High expectations are held all along the 11 miles of proposed light rail transportation by residents, commuters, business owners and elected officials as they hope to see the extension of the New Jersey Transit Hudson Bergen Light Rail finally enter Bergen County and reach the Englewood Hospital Medical Center.
All anticipate an economic boom to the area as they peer across the county border to see the industry and increased tax base brought to the light rail line in Hudson County.
However, according to the Northern Branch Corridor Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) prepared by NJ Transit, which was submitted in 2011 and updated on 2012, “The source of funding for construction and annual operating and maintenance costs has not been identified at this time.”
The situation has not changed according to William J. Smith, Senior Public Information Officer for NJ Transit. He told JLNJ “NJ Transit submitted the Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement evaluating impacts associated with terminating the line in Englewood to the FTA (Federal Transportation Administration) on December 1st (2014). We are currently awaiting their response and will thereafter hold public hearings and comment. Funding for the project—which is currently projected at approximately $1B—has yet to be identified.”
In fact it’s so vague that Steven Taubenkibel, Public Affairs Specialist for the FTA told JLNJ, “The FTA has not received an application from New Jersey Transit for the Northern Branch of the Hudson-Bergen LRT project to enter FTA’s Capital Investment Grant (CIG) program. To date, we have provided approximately $2 million in FTA funding to support the development of an EIS for the project. We anticipate completing the environmental review process with New Jersey Transit this summer.”
However, from this step to get funding could take years. Taubenkibel said, “The CIG program is a highly competitive grant program. Projects accepted into the program must go through a multi-year, multi-step process according to requirements set forth in law in order to be eligible for and receive program funds. This includes undergoing an evaluation and rating by FTA on specific criteria set forth in law. Once accepted into the program, projects must complete planning, engineering and design phases, complete the federal environmental review process, gain funding commitments from their state/local sources, obtain at least a medium overall rating from FTA, and meet other readiness requirements before construction funding can be awarded.”
Janna Chernetz, New Jersey Advocate for the Tri-State Transportation Campaign told JLNJ the farebox revenues ($2.10 for a single ride and $64 for a monthly pass) will not cover more than about 40% of the cost of operating the line. “The cost of operations will be about $15.6 million a year and require $9.9 million in annual state subsidies.”
That is a sticking point said Chernetz. New Jersey’s got a myriad of budget problems including taking from one fund to feed another leaving State funding for NJ Transit lacking. “What the N.J. Transportation Trust Fund has been doing for the past five years is they’re taking money from their capital budget and they’re transferring it over to operations. We’re talking a couple of hundred million. That comes to $2 billion which they’ll have to transfer into the capital budget in order to make up the costs of projects that could have been funded. This light rail could have had a funding source,” if so much wasn’t removed.
But a lack of State funding isn’t the only problem. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation website, as of the end of fiscal year 2014 the Mass Transit Account has less than $1 billion in its coffers and could be bankrupt before summer. The Federal Highway Trust Fund, which funds transit projects, is also going bankrupt by the summer.
Also hanging on by life support is the N.J. Transportation Trust Fund which is $14.8 billion in debt and will be bankrupt by the summer. This last means that New Jersey most likely will not be able to come up with the matching funds it needs, $1.6 million to get federal funding for all proposed projects. The money isn’t there and isn’t likely to be because of political infighting on the gas tax which has not been raised since 1988, the second lowest in the United States and the source that feeds the fund. It will take a gas tax increase to 31 cents to raise the $1.6 million but surveys show that two thirds of the taxpayers are against it.
It’s been 16 years since the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail first came online and was originally envisioned to extend from the tip of Bayonne in Hudson County, through Hudson and Bergen counties along a little – used CSX freight line up to Tenafly where the old historic train station stands. It was then that Congressman Robert Menendez was instrumental in getting the federal funding to start that line. Construction was started but the line terminated in North Bergen and stopped for 15 years.
