Editorial: Build the NY/NJ rail tunnel
Written by jrood
(The following editorial appeared in the Newark, N.J., Star-Ledger Sept. 16, 2010.) If Gov. Chris Christie abandons the Hudson rail tunnel project, it will make his administration's $400-million blunder over Race to the Top seem like only a warm-up exercise. The federal government has already agreed to devote $3 billion to the project, the largest dedication of federal support for mass transit ever.
That’s because it is widely
recognized as vital to the region’s economy. The number of people riding trains
to New York has increased four-fold in the last few decades, carrying a work
force that brings $50 billion a year in income to New Jersey. But there is no
room for expansion. This project would make room for twice as many trains. It
would create 6,000 good construction jobs. It would remove 22,000 cars from the
road each day, reducing the region’s chief cause of air pollution. It will
yield huge benefits for decades to come.
Our fear is that the 30-day
pause in tunnel work ordered by the governor is not just a prudent check
against cost overruns, but a trial balloon to test the reaction to killing the
project. He has incentive to do that, since he might be able to grab some of
the money set aside for the tunnel and use it instead to restore the nearly
bankrupt Transportation Trust Fund. That would be a serious mistake, and a
casualty of the governor’s rigid opposition to a modest increase in the state’s
gas tax, one of the nation’s lowest.
Is the governor’s
opposition to any tax hike so powerful that he would leave $3 billion in
federal money on the table? Does he have another idea for restoring the Trust
Fund?
The governor ordered this
freeze after federal officials warned that the tunnel could cost $1 billion
more than the $8.7 billion estimate. And maybe that’s the only reason for this
pause. But the governor brought politics into this with his absurd charge that
former Gov. Jon Corzine deliberately low-balled the cost so he could hastily
move the project forward. It "was clearly a rush by the Corzine administration
to have gold shovels and put them in the ground and try to get Corzine
re-elected," he said.
Really? As it turns out,
the $8.7-billion estimate was a collaboration of the Corzine and Bush
administrations when Jim Simpson was head of the Federal Transit
Administration. He is now Christie’s commissioner of the Department of
Transportation. Was he in on the conspiracy, too? The governor needs to find a
way to get this project done. Throwing stones at Corzine is not the leadership
we need. It’s a cop out.
