Access to the Region's Core

We're a few weeks late to the game on this, but last month New Jersey Transit launched a new Web site and accompanying promotional video to hype its proposed multibillion-dollar set of rail tunnels under the Hudson River, known as the Access to the Region's Core project.

With ominous music playing in the background, a deep-voiced narrator warns, "Our mobility is at risk. Today's transportation system is at the breaking point."

Worth a quick look, the video spells out some of the regional transportation problems that exist today, and offers ARC as the solution. The tunnel would connect more trains from New Jersey into a new set of tracks and platforms just north of Penn Station.  read more »

Much of Governor Paterson's approach over the last few months has been characterized by telling New Yorkers what they will not have under a Paterson administration. There will not be flush state coffers (and there will be cuts); there will not be a finished World Trade Center by 2012; there will not be enough money to fund an M.T.A. capital plan. Money is short, campaign promises were none, so cutting back has become issue No. 1.

But today, invoking the success of projects built during the Great Depression such as the Lincoln Tunnel and much of the New York City subway system, Mr.  read more »

The planned redevelopment and expansion of Penn Station, a top priority of the Spitzer administration, needs to include transportation improvements in order to be a "favorable investment" of the state's resources, Governor Paterson said today.

"What is essential to Moynihan Station is that it be a viable transportation hub," he said, speaking at a Crain's New York breakfast this morning. "If it doesn't include the transportation, its value diminishes considerably as far as I'm concerned."

The remarks suggest yet another turn in the project's long history, with yet another desire to expand its scope. The project, named Moynihan Station in honor of the late senator who championed it, has sat on the drawing boards since at least the early 1990s,  read more »

With at least eight years left before a set of new rail tunnels under the Hudson River are scheduled to be built and functioning, developer Sam Chang has already begun to reap benefits from the project. That's because the voracious builder of cookie-cutter hotels bought a $24 million West Side parking lot last November—a lot that just happened to be the same site the Port Authority needs in order to build the more than $7 billion project, called Access to the Region's Core (ARC).

Since then, the number of developers and landlords buying any city property has fallen off a cliff amid an impossible financing market, and brokers report that the bulk of sales that do happen have noticeably lower prices.  read more »

We've received a bit of feedback about a story this week on the Access to the Region's Core project, a $7.6 billion (at least) pair of New Jersey Transit rail tunnels slated for under the Hudson River—mostly criticisms of the project as currently planned.

The route of the tunnels has drawn criticism from many transportation advocates and some elected officials, particularly over the failure of the project to connect to tracks in Pennsylvania Station and the lack of a connection with Grand Central. Advocates have also criticized the depth of the station platforms under 34th Street, which would be about 150 feet below the street and require high-speed escalators to reach the top, though New Jersey Transit has dismissed the alternatives as far too costly.  read more »