Op Eds from 2004 NY Times and 2013 Crain's NY
So many years have past since my first OpEd in the NY Times on October 3, 2004 calling for a new unified vision for commuter rail around 2nd Avenue.
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The Long Island Rail Road (another subsidiary of the authority) has its $6.3 billion East Side Access project that will carry Long Islanders to Grand Central Terminal. New Jersey Transit has proposed a $4.5 billion expansion project connecting New Jersey, New York's Pennsylvania Station and Grand Central. And President Bush has offered $2 billion to help the Port Authority extend the John F. Kennedy International Airport's AirTrain to encourage business in Lower Manhattan.
Meanwhile, New York City Transit is spending about $3.5 billion for the first segment -- East 63rd Street to East 96th Street -- of the Second Avenue subway project, which would ease congestion on the Lexington Avenue line and make mass transit more convenient for people living along the East River. The full-length Second Avenue subway from 125th Street to Lower Manhattan is expected to cost about $16 billion.
If the planning and some of the money from all these projects were put into one Second Avenue pot, we could satisfy the goals of each at much less cost. This is possible by linking the Second Avenue tunnel to Metro-North at 125th Street, to Long Island Rail Road at 63rd Street and to Amtrak and New Jersey Transit at 31st Street.
The key would be running regional rail trains under Second Avenue instead of subway trains. That would eliminate the need for Long Island Rail Road and New Jersey Transit to build multibillion-dollar terminals at Grand Central and the need for the Port Authority to extend the AirTrain to Lower Manhattan.
Under a seamless Second Avenue plan, people could catch a commuter train from Second Avenue to the Bronx, Queens, Westchester, Connecticut, New Jersey, Boston or Washington. Or they could simply use the line as an extension of the existing subway system. While such a system may seem like an obvious goal, there is no agency or federal law that encourages the kind of design that our Interstate highways have become. Our rail operators don't focus on sharing their resources or planning for needs outside their own operations.For example, New York City Transit did not have the mission to consider expansion outside the realm of subway trains or buses when it prepared the environmental impact statement for the Second Avenue subway. It studied many options to relieve congestion on the Lexington Avenue line but it never considered using commuter rail.
Today, we are facing similar problems to those that the private and public subway and bus companies faced early in the last century. They could not afford to maintain and expand service without mingling their resources. As a result, New York City Transit took over operations of many private bus and subway companies, providing an integrated system within the city.
Similarly, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has made moves toward an integrated regional system by using MetroCards to link bus and subway service and, more recently, forming the Capital Construction Company, whose goal is to create transportation hubs and increase mass-transit service in the New York City area. It can take the next step by making the Second Avenue subway a regional transportation hub, with the MetroCard becoming the E-ZPass of not just subways and buses, but also commuter trains.
The authority has already committed billions to the Second Avenue and East Side Access projects. If we combined these goals with the AirTrain and New Jersey Transit, we have the potential to get the Second Avenue line into Lower Manhattan sooner and get people where they want to go -- within the city and throughout the region.
The City Robert W. Previdi is a former spokesman and operations planner for New York City Transit.
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Here is another OpEd from Crains NY in 2013:
Penn Station is by far the busiest transportation facility in the nation. It moves 500,000 passengers per day, twice as many as the world's busiest airport, Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International. Still, there is a need to increase mass-transit capacity into Penn Station, which is why Amtrak has been looking to build a dual-track train tunnel under the Hudson River.
Unfortunately, finding the $15 billion or so for Amtrak's Gateway project has proved difficult. But there is a way to spend roughly half as much while still doubling rush-hour train traffic. It involves taking a regional approach in how we use Penn Station.
Today, many Long Island Rail Road and NJ Transit trains terminate at Penn Station by discharging their passengers, loading more passengers and heading back in the direction they came from. This causes too many at-grade movements (where trains cut across each other's path) within the station. It slows everything down, limiting service and inconveniencing pass-through passengers.If trains simply kept going in the direction they came from—with NJ Transit trains continuing to Long Island and LIRR trains along New Jersey routes—we could streamline operations and expand the number of destinations each railroad serves.
For example, NJ Transit customers could reach JFK airport, Citi Field and the U.S. Open tennis tournament, while Long Islanders would be able to reach Newark Liberty airport, MetLife Stadium and the Prudential Center.Achieving this would require changing equipment and updating operating procedures, but this concept is not new or radical. It's been done in the U.S. and around the globe, including in London and Paris. Heck, even Philadelphia did it: Way back in 1984, the old Reading Terminal and Suburban Station were combined into the Center City Commuter Tunnel.New York City should not be three decades behind Philadelphia. Adopting this approach for Penn Station would take advantage of the LIRR West Side Yard's proximity to the station, allowing us to meet capacity goals with a new single-track tunnel at half the cost of Gateway.Amazingly, nobody has ever seriously demanded that the railroads (Amtrak, NJT or LIRR) rethink how they use Penn Station in a way that would reduce the capital expense of doubling Hudson River capacity.
If we are concerned about what we can afford—and how we can leave some funds to fix the existing station—then New York's and New Jersey's elected officials should insist that the agencies find a way to make better use of the existing track, tunnels and yards that support Penn Station.On a recent visit to Germany, I took an Intercity-Express train to Frankfurt from Mannheim. My return trip, while booked on ICE, was actually a French TGV train headed for Paris. If trains can operate this way between France and Germany, surely we can commingle NJT and LIRR service across the Hudson to save $7 billion.
Maybe Madison Square Garden will move someday; maybe it won't. No matter what we decide, we need to expand capacity for trains under the Hudson as well as fix the way Penn Station greets travelers, and do so in a way that makes sense financially for taxpayers and the riding public.
Bob Previdi is a career public transportation professional.
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