Proposed Subway To Jersey Scored

The reaction to a new proposal for a Manhattan-New Jersey subway loop was almost unanimously unfavorable yesterday. The $500,000,000 plan is scheduled to be recommended this week by the Metropolitan Rapid Transit Commission.

The plan was called "disappointing," "wasteful," "monstrous." The nearest to commendation was a remark that the plan was "feasible."

State Attorney General Louis J. Lefkowitz said that a constitutional amendment might be necessary to get the money. That would put the matter of two years or more.

The ten unsalaried members of the commission—there are five each from New Jersey and New York—are believed to have agreed on the proposal that they will present to the Legislatures of the two states. The members will meet Thursday.

The plan is a modification of one announced last May. It was the work of Arthur W. Page, the commission's project director, who had conducted a lengthy survey of the rapid transit situation.

The Page report suggested a $400,000,000 expenditure for an underground loop in New Jersey that would cross the Hudson River at Fifty-ninth Street and the Battery and plug into the Broadway BMT tracks in Manhattan.

Annual Loss Foreseen

The system would have run at an annual loss estimated at $12,000,000. This deficit would be made up by New York City and Orange and Rockland Counties in New York and the ten northernmost counties of New Jersey.

The new plan scraps the use of BMT trackage in Manhattan. It would require the digging of a new subway from Pearl Street at the Battery, then up Fifth Avenue to Twenty-third Street, along Madison Avenue to Fifty-ninth Street and westward to the Hudson.

It would cost $100,000,000 more to build and would incur a $14,500,000 annual deficit.

The Page plan would have bypassed Journal Square in Jersey City on the east. The new plan would run the line through Journal Square.

The commission favors starting from scratch and building a wholly new system.

"It could incorporate all the most modern techniques of subway design including modern stations and all-new cars," according to a pamphlet published early this year by the Commission.

"It has the fundamental advantage of bisecting the Midtown office district on Madison Avenue, which would be convenient to more people than a route on Broadway."

First reaction on both sides of the Hudson ranged generally from disfavor to outrage.

Harold Riegelman, counsel for the Citizens Budget Commission, said:

"If the report of what the Commission's recommendation will be is right, it is disappointing on two counts: They seem to have taken the most expensive way of doing it and they have told us only half the story.

"The rapid transit problem extends to Westchester, Dutches and Putnam Counties and also to Nassau and Suffolk. To take this thing piecemeal is very difficult. It is hard for New York to say yes, we will chip in so much for the loop, without knowing what the whole system will cost."

Morris Pesin, chairman of the committee on transit of the Jersey City Merchants Association, said the line would "all but destroy Jersey City, its business areas, its ratables, bus system and its whole economy."

“The inclusion of Journal Square into the run at the ridiculous cost of $20,000,000 would merely transform the bypass into an underpass," he said. "Riders would never see the light of day."

Mr. Pesin said the merchants would not cooperate in "the economic extinction of downtown Jersey City."

Herman T. Stichman, trustee of the bankrupt Hudson and Manhattan Railroad, strenuously attacked the plan as "wasteful."

"It would take a pipeline to Fort Knox," he said.

Mr. Stichman argued for the use of the present H. & M. tunnels to Manhattan. He said that the "comparatively inexpensive loop could be constructed in one-third the time at about one-fourth the cost if both the uptown and downtown lines of the' Hudson rapid tubes were made the base of the system."

Mr. Stichman warned that "the cost of the proposed loop Is grossly understated." He pegged the cost as closer to $750,000,000 than the commission's half-billion dollar estimate.

Mr. Lefkowitz said there was a question of whether public funds could be committed by law in an enterprise of this sort or whether a constitutional amendment might be necessary.

"This is a substantive question that would require very careful study," he said. The State Attorney General made it clear that he would have to examine the legislation before giving an opinion.

If he should rule that a constitutional amendment were necessary it would be 1960 at the earliest before the plan could be placed in effect. Such amendment must be passed by two successive Legislatures and then submitted to the public for approval.

New Jersey's economically stricken commuter railroads say they cannot hold out a great deal longer.

Carl T. Moore, president of the Jersey Central Lines, put it this way: "We don't profess to know how best the loop can be constructed, but we do know that the railroad cannot continue to provide this essential passenger service at the out-of-pocket loss we now sustain."

He said the line was losing $1,100,000 a year on its ferry operation and $2,300,000 a year on its passenger trains.