Anti-Metropolitan Counsel

It would be a curious subversion of stated purpose if the Metropolitan Regional Council, founded to promote a common attack by city, county, and town officials on problems in twenty-one counties in three states, were the agency that dealt the death blow to the only practical remedy in prospect for dealing with metropolitan rapid transit ills. Yet that is what the council threatens to do by unanimously urging the New Jersey Legislature to reject the pending bill that would create a New York-New Jersey transit district.

We suppose there is a certain amount of validity to some objections raised to the legislation, which has been passed by the New York Legislature, signed by Governor Harriman, and awaits a decision by the New Jersey Legislature before it, can become effective. But we have been three or four years in coming to the bill we have, and it is the only bill upon which we can now move forward with any hope of success in the local rail commuting emergency.

Certainly it would be desirable to make a three-state approach to this rapid transit problem, rather than deal with merely the New York-New Jersey phase to the exclusion of Connecticut. Westchester and Long Island commuters. Eventually, that must come, but there are good arguments for not making the district bite off too large a chew in its first, tentative planning. It may be that there is some lack of clarity, or ambiguity, in the bill. There is room for difference of opinion on strength of representation from various communities on the board of management. Naturally, there is distaste for the principle implied, that taxpayer subsidy to transit is required, but what else promises transportation improvement from swift decay?

If the council's point of view is accepted by the New Jersey Legislature, we will be back where we started, committed vaguely to more "study," another year or more lost, seeking a perfect solution when we should be buckling down to what all must admit under any legislation could be only imperfect, incomplete beginnings but at least a start instead of a study.

When it is noted how little authority the transit district bill would grant, with nobody really committed to anything except the setting up of a cooperative governmental agency to propose something subject to later ratification, it is really amazing that there should be objection to a little experimentation. We hope the New Jersey Legislature will not be so timid.