Amtrak tunnel closures loom for badly needed repairs on aging Hudson River crossings

Traveling from New Jersey to New York City is about to get even harder.

Amtrak and NJ Transit trains travel through the current tunnels running between New Jersey and New York's Penn Station.

The salty floodwaters of Superstorm Sandy caused so much damage to two train tunnels under the Hudson River that they must be closed for additional hours every week, which will mean fewer trains and longer waits for commuters, officials said. Already, the tunnels are closed for large portions of the weekends for repairs. Now, those closures will extend into the week.

And that work is just a stopgap because the 104-year-old tunnels will continue to deteriorate, said Stephen J. Gardner, an Amtrak spokesman. Eventually the tunnels must be closed for about a year apiece and completely rebuilt. That could come to pass within the next 20 years, officials have said.

Before that happens, Amtrak’s leaders hope to build two additional new tunnels capable of handling existing traffic. But those will cost in excess of $10 billion, and likely much more. New tunnels were being built, but the project was scrapped in October 2010 by Governor Christie, who cited potential cost overruns that would have to be borne by New Jersey taxpayers.

If the old tunnels close before new ones are constructed, the region’s transportation network could be crippled, said Anthony R. Coscia, chairman of Amtrak’s board of directors.

“We’ve got to get new tunnels built as soon as we can,” Gardner said.

The size and complexity of the problem, made clear for the first time Wednesday in a report by the agency, took even longtime experts in regional transportation by surprise.

Read the New York City Tunnels Assessment Report here

“Wow. That is sobering,” said Martin E. Robins, the former deputy executive director of NJ Transit and founding director of the Alan M. Vorhees Transportation Center at Rutgers. “There’s plenty of suffering we’ll have to bear as a result of these findings.”

NJ Transit officials said the region’s transportation agency will have to work together to make the commute bearable.

“It does appear that there will be significant impacts” to NJ Transit passengers, said Nancy Snyder, a spokeswoman for NJ Transit. “NJ Transit, Amtrak and MTA all recognize we need to work collaboratively to reduce the impact.”

‘Shortsighted decision’

The report puts into stark relief Christie’s decision to cancel a project to build two new cross-Hudson River tunnels called Access to the Region’s Core (ARC). At the time, Christie said he was concerned the project might have large cost overruns that New Jersey would be forced to pay. The Government Accountability Office, the non-partisan research arm of Congress, found that the project’s projected cost of $10 billion was accurate, and that Christie had exaggerated the potential overruns.

Money earmarked for the tunnels was diverted to other transportation projects in the state, including rebuilding the Pulaski Skyway.

“Governor Christie has always recognized the need for additional trans-Hudson transit capacity,” said Kevin Roberts, a spokesman for the governor. “The governor is open to a plan that is well-engineered but also fair and equitable to New Jersey — with costs shared between all benefiting jurisdictions, including New York State, New York City and the federal government.”

Robins, who led the planning process for ARC in the late 1990s as an executive at NJ Transit, said whatever tunnel plan is eventually agreed to by Amtrak, federal and state leaders, it inevitably will cost more money than ARC, which was scheduled for completion in 2018.

“It was a shortsighted decision,” Robins said of Christie’s action, “and now we’re reaping what we sowed.”

Democrats seized on the dire predictions to lambaste Christie’s 4-year-old decision. Republicans defended it as a prudent fiscal move.

“The work on the ARC tunnel that had been done painstakingly over a decade was irresponsibly thrown out by the governor,” said state Assemblyman John S. Wisniewski, a Democrat from Sayreville who heads a state transportation committee.

Republican Assemblyman Scott Rumana of Wayne, also on the transportation committee, said the cancellation of the tunnel was “the right fiscal decision.”

“Was it the right decision from a transportation standpoint? I don’t know, but fiscally, it would not have been appropriate for the state to assume billions of dollars of risks,” Rumana said.

But the two sides found common ground when it came to delays caused by extended closures.

“It’s definitely a concern, there’s no question about it,” Rumana said. “Clearly, if we’re going to have backup on the rails, it’s going to force more people into cars that clog our highways, and we know that our highways already need work.”

Rumana said the federal government should largely fund and manage a new tunnel project, which would have importance to the region, not just New Jersey.

“New Jersey’s economy is dependent on a reliable mass transit system, and it’s past time we found a long-term solution to this problem,” said Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., D-Paterson.

Source: North Jersey.com