Rockland and Orange counties”™ commuters have long suffered the transportation constraints of getting from the western side of the Hudson River to regions east of the waterway. But plans are underway to make those commutes easier both above and below the river.
The construction of the new Tappan Zee Bridge is rife with possibilities for alternative transit options and plans have resurfaced to improve and expand the train tunnels under the Hudson River into Manhattan, but both come with heavy costs.
Most recently, Amtrak”™s eight-pronged, multistate Gateway Program has been developed to make much-needed repairs and congestion-relieving expansions to sections of the Northeast Corridor train system in New Jersey and New York.
U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer has vowed to fight for a section of the program that would ensure the familiarly known “one-seat ride” from Rockland and Orange counties to New York City gets implemented.
New Jersey Transit and Metro-North Railroad trains from those counties require passengers to transfer at Secaucus or Hoboken in order to reach New York City, which adds significant time to an already lengthy commute.
One part of the Gateway Program is designed to create a direct line to the city from the Orange and Rockland county lines. This innovation is an $800 million track installation called the Secaucus Loop. This track would circle the Secaucus transfer hub and prevent the need to transfer trains to or from Penn Station.
“If you could get on the train here in Middletown right into Manhattan; get on a train in Rockland County and right into Manhattan ”“ that is huge. That would probably raise property values,” Schumer said earlier this month at a press conference in Orange County.
But Amtrak”™s project, which has been estimated to cost more than $20 billion, has become something of political football for officials in all levels of government.
Govs. Andrew Cuomo and Chris Christie, respectively of New York and New Jersey, and U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx have spent the last few weeks pointing fingers about who is going to cover the brunt of the cost.
Farther north at the Tappan Zee Bridge, a 31-member mass transit task force issued a report in February 2014 with the consensus that a form of bus rapid transit (BRT) should run over the new bridge, which is being built to support additional transit infrastructure.
The plan outlines seven bus lines with BRT characteristics ”” such as dedicated lanes and traffic-signal priority to prevent frequent red light stops ”” that would make transit connections throughout and between Rockland and Westchester counties as well as a northern section of the Bronx.
The project, which is being overseen by the state Department of Transportation, would improve existing bus lines and add BRT at a cost of roughly $160 million. Five of the seven proposed BRT lines are estimated to cost less than $20 million each to implement, and the remaining two ”” a line from White Plains to the Bronx and the other from Suffern to White Plains ”” would run more than $40 million each.
The task force”™s combined recommendations with BRT and other bus improvements, additional planning studies and upgrades to the White Plains Metro-North train station as part of a plan to make it a transportation hub could end up totaling $402 million.
The additional transit expenditures would be on top of the nearly $4 billion price tag attached to the construction of the new Tappan Zee Bridge that is about half paid for in loans and settlement funds, according to previous Business Journal reports, and is expected to be completely open in 2018.
In June, the task force provided an update on the project in which the group presented funding ideas being considered, most of which heavily rely on finding reimbursable federal loans as well as state funding.
So far, $91 million has been committed to phase one of the project to replace the Suffern to White Plains route of the existing Tappan Zee Express to a BRT system.
Despite the financial burden, Marsha Gordon, CEO and president of The Business Council of Westchester and a member of the mass transit task force, is confident that BRT will be available the day the bridge opens.
“While Senator Schumer”™s vision is probably more of a long-term vision,” she said, referring to Amtrak”™s Gateway Program. “We do have an immediate plan to enhance mobility in the Hudson Valley” centered on the BRT system.
“It”™s more financially feasible and the plans are in place as we speak and are moving forward,” she said. “The day (the Tappan Zee Bridge) opens there will be BRT on that bridge.”
Al Samuels, president and CEO of the Rockland Business Association, said he sees the benefit of major infrastructure projects for employing people in the county, but would like to see more initiative to bring people into Rockland, rather than drive them out.
“Projects of this nature always provide for jobs and that”™s a good thing,” he said. “I wouldn”™t fight the proposal that”™s out there now about the rail, but I would fight for what I think is very much needed by the businesses of Rockland and Orange County, which is the workforce of the city.”
March Gallagher, the chief strategy officer for the Newburgh-based nonprofit Hudson Valley Pattern for Progress, said that while a one-seat ride to New York City is great for commuters, the BRT seems more feasible.
The Tappan Zee is “critical infrastructure that has to be maintained,” she said, while the Gateway Program is “really a cost-benefit question that the policymakers haven”™t fully vetted yet. The real question is: What is the cost of it and can we continue to maintain the systems that we”™ve got?”
