Comments on: No ARC without TOD

By: My Homepage

My Homepage — Tue, 18 Feb 2014 04:18:35 +0000

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By: Gov. Christie Cancels the Hudson River Tunnel (again)

Gov. Christie Cancels the Hudson River Tunnel (again) — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 18:19:59 +0000

[…] developed here by economist Steve Hanke to finance improvements to their shared infrastructure. Market Urbanism argues New Jersey’s real commuter problem is its underdeveloped cities. And The […]

By: David Keddie

David Keddie — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 23:15:00 +0000

Anti-density sentiment is quite intense even in areas with heavy commuter rail use. I live in West Windsor Township, home to the Princeton Junction station which is one of the most heavily used railway stations in New Jersey and blessed with its own short branch line to the Princeton campus called the Dinky. The Princeton Junction station is surrounded by surface parking, with 5-10 year waits for a spot depending on residency, and a collection of rundown one or two story buildings merging into low-density suburban development. We’ve had years of meetings over efforts to redevelop the station area as a transit village, with the developer suing to be allowed to build more housing than the final agreement. All along the way local environmental and community groups have fought tooth and nail to prevent upzoning of the adjacent thinly developed Sarnoff site despite their provision for a BRT line. We find ourselves in the rare situation of having private developers begging to build large-scale transit oriented developed and it being bitterly opposed at worst and talked to death at best. If the state is serious about encouraging transit use it must pair large infrastructure projects with upzoning that prevents the local nimbyism from preventing transit-oriented development. Otherwise the rail system will continue as a charity case of the state, overwhelmingly dependent as the ARC is on funds derived from tolls and gas taxes and thus susceptible to the same insecure political support of any charity program.

Given the failure of the state to work with the MTA to use through-routing to expand capacity in Penn station and the failure to allow transit-oriented development, the ARC tunnel with it’s lack of connectivity and dead-end terminal looks exactly like a boondoggle supported for the sake of providing jobs for union-member constituents rather than the product of a serious approach to encouraging transit use. Unless we can somehow approximate the profit-seeking corporations that built the original tunnels, rail and subway infrastructure then our transit systems will continue to hobble along as wards of the state. That’s my take at least…

By: Alon Levy

Alon Levy — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 20:52:00 +0000

The lack of TOD at Secaucus is a major fail. But I’m not willing to write everything off yet, because the way TOD is done in the US is about as bad as not doing any TOD at all. The problem is that instead of relaxation of zoning restrictions, it usually takes the form of special deals between government and developers. The government absorbs the losses of running transit, the developers get to reap all the extra profits, and usually there’s so much parking that transit ridership doesn’t grow much anyway. It’s basically government subsidies to developers, dressed in nice transit clothes.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 19:51:00 +0000

The notion that NJ Transit rail into Manhattan is nothing more than a sparsely used, white-collar luxury is not supported by the facts. NJ Transit ridership has been growing consistently for years, and is projected to continue growing, making the ARC tunnel capacity expansion necessary. While its true that more should be done to encourage growth around NJ transit stations (the organization I work for, NJ Future, is a proponent of this: http://njfuture.wordpress.com/2010/07/06/new-tunnel-could-transform-nj%E2%80%99s-landscape-%E2%80%A6-and-brighten-its-economic-prospects/ ) turning that idea into an argument against the ARC Tunnel misses the point. While politicians can have some influence on growth patterns through zoning, regulatory policy, tax incentives, etc, the macro-trends in development are dictated by the market. Employers want to locate in NYC for all sorts of reasons, and NJ would be foolish to turn its back on that economic engine. Finally, the type of development you promote IS happening in New Jersey, in places like New Brunswick, Hoboken, Morristown, Rahway, etc. However that trend cannot continue if we do not have the capacity necessary to accommodate all of the new riders that TOD brings, and the ARC tunnel is the only way to provide that capacity.

-Jay

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 18:51:00 +0000

At the top of this post you talk about the state’s reliance on New York and Philadelphia for jobs, and then further down you talk about how few people use commuter rail lines (presumably to get to those jobs). That seems contradictory.

Here’s something else to consider, that may provide additional fodder for the other-than-tunnel argument: Proportionally, New Jersey does NOT rely on neighboring jurisdictions to give its residents jobs. According to the 2000 census, only 12 percent of New Jersey workers (6 percent of the state’s entire population) work outside the state. That translates to fewer than 500,000 people, spread across the entire geography, not all of whom are headed to New York. So this is a chicken-and-egg problem: Is that number not greater because transit options are constrained (we’re told the current rail tunnel is at capacity), or are transit options limited because demand isn’t there?

Looked at from the other side, 3.4 million New Jersey workers stay in New Jersey to go to work. If you ask 100 of them, they will list 100 different origins and destinations for their commutes. It’s impossible to build a sensible public transit network given this kind of wide dispersal of employment opportunities. Perhaps, as you suggest, stimulating high-density employment development rather than suburban office parks will be the real key to the growth of TOD, and will open the door for more intra-state transit development.