Breaking Ground On ARC Tunnel

Groundbreaking is set for today on the $8.7 billion parallel tunnels into Manhattan from New Jersey, expanding train service along the Northeast Corridor and NJ Transit.

Is it going to be a boondoggle or a boon? Well, it's going to depend on who you talk to and how they report where this new tunnel is going to terminate in Manhattan. The Star Ledger is reporting as though the tunnels will link back to the Northeast Corridor, despite noting last month that they wouldn't.

Let's consider the following:

Well, it looks like New Jersey Transit is getting its link, but Amtrak is about to be screwed, even after nearly $8.9 billion is expected to be spent on the new tunnel.

The reason that Amtrak is about to find itself without additional track traffic? NJ Transit claims that they can't build the tunnel to link with NY Penn Station because of soil conditions that would add additional cost. Never mind that it would cost billions more to build additional Amtrak tracks years down the road, but the whole point of the track construction was to improve the service on both Amtrak and NJ Transit.

Also, if you look at the maps provided, you'll see that the NJ Transit project includes single-seat rides into Manhattan from the Bergen/Main/Pascack Valley lines, which currently stop at Secaucus Transfer. The stop at Secaucus Transfer would not be required if those trains now are able to go directly into Manhattan. That's $850 million spent on Secaucus that was an expense that cost taxpayers and commuters plenty.

Even more troubling to some, NJ Transit and the Port Authority eliminated a connection to the existing Penn Station. Passengers can walk along the sprawling underground concourse to get there, but trains using the new tunnels won't be able to pull alongside the station's platforms or continue on to Connecticut and Boston.

As a result, Amtrak will be relegated to the old tubes, and NJ Transit will continue to use them even when the new tunnels are open. In a testy letter to the ARC project director last April, former Amtrak president Alex Kummant complained the expensive initiative was now for the "sole benefit" of NJ Transit.

What's more, he said, the decision to drop the Penn Station connection could require the construction of yet another rail tunnel to help Amtrak meet its expected growth in ridership.

Amtrak's current president, Joseph H. Boardman, declined to comment for this story, but as chief of the Federal Railroad Administration last year, he echoed Kummant's concerns in a letter to the head of the Federal Transit Administration, which had final say on the ARC project.

"Given the complexity and cost of such an undertaking, we must make sure that the project delivers every ounce of capacity and flexibility that is reasonably possible," Boardman wrote. "Unfortunately, I do not believe NJT's plans achieve this goal."

A coalition of passenger groups continues to complain bitterly about the project, calling the new dead-end station a waste of money.

"It's one of the greatest bamboozle schemes ever put out by a mass transit agency," said Albert L. Papp Jr., vice chair of the National Association of Railroad Passengers. "What NJ Transit has done is propose to build a brand new railroad for its exclusive use. This is unconscionable. There's only one chance to get this right in our lifetime."

NJ Transit, the lead design agency, said it dropped the Penn Station connection only out of necessity, after test drilling showed unstable rock above the new station's proposed location. As a result, engineers were forced to lower the cavern depth by more than 30 feet. The mezzanine of the new station, known as the Penn Station Expansion, will now lie 150 feet below ground.

NJ Transit and Amtrak must figure out a way to make the additional tracks to Penn Station work. The costs demand as much.

The new tunnels are absolutely necessary for the safety and reliability of the Northeast Corridor as the two existing tunnels are over 100 years old and a breakdown in one of the tunnels can result in system wide delays that can ruin the commute up and down the East Coast.

The cost is significantly higher than it would have been had the project been started decades ago, but delays and an inability to secure funding has resulted in higher costs to date.

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the overall cost of this project soars to $10 billion before all is said and done.

The sad fact is that even with all this money, this may be a flawed project if the two new tunnels do not link back to the Amtrak NE Corridor at Penn Station, rather than a new concourse several blocks away that prevents Amtrak from fully taking advantage of the increased capacity.

Oh, don't expect this project to be completed anytime soon either. It's projected to be completed in 2017 (at the earliest).