Scoping hearings were held last week for the project known as "Access to the Region’s Core" (ARC), which would build a second New Jersey-Manhattan passenger rail tunnel under the Hudson. Those at the hearing agreed the project is badly needed, but questioned options that would end the new line at NY’s Penn Station.

The project will accommodate projected growth in travel between west-of-Hudson communities and midtown Manhattan. Since 1980, the number of trips into New York’s central business district from the west has grown by 64 percent while growth from all other directions has been only 25 percent. As a result, NJ Transit and Amtrak service is at capacity — no more peak-period trains can fit into the Hudson tunnel that feeds Penn Station. Recent NJ Transit projects – such as the Kearny and Montclair connection and Secaucus Junction – are bringing even more new riders into New York Penn Station, which already serves 310,000 passengers daily. NJ Transit is struggling to accommodate its ridership and forecasts volumes that will exceed capacity by as much as 5,000 riders per day in 2009. Other trans-Hudson transit facilities, like the Lincoln Tunnel exclusive bus lane, are also at or near their full capacity.

Though the project has been extensively discussed in New Jersey, it is something New York needs to pay more attention to. If Manhattan is hard to reach from New Jersey, increasing numbers of new jobs are likely to locate in Jersey City or the suburbs.

Currently, two options for a new tunnel have been advanced for study in an environmental impact statement. Both contain serious inadequacies. Alternative "P," which puts a new station directly underneath existing levels of Penn Station, would force riders to fight their way through crowds and narrow stairwells to the streets. Alternative "S" includes a costly two-track tunnel under the East River just to park trains at the Sunnyside Yard in Queens.

Neither option provides access to Manhattan’s east side, which hosts more jobs than the Penn Station area. Seventy percent of midtown jobs are within a 20-minute walk from Grand Central Terminal, versus 30 percent within a 20-minute walk from Penn Station. An earlier option to extend NJ Transit tracks to Grand Central Terminal was abandoned after resistance by the MTA.

At Wednesday’s hearing in New York City, attendees uniformly supported a second Hudson rail tunnel, but questioned the wisdom of terminating it at Penn Station. A loop alternative, providing access to both the east and west sides of Midtown, was presented by the Regional Plan Association’s Jeffrey Zupan. A new passenger rail tunnel would enter Manhattan under 34th Street, continuing east of the Penn Station area in a loop that would serve virtually all of Midtown, including stops just west of Grand Central and at Rockefeller Center. Although additional stations would add expense to the project, the loop costs no more than alternative S, with its heavy costs to reach the storage yard in Queens. Without a doubt, some think a tunnel arriving at a Manhattan "beach-head" near Penn Station is a necessary compromise for moving the project forward. The agencies should consider the trouble they will face finding additional funds later once the Hudson tunnel component is finished. Considering the project will likely cost over $3 billion to build, they should try to get it right the first time around. The RPA loop concept deserves full scrutiny in the environmental impact statement.

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