New Jersey's innovators: New Jersey Transit's billion-dollar capital budget is focused on creating a unified, statewide network of commuter and light rail lines. New technologies are a key part of that strategy

Railway Age, April, 2004 by William C. Vantuono

Secaucus, N.J., is a small, rather nondescript toxin that sits in the heart of New Jersey's Meadowlands, a vast, swampy spaghetti bowl of highways that, thanks mainly to an immense sports complex, is a favorite of real estate developers. The Meadowlands is also the great divide between Newark and the densely-packed communities of Jersey City, Hoboken, Union City, and Weehawken, which sit on the western shores of the lower Hudson River, across from New York City.

For generations, several busy passenger rail lines crossed paths in Secaucus. Passengers that used one railroad did not have direct access to the others. For example, if you lived in Bergen County in the northernmost part of the state and worked in Midtown Manhattan, you took the Erie-Lackawanna to Hoboken Terminal and then transferred to a PATH train, which got you uptown to 33rd Street.

Today, Secaucus has become a vital location on the New Jersey Transit map. In late 2003, 20 years after portions of the Pennsylvania, Erie-Lackawanna, Jersey Central, and Lehigh Valley railroads or their successors were combined to form the nation's third-largest commuter rail system, Secaucus Junction opened. The massive, $450 million transfer station is the latest project in a series of major investments that have created a unified, statewide commuter rail system. Secaucus Junction, the state's Holy Grail of commuter rail, links NJT's Northeast Corridor, North Jersey Coast Line, and MidTOWN DIRECT trains serving New York Penn Station with Main, Bergen County, Port Jervis, and Pascack Valley Line trains serving Hoboken Terminal. (It was preceded in 1995 by the Kearny Connection, which linked NJT's Morris & Essex Lines with Amtrak's Northeast Corridor.) Now, if you live in Bergen County and work in Midtown, you can transfer from your Hoboken-bound train for a quick trip into New York Penn Station.

Down near New Jersey's southern-most part of the Northeast Corridor, a relatively obscure section of lightly-used freight railroad has been transformed into a first for the rail transit industry. The Trenton-Camden corridor is the site of the first diesel fight rail transit system in the U.S. NJT's 34-mile, 20-station, $1.1 billion River Line (formerly called the Southern New Jersey Light Rail Transit System) began service on March 14, roughly 10 years after it was conceived. It links the NJT/Amtrak Trenton Station on the NEC with the Waterfront Entertainment Center in Camden and also connects with PATCO and SEPTA. The River Line is a DBOM (design build operate-maintain) project contracted with Southern New Jersey Light Rail Group LLC, a consortium led by Bechtel. The vehicles, supplied by Bombardier, are self-propelled, double-articulated, low floor cars with a powered, walk through center section. The right-of-way is shared with Conrail Shared Assets freight trains through a temporal separation agreement.

Though some critics see the River Line as a politically-motivated turkey rather than a model turnkey system, it is being vigorously promoted as a magnet that will attract business and residential development and contribute to the area's economic revitalization.

Because of Secaucus Junction, the River Line, and other recent developments--the Airport Rail Station on the NEC and the Hudson Bergen Light Rail Transit System (related story, p. 41)--New Jersey's rail commuters now have little reason to say "you can't get there from here." But more work needs to be done.

Under way are several ambitious projects, including Minimum Operating Segment 1 of the $265 million Newark-Elizabeth Rail Link LRT; Phase 2 of Morrisville Yard in Falls Township, Pa., which provides additional storage and train servicing capacity for NEC operations; and a new commercial development grandly named Xanadu at the Meadowlands Sports Complex.

Xanadu will be served by a commuter rail link to NJT's Pascack Valley Line. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey will contribute $150 million to build the 1.9-mile extension into the five-million-square foot entertainment, office, retail, and hotel project. State officials also want to build a second commuter rail connection to Xanadu from NJT's Main Line by way of Secaucus Junction, which would attract passengers from a much wider geographical area, and they are also talking about an LRT extension that would bring the Hudson-Bergen system into the Meadowlands. The sports authority hopes to start construction of Xanadu next spring and open the first components in 2006. NJT has awarded Parsons Brinckerhoff a contract to redesign a portion of the Pascack Valley Line for the commuter rail link. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2005 and be completed by the end of 2007.

All of this takes big dollars. New Jersey has provided transit expansion funding through what has been up to now a fairly stable source of capital: the Transportation Trust Fund (TTF), which is funded by revenue collected from gas taxes, highway tolls, and other sources. The TTF has bankrolled billions of dollars in passenger-rail-related projects ranging from state-of-good-repair programs fur aging infrastructure to replacement or refurbishment of hundreds of pieces of rolling stock to expansion of a system that seems to be in a perpetual state of strained capacity.