U.S. Senator Menendez’s office told JLNJ “There were obstacles, funding was an issue, politics was an issue. There were many towns at the time that didn’t want it in their community and fought against it and so it never reached Bergen County.”
Asked what is different now, JLNJ was told that now all mayors in the communities along the line where there would be stops have agreed and are supportive of the line. NJ Transit is supportive of the line and so is CSX. “Everyone who needs to be on board is on board with the exception of Tenafly.”
The stop short of Tenafly, which became the new end of the line is Englewood whose mayor Frank Huttle III along with Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop chairs the Mayors Hudson-Bergen Light Rail Commission, made up of 12 mayors representing all the municipalities through which the light rail will travel. Huttle said this commission was instrumental in steering the politics to what he felt was not only good for Englewood but good for the state and the country.
“Investments have to be made and prioritization has to be made. This light rail will create a major improvement to our entire economy,” he told JLNJ.
He said it will give the region better access to jobs and a better quality of life, by shortening the ride to those goals.
“New Jersey has to address these hard decisions but they will be addressed and I’m confident that that will occur.”
Asked why they are supporting this project when there is no funding he said that now is the time to deal with funding. “Light rail doesn’t come and doesn’t get funded by the FTA without the FTA seeing support. We have delivered that support.”
He said now they have legislative support, we have state support and they have federal support.
That support was shown on March 13 when at the invitation of Huttle and the mayors, federal, state and local elected officials were out in force in Englewood to call on Congress to provide infrastructure funding for the light rail line.
U.S. Senators Menendez and Cory Booker were joined by representatives of every voting district on the proposed line; Congressmen Bill Pacscrell (N.J.- 08), Albio Sires (N.J.-08), Donald Payne, Jr. (N.J.-10), State Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto, State Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg, State Assembly people Gordon Johnson and Valerie Huttle, Hudson County Executive Thomas DeGise, members of the Bergen County Board of Chosen Freeholders and labor leaders.
Menendez, who is the senior Democratic Senator on the transit subcommittee, oversees the New-Starts program, which provides federal funding for new transit systems and told those gathered, “Right now, New Jersey has zero projects in the New-Starts pipeline. It’s time to change that.”
He said that the program gets $2 billion in grants from the federal government every year. “We need to make tough decisions about how to fund a long-term transportation bill in Washington, and to resolve our problems here at home, if we want to make projects like the Hudson Bergen light rail extensions a reality.” One quarter of that New-Starts money would be needed just for this one project while 49 other states are clamoring for funds to improve their own transportation issues.
Menendez’s office told JLNJ that he is making a strong push in the Senate to get a share of that money for New Jersey Transit. He’s also pushing on the Congressional side to get a minimum five-year robust funding package for highway transit and infrastructure projects (including the light rail). New Jersey has also been clamoring for a new Hudson River rail tunnel.
Menendez’s office told JLNJ that “what Congress has done is continually kick the can down the road,” with short-term extensions. “What the senator has argued is that these projects are going to take longer than a month, six months or a year. If you’re going to break ground on a project that is going to take years to complete, those who are putting together and devising this project need to have assurances that the money will be there to complete those projects once they start them.”
The Northern Branch service would operate primarily on existing railroad right-of-way owned by the New York, Susquehanna & Western (NYS&W) in North Bergen and CSX Transportation (CSX) between North Bergen and Englewood and would introduce new station stops in North Bergen, Ridgefield, Palisades Park, Leonia, and Englewood Hospital. CSX will still use the line to move freight as well.
“It will relieve traffic, it will take thousands of cars off the road in an already congested area,” said Chernetz of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. “The development around transit is very lucrative,” and desirable as according to the DOT less than 50% of the U.S. population has direct access to transportation. “Younger people don’t want to need cars to get to their jobs and they can do that living in a transit oriented development. We see it as nothing but a pro.”
Chernetz said with the trip taking 33 minutes to get from Englewood to Hoboken, it’s expected that there will be about 21,300 daily trips on the line by the year 2030 according to NJ Transit’s projections.
By Anne Phyllis Pinzow
