations attempt to justify running 28 to 64, up to one mile long, mainly trash trains a day, seven days a week, through the heart of Jersey City." Cunningham charges that EDC wants to site the western end of the tunnel in Jersey City because NYC officials "do not have the courage to run this 24 hour a day Trash Train through Staten Island." He wrote that the engineering and environmental analysis in the draft environmental impact statement is "at best shoddy and at worst a lie."

The draft EIS for the project is in fact not released yet, though perhaps the Jersey City administration has seen some of it. The letter poses a number of questions the EIS is very likely to answer. As for NYC trash, it is now being driven seven days a week through Jersey City and other NJ municipalities in droves of poorly sealed, crash-prone trucks. However, the EDC says that the tunnel will be economically viable and environmentally beneficial even if trash export is banned from it entirely.

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