Three of the four options presented last week by Governor Pataki and the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. would displace subway trains from existing tunnels in order to create a Long Island Rail Road connection downtown.

This emphasis is likely to set up a bruising fight over the project, which has little support except among downtown business groups and the political leaders they have enlisted.

One alternative would use the A-C Cranberry Street subway tunnel, pushing C trains to the F-train Rutgers Street tunnel (and thus preventing C riders from reaching stations in lower Manhattan). Another would run LIRR trains through the M/N/R train Montague St. tunnel, displacing other subway trips through lower Manhattan (though the N-train will soon be re-routed over the Manhattan Bridge). A third would take both subway tunnels, one for JFK Airport service and one for LIRR trains.

The fourth would not disrupt subway configurations, but would require a new tunnel between Brooklyn and Manhattan, costing billions.

Even without the problem of removing subway capacity, there are big, basic feasibility and fairness questions the project will have to face. First, the JFK-downtown market is likely to be quite small, and the downtown LIRR market is dubious at best. The Regional Plan Association has already made the case (MTR #393) that such a link will provide little time-savings for Long Islanders working downtown, and that the Second Avenue subway is a far more important investment for lower Manhattan. Second, the MTA is preparing to invest billions in a Long Island Rail Road link to Grand Central Terminal. Of all the big transit needs facing the region, are two Long Island rail links at the top of the list? The Long Island Rail Road has never identified a downtown link as a need, and the Long Island business community says it has a half-dozen big priorities it would place ahead of this project.

One of the major developments on the issue last week was a statement by MTA Chair Peter Kalikow to reporters that the MTA is prepared to make a "significant contribution" to the project in the agency’s 2005-2009 capital program. Kalikow had previously distanced the MTA from the project (see MTR #369). It’s hard to imagine how the MTA will put serious resources into such an initiative at a time when both its capital and operating budgets are under such pressure that additional fare increases are on the table, when Governor Pataki continues to fight any suggestion of new state revenue and when the federal government is gridlocked over transportation funding.

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