Supporters of the proposed Monmouth-Ocean-Middlesex (MOM) commuter rail line, including county officials, business leaders and environmental groups rallied in Lakewood last week. They called on NJ Transit to finish off its environmental review and decide which of two main routes it supports.

Train service to these fast growing counties may work, especially if municipalities along the line enact appropriate zoning and develop reasonably dense transit villages around stations. However, the present funding and planning context for building new rail lines in New Jersey is a tough one. For MOM service to work, several larger things need to happen:

• Transportation Trust Fund renewal ― because New Jersey has borrowed against all of its existing transportation revenue, future transportation projects, from road repair to new train capacity, will have to be paid for with new taxes, fees or tolls. MOM may be in a very long queue for scarce construction funds.

• More mass transit operating funds ― NJ Transit has added a lot of new service since the mid-1990s but state appropriations to help pay for it have lagged. Governor McGreevey’s budget this year increased the appropriation but it was barely enough to turn the corner on this problem. NJ Transit continues to pay for operations from its capital budget, depriving rail and bus system of resources needed to keep vehicles and infrastructure in decent shape. Transit operating funding needs to be addressed in Trenton more comprehensively. Otherwise, MOM operations would add to this problem.

• Penn Station and trans-Hudson capacity — Proposed MOM alignments would terminate trains in northern NJ, with NY-bound passengers transferring in Newark. But even if additional trains are not physically driven into Penn Station, the ridership increase raises capacity issues for NJT’s NYC-bound service, and for Penn Station’s platforms. Penn Station and its NJ tunnels will be fully at capacity within a few years. If MOM ridership is significant, it may well depend on construction of new trans-Hudson tunnel capacity for NJ Transit. Fortunately, that project is in the works but funding it will be a major challenge (MTR #387). 

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