The primary goal of the pipedream imagined in this series is to solve the problem identified in the first post: the difficulty of moving freight across the Hudson River by tractor-trailer truck due to congestion on the GW Bridge, Verrazano Bridge, and connecting highways. The imagined rail freight tunnel would provide an alternative, freight carried across the Hudson by rail and placed on trucks in the Bronx or, in the case of trailers on flat cars, in Brooklyn and Queens as well. A second goal, related to the investments Upstate that would improve the connection to New Jersey, is to increase the competiveness of the Port of New York and New Jersey for goods heading to and from the Midwest. A third goal, again for the investments Upstate, is to remove freight traffic from the existing New York Central mainline, allowing a gradual increase in operating speeds for passenger service on that route, eventually reaching the point where the line could be described as “high-speed rail.”
These, however, are not the only goals I have in mind. With railroad improvements driving economic development in other parts of the country, I imagine the pipedream would have the potential to create jobs and spur development. And with a little more investment, direct commuter rail service from Rockland and Orange to Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan would become theoretically possible – without inflating the cost of a new Tappan Zee Bridge by putting transit there. This post is about the goals Downstate, with the next post about the goals Upstate.
First, the primary transportation goal. The Port Authority Cross Harbor Freight Study found that 10 million trucks cross the George Washington Bridge and 5.7 million trucks cross the Verrazano Bridge every day, with both figures rising steadily. That’s an average of 27,400 trucks per day on the GW and 15,600 on the Verrazano, with presumably higher volumes on weekdays. Noted the study “according to the INRIX 2009 National Traffic Scorecard, the country’s worst bottleneck since 2007 is the Cross Bronx Expressway/I-95 in the Bronx, which provides direct access to the George Washington Bridge. The segment leading to the Bronx River Parkway, Exit 4B interchange, was congested 94 hours of the week, with an average speed while congested of 11.4 miles per hour (mph). Between 4 and 5PM on Fridays, vehicles on this stretch averaged just 5 mph, i.e., the slowest location and time in the United States in 2009.” The condition of that road is very bad. In large part because the city and state do not dare to shut it down to maintain it.
To put every one of those trucks on a 67-car train would require 642 trains, or 321 in each direction, or 13.4 trains per hour each way for 24 hours. With the right infrastructure, including the right terminal infrastructure, it is theoretically possible to come close to that, but this would neither be likely nor required. Many of the trucks are moving from one part of the metro area to another, and it would never make sense to put freight moving from one part of the metro area to another on a train.
Rather, the goal would be to provide an option for freight moving to and from the rest of the country. Today, according to the study, intermodal rail traffic – truck trailers and containers carried on trains – accounts for just 18 million of the 383 million tons carried into and out of the New York metropolitan region in truck trailers and containers, with trucks moving the rest for their entire distance (in many cases to and from railheads in eastern Pennsylvania or from Exit 8A on the New Jersey Turnpike). For trailers and containers just passing through the region, railroad intermodal accounts for 6 million out of 257 million tons. (The railroads moved 125 million tons into and through the New York metro area in traditional railcars).
The goal is to get the intermodal rail share of this market up, before the bridges and connecting highways choke on truck traffic. I don’t want to oversell this the way some people do, by promising a huge decrease in traffic congestion throughout the region. Drivers might run into fewer trucks on the Cross Bronx and Staten Island Expressways, and on the GW and Verrazano bridges, but they’d run into those same trucks later as they spread out to make local deliveries. But at least that traffic would be spread out.
The possibility of faster, cheaper freight movement into Downstate New York via the rail tunnel would keep the cost of goods down east of the Hudson. It might also relocate some distribution activity from New Jersey to Downstate New York. Not long ago, retail organizations with stores in both New York and New Jersey, supermarkets for example, might have warehouses on each side of the river to serve their stores. Today, nearly all the warehouses for bi-state organizations are in New Jersey. In fact, retail organizations with all their stores in New York are often supplied from distribution warehouses in New Jersey. Key Food, for example, has moved all its distribution operations to New Jersey. And the Hunts Point Terminal market is threatening to move to New Jersey. A rail freight tunnel accepting extensive intermodal traffic, and rising fuel prices, might reverse this trend.
Of course goods from the West and Midwest can move into the east of Hudson area by railroad right now, via the railroad bridge over the Hudson River at Selkirk south of Albany and MetroNorth’s Hudson Line down to the Bronx. CSX has failed to develop this market for intermodal freight, and grand plans for an intermodal freight terminal in the South Bronx following the completion of the Oak Point Link direct from the Hudson Line have largely failed to come to fruition. Anyone contemplating an investment in a rail freight tunnel might want to consider why that is so. With a common carrier agreement on the CSX mainline and multiple railroads involved in the rail freight tunnel, however, if CSX couldn’t compete for this market someone else could.
