New Jersey’s Careful Plans To Stop Trying

Senator Jones's (R., Bergen) comment that the public hearing is a good weapon with which to kill legislation is acceptable within his specifically intended context. He refers to the hearing scheduled in Assembly committee November 24 on his bill creating a rapid-transit district. This measure is a companion to one passed at the last session of the New York Legislature. It could create a transit district and empower it to study commuter problems in the Metropolitan Area, then make specific recommendations to the two State Legislatures and Governors. It would not empower any capital expenditures.

The opposition will be well organized and familiar, bearing down with the unwarranted and inaccurate allegation that passage of this bill would commit the transit district to a costly rail loop plan. This refers to a part of the Metropolitan Rapid Transit Commission report completed early in the year. No commitment is involved. The opposition has been generated largely by municipal officials' fears, carefully nourished by bus operators, of a heavy pro-rata charge to support a transit system.

The alternative to be offered at the same hearing is a bill handing the commuter problem to the Port of New York Authority. The Port Authority has already rejected this on the ground it would be illegal under the terms of its charter.

It is wished the proponents and defenders of the Jones bill had an attack as well known and understood. Their attack has been mounted on grounds which may largely be termed social or societal, having to do with the immediate problem of area strangulation--not so slow a process as sociologists’ language implies. Commuter organizations have been surprisingly unorganized for this battle. If Mr. Jones's comment is not to be quickly validated, they and others with dramatic personal as well as social concerns will have to present an intelligent and comprehensive case for dealing realistically with transit. To Mr. Jones's bill there is no reasonable alternative; his opponents know that attempts to dragoon the Port Authority are no alternative. The indicated death of this bill and the cancellation at year's end of the New York legislation would be no less than total abandonment of the metropolitan transportation problem.