NJ Transit Does It Again

I've railed on about the Secaucus boondoggle for years now. That white elephant cost taxpayers and commuters hundreds of millions more than originally estimated because NJ Transit had to build a gold plated facility that is severely underutilized.

Now, we learn that NJ Transit spur line to the new Giants Stadium/Xanadu complex is costing far more than it should have, and that had NJ Transit opted for a different route it could not only have saved millions of dollars, but it would have avoided purchasing land that is part of a Superfund site.

But that did not stop the state from making the site the cornerstone of a $182 million project to bring rail service to Giants Stadium, Xanadu and the rest of the Meadowlands Sports Complex.

A review of the rail project shows that the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority in December 2006 spent $6.2 million to buy 56 acres of the site from its current owner, Honeywell International.

At about $108,000 an acre, that's roughly five times the price the state charged a private developer for 785 acres of contaminated land at the nearby EnCap Golf project site.

Six alternative routes considered for the rail line, built as a spur off NJ Transit's Pascack Valley Line, would have allowed the state to buy much less land — only about 3 acres — and avoid Superfund-style contamination.

Additionally, all of the competing rail alternatives would have been built off the much more widely used Bergen Line, which also would have served Pascack Valley riders.

The state says the Honeywell option, with its proximity to the Pascack Valley Line, was the most cost-effective and useful for New Jersey mass-transit users. They also note that their deal with Honeywell makes the Morristown-based conglomerate solely responsible for the costs of the cleanup.

Someone was profiting from that choice, despite the fact that it makes little sense for the trains to operate from the Pascack Valley line and not the Bergen line.

The link project was originally supposed to cost $150 million. Its current cost is $182 million, and growing. Here are the alternatives.

Even as the project was being debated in 2005, there were questions over how and why this particular right of way was chosen.

This is the way NJ Transit does business. They are not fiscally responsible, and despite their claims that the route chosen was the best and most cost effective choice and that alternative routes might have not been cost effective for obtaining easements and/or necessitated construction of elevated rail lines, the cost for obtaining the easements is significantly higher than it should have been. Why did the state pay far more for the Honeywell land purchases, than private developers received for the Encap deal? That raises questions about both deals; namely that the developer in Encap got a sweetheart deal and/or NJ Transit got gouged in the Honeywell deal.

UPDATE:
EnCap has declared bankruptcy after failing to reorganize. It also means a boon to lawyers:

The end of the bankruptcy case, EnCap attorneys have warned, could lead to years of expensive and time-consuming litigation among more than a dozen entities, with at least 200 unsecured creditors now left to look to parties other than EnCap for compensation.

The hearing began with attorneys for the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission and insurance giant AIG telling Winfield that negotiations had broken down over a disputed $148 million insurance policy to finish cleanup of the landfills at the EnCap site. That led the commission for the first time to side with Wachovia Bank — which wants to foreclosure on the property — in asking the judge to dismiss the case.