Remaking The Region: Port Authority, MTA Would Become New Regional Transit Authority

By DOUGLAS FEIDEN

The Port Authority and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority should be dismantled to make the city’s giant transportation system leaner and meaner.

That’s a cornerstone of a 25-year master plan for the New York region just released by the Regional Plan Association.

The study says the agencies should be folded into a sprawling new Regional Transportation Authority that would serve New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. This would allow for consolidation of planning, funding and management, the blueprints say.

The RPA’s vision for the 31-county, tri-state New York metropolitan area looks ahead to the year 2020 and sees a subway running up Second Avenue, a new East River bridge at the United Nations, a vast new park in midtown Manhattan and a train that zips from Kennedy Airport to Grand Central.

America’s premier planning group—which boasts a modest budget, a tiny staff, no real power, but great influence—is also proposing $25 billion in capital spending to construct 25 miles of new railroad tracks in the region over the next two decades.

Some of these undertakings may be fantasies, experts said. Many will probably never be built. Most would require colossal tax hikes at a time when the governors of all three states are paring taxes.

But the RPA’s sweeping proposal would also consolidate several local transit agencies in a new mega-agency, stripping the Port Authority of its tunnels, bridges, bus terminals and PATH tube duties and redirecting it back to its core mission—running airports and seaports.

“The model is the kind of consolidation of transportation structures that Paris and Tokyo now have,” said RPA executive director Robert Yaro. He said a new three-state Regional Transportation Authority could save $500 million a year for Albany, Trenton and Hartford by slashing "turf skirmishes" if cooperative efforts take off.

But the Giuliani administration expressed scant enthusiasm for the proposal yesterday.

“One might be skeptical of some new regional entity placing things that are desperately needed by the city at the top of their list of priorities,” said City Planning Director Joseph Rose.

Port Authority executives, while taking pains to praise RPA’s work and calling for “closer partnerships” among the regional transportation agencies, said “melding them together will prove difficult.”

A LOOK INTO THE FUTURE

Highlights of the Regional Plan Association's 25-year master plan for the 31-county tri-state area that encompasses the New York metro area, looking ahead to the year 2020:

* Second Avenue Subway would finally be built. Long delayed and then abandoned, it would run from the lower East Side to The Bronx.

* The United Nations Bridge would span the East River, connecting UN headquarters at 42d St. with a new UN Square on the Queens riverfront.

* The Port Authority and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority would be dismantled, replaced by a tri-state Regional Transportation Authority.

* Long Island Rail Road would have two new destinations, with extra trackage taking the line to Kennedy Airport and Grand Central Terminal.

* Capital spending would be massive. New rail lines—25 miles of track—would proliferate. Price tag: $25 billion."