The greater advantage of a rail freight tunnel under the Hudson would accrue to trains coming from the south through New Jersey. Then what about the state of the rail infrastructure in New Jersey? My view is that is the problem of New Jersey and the railroads. If they want trucks and containers on trains instead of highways to and from Eastern PA and Exit 8A, they would support freight improvements in New Jersey similar to those imagined in these posts for Upstate New York. In some cases, to get to a freight tunnel, the railroads may be willing make the investments themselves. There are lots and lots of freight tracks in New Jersey, active and abandoned, with enough capacity that it would surely be possible to make upgrades if they were considered profitable. In the mean time, improving the rail freight route from the Port of New York and New Jersey via Upstate New York would improve the Port’s competitiveness.
In Rockland and Orange Counties, west of the Hudson in New York State, commuter rail service is provided by New Jersey Transit on contract from MetroNorth, on lines originally built by the Erie Railroad but now assigned to Norfolk Southern. MetroNorth’s Port Jervis line enters New Jersey at Suffern, at the point where the New York State Thruway turns east toward the Tappan Zee Bridge, and generally ends in New Jersey – although a small number of trains do move on to Penn Station in Manhattan. But there is a little used track, still shown on the state rail plan as active, that runs parallel to the Thurway across the most heavily populated part of Rockland County from Suffern to a connection with New Jersey Transit’s Pascack Valley line. That right of way once extended to the Hudson River at Piermont, crossing the CSX River Line along the way.
Imagine that the rail freight tunnel to the Bronx existed, and that this cross-Rockland track could be extended a short distance to the River Line and connected with it. Imagine that platforms were installed for a series of stations across Rockland parallel to the Thruway. In that case, it is possible that commuter rail service with dual mode (electric and diesel) locomotives could be provided in Rockland and Orange Counties, then express through New Jersey down to the River Line between the freight trains, over to the Bronx via the imagined tunnel, onto geographic Long Island in Queens via the Hell Gate Bridge, and into Grand Central via East Side Access. If the Long Island Railroad will run 24 trains per hour into Grand Central, perhaps two or three per hour could be added from the West of Hudson area. This would be theoretically possible if the rail tunnel were built.
In the past few weeks, the federal and New York State governments have made a decision to replace the deteriorating Tappan Zee Bridge with an eight-lane, mixed vehicle bridge without any lanes or tracks dedicated to mass transit service, eliminating the commuter rail and bus rapid transit components that local politicians had developed over the years. The current bridge has seven lanes, with one running in the peak direction, also for mixed traffic. The commuter rail link across the Hudson River to the MetroNorth Hudson line was eliminated due to its extreme cost; the price for the Tappan Zee replacement project had soared to $16 billion, plus over-runs. The bus rapid transit option may have been eliminated because highway planners wanted all lanes to be available to cars and trucks. With the completion of I-287 in New Jersey in 1993, the Tappan Zee has become a key truck route to New England from points west, via the Cross Westchester Expressway and I-95.
Since New York can’t afford the $16 billion and the deterioration of the bridge is rapid, I can’t say I disagree that the commuter rail component had to be removed. The proposed rail freight tunnel, however, could provide an alternative for Manhattan commuters from the West of Hudson region. And by providing an alternative for trucks, it could also allow one lane in each direction on the new Tappan Zee to be limited to buses some day. As noted, a large share of the freight tonnage moving around metropolitan New York is just passing through, according to the Port Authority – 251 million of the 1,051 million moving around the region by truck. In part because goods bound for New England are now often supplied from warehouses in Central New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania. The rail freight tunnel would allow some of that traffic between New England points west and south of the NY Metro Area to move by rail, using the dedicated freight track on the Hudson Line and the east-west track from Beacon New York to Danbury, Connecticut.
But any proposed railroad pipedream would mean nothing is that if all that would be offered is a “study” to make up for the elimination of mass transit on the Tappan Zee. Those “studies” are political bullshit, which allow politicians to offer promises to some interests while directing resources to others. These days, if you want to do something, you have to just go ahead and do it, skipping the studies and the rest. As the whole waste of time of the multi-year Tappan Zee planning process shows. I hope the days of putting out studies for political purposes, to hand over money to consultants in exchange for donations and provide the illusion of action, are over. If a study is required, then this is it. All it requires is a few graphics.