The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey will spend up to $70 million on a second environmental study and additional engineering work on a proposed freight rail tunnel connecting Jersey City with Brooklyn, or an improved barge service between the two.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has issued a request for proposals and will spend as much as $35 million for a “Tier II” environmental impact statement (EIS) on proposal to improve the transport of cargo between New Jersey and New York City, and up to another $35 million on additional planning and engineering.
The study will refine a “Tier I” EIS completed in 2014 that looked at the possibility of building a cross-harbor rail tunnel from Jersey City, N.J., to Brooklyn, or improving an existing rail barge service that dates back to the 19th century between those two locations.
New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y) and Patrick Foye, the executive director of PANYNJ, discussed the plan during a press conference last week.
The Tier I EIS estimated that building a rail tunnel would cost between $7 billion and $11 billion, while an improved barge system would cost $100 million to $600 million.
Nadler has championed the idea of building a cross-harbor tail freight tunnel for 30 years, arguing the project would “finally connect the New York metropolitan region to the national freight rail grid by removing trucks from our streets and diverting them to the underutilized rail network.”
Freight trains moving to points east of the Hudson River, including most New York City boroughs and other parts of Long Island, must travel all the way to Selkirk, a city 10 miles south of Albany, to cross the river. Staten Island, however, does have a direct link thanks to a rail bridge over the Arthur Kill, that among other things, serves the GCT New York container terminal at Howland Hook.
The roundabout way that railcars are moved to and from most of New York City and other locations east of the Hudson River is so well known that it is sometimes called the “Selkirk Hurdle,” a phenomena that has even merited a Wikipedia entry.
Ironically, the lack of rail service connecting New York City with the rest of the nation was one of the factors behind the creation of the port authority back in 1921.
In his history of the agency, Empire on the Hudson, Jameson W. Doig noted, “In 1920, for example, 90 percent of the docking facilities were located in New York City, but most railroads terminated in New Jersey.
“The irony bordered on the incredible: The world’s busiest harbor was not designed for direct rail-water shipment,” he wrote. “Boxcars had to be loaded on and off barges, which shuffled back and forth across the Hudson River and New York Bay.”
Today, the situation is reversed. Most of the big containerships call at terminals in New Jersey and Staten Island, where they have direct links to the national rail grid. But businesses on the east side of the harbor, where only a few containerships call at the Red Hook Terminal in Brooklyn, rely largely on truck deliveries.
A press release from Cuomo’s office estimates the tunnel would remove 1,800 trucks from New York Harbor crossings per day or half a million trucks per year.
Nadler said a tunnel “will change the way we move goods throughout our region for the better, with economic, environmental, health, safety and cost saving benefits for millions of people.”
Cuomo’s office said without a rail link, “more than one billion tons of freight move through the greater New York region each year primarily by truck, with truck congestion adding an estimated $2.5 billion annually to the cost of delivering goods to consumers and businesses. Trucks transport about 90 percent of the freight, while rail handles only 2-3 percent—with most freight arriving by rail at points west of New York and relying on trucks to reach their final destinations.
“It costs as much to move goods from New Jersey to Manhattan as it does to move them 500 miles or more in some other areas of the United States,” the governor’s office added. “In the next 20 years, freight to, from, and through this region is expected to increase by at least 37 percent – beyond the capacity of our roadways, putting a lid on economic development.”
“We need to move goods around the region more efficiently,” said Foye. “That’s what this next step is all about.”
PANYNJ advances cross-harbor freight rail study
