|
|
| Opposition to ARC Project Grows (645717) | |||
 |
|||
| Home > SubChat | |||
|
[ Read Responses | Post a New Response | Return to the Index ] |
|
||
|
Opposition to ARC Project Grows |
|
|
Posted by Forest Glen on Mon Jul 7 21:39:30 2008 Apologies if this is a repost. I stumbled upon a newsletter at the Hoboken Terminal. It is by the Lackawanna Coalition, a New Jersey Transit rider's advocacy group.Opposition to ARC Project Grows-Jersey City Mayor, Manhattan Community Boards Voice Their Objections To Current Plan By Joseph M. Clift The mayor of Jersey City, the owners of Newport community on the Hudson waterfront and Manhattan's West Side and Midtown community boards all have added their very clear opposition to NJ Transit's current plan for the Access to the Region's Core (ARC) Project, also known as the Trans-Hudson Express (T.H.E) Tunnel Project. All four stated their opposition in letters to NJT to be included in the legal public comment record of the ARC Supplemental Draft Environmental Statement (SDEIS) issued in March. NJT must respond to all comments in the Final Environmental Impact Statement. Jersey City mayor Jeremiah T. Healy said he believed NJ Transit's proposed routing of the ARC Project-bypassing the Hoboken Terminal-had serious flaws and significant deficiencies. The bypass routing will reduce Hoboken's peak-hour ridership from 36% of New York ridership to 13%, threatening future rail service and jeopardizing development of the Hoboken/Jersey City waterfront served by Hoboken trains, while enhancing the Secaucus Station area in the environmentally sensitive Meadowlands. The mayor requested that NJT examine an alternate route serving a new through station at the location of the existing Hoboken Terminal. Potential savings are $2 billion to $3 billion by making greater use of existing rail infrastructure west of Hoboken, requiring far less construction and eliminating the need to disturb environmentally sensitive wetlands. Marcilia A. Boyle, senior vice president of the Lefrak Organization, owners of Newport, criticized the ARC planning effort. "The failure of NJT to evaluate the Jersey City Hoboken connection [routing] in both the original DEIS and the SDEIS is a serious omission in the planning process for such a major undertaking as the ARC project that could jeopardize this important undertaking and have unintended negative consequences that have not been vetted in the EIS process...The idea that a major public infrastructure project such as ARC which will come along perhaps only once in a century, would ignore the economic growth of the community it passes through is seriously deficient from the points of view of regional planning, smart growth and sound environmental and transportation policy". Boyle described unfair competition with New York City in the ARC project-no ARC goal addressed New Jersey Hudson River waterfront economic growth, while goals did include economic development on Manhattan's West Side, the primary competitor of the New Jersey Hudson River waterfront office market, "The route of the ARC project would heavily invest in enhancing the Manhattan market to the detriment of the Jersey City/Hoboken waterfront". She concluded by citing the benefit of connecting Hoboken to Grand Central Terminal, Westchester County, and Connecticut, and urged NJ Transit to "pause and include a full evualuation of the Jersey City/Hoboken connection [routing] in the EIS process for the ARC project". Manhattan's West Side and Midtown community boards, while expressing support for ARC, clearly stated strong opposition to the current ARC plan. They cited a long list of concerns and problems, including failure to provide track connection to Penn Station, the 175-foot/20- story depth and reduced size-from eight tracks to six-of the proposed 34th Street station, and the failure and apparent inability to mitigate increased pedestrian and traffic congestion in and around West 34th Street caused by the new station. Both boards urged NJT to address the concerns raised and develop a more responsive project plan. Copies of this article are available at the customer service office in Hoboken. I think the people in Jersey City are wrong for trying to prolong the commuters of people from the hinterlands of Jersey for their own selfish reasons. The fact remains that commuter railroads exist to get people from the suburbs to the CBD. Despite their delusions, Jersey City/Newport is not the CBD. The Hudson-Bergen Lightrail provides transportation within Jersey City. There are plenty of high rises being built in the area. ARC will only expedite the commutes of people who merely use Hoboken as a transfer station. This will not stop people from going to the waterfront. |
|
|
|