Council To Study Transit

Jersey City Mayor Witkowski has called the traffic and transportation committee of the Metropolitan Regional Council into session to consider new commuter plans in the wake of Assembly failure to approve a metropolitan rapid transit district.

Witkowski, who is chairman of the 12-member committee, said the so-called Stichman plan for a rail rapid transit network would be among the proposals the group would focus upon.

“Having played a large role in the defeat of the transit district, I feel it is up to the regional council to offer constructive plans aimed at solution of the commuter problem,” Witkowski said.

The committee will meet Wednesday at 250 Church St., New York City.

Witkowski gained unanimous council disapproval of the district plan, which would have established a 16-member agency, charged with creating a transit system between New York and New Jersey.

The heaviest opposition concentrated on the Page Report of the Metropolitan Rapid Transit Commission. This report recommended a $400,000,000 transit loop, which would be supported by an annual $12,000,000 subsidy from the areas it would serve. Hudson County would have borne $1,500,000 of this deficit.

The Stichman plan proposes that existing commuter lines tie in with the Hudson tubes at Journal Square through a system of transfer points, then seek aid to run this network from the Port of New York Authority.

Herman Stichman, trustee for the bankrupt Hudson and Manhattan Railroad, says this would revitalize the tubes and commuter lines, maintain the commercial institutions which depend upon present rail routes, and reduce any operating deficit to a minimum.

Stichman’s Plan also would make the Port of New York Authority share the responsibility for any interstate rapid transit system by requiring its cooperation with whoever operated it.

The traffic and transportation committee contains representatives from Newark, New York City, Westchester County and Greenwich, Conn.

The Jersey City Merchants Council, in a sharp retort to Republican state chairman Carl Erdman, said it “deplores his attempt to make the transit problem a politically partisan issue by condeming the Democratic Party for the failure of the transit district bill to become law.”

In a letter to Erdman, the Council cited “two outstanding” Republican State senators–Wayne Dumont and Robert C. Crane–who opposed the bill.

The letter pointed out that assemblymen who opposed the bill came from counties most seriously affected by the loop.

“The fact that most of them were Democrats was purely coincidental,” the letter said.

In the face of an ever-mounting rail transit crisis (the Erie sends its last ferry across the Hudson tonight) Sen. Clifford P. Case (R-N.J.) has called for a Senate investigation of what he termed “recent efforts to rid railroads of their commuter services and, in some cases, of all their passenger service.”

Case said “the Transportation Act of 1958 was intended by Congress to preserve, not destroy, the essential passenger service of the railroads of the country.”