States Dragged Feet On Meeting Rail Crisis

It took World War II to arouse enough worldwide cooperation to set up the United Nations.

Only with the past few years, despite more than a decade of mounting congestion and forewarnings of a general collapse of commuter railroad service, has there been any appreciable headway in interstate and federal action aimed at coming up with answers to the rail crisis which now faces the greater New York Metropolitan Area.

While the stakes in the present commuter crisis may not be as high as world peace, the obstacles to its resolution have sometimes seemed no less formidable.

AGENCY CREATED

In 1952, not long after the Port of New York Authority built its bus terminal at 41st Street and Eighth Avenue in New York City, New Jersey Governor Alfred E. Driscoll said:

"In the New York-North Jersey Metropolitan Area ... our citizens need better interstate high-speed rail transportation. The problems are interstate in character. It is to be hoped that their solution will be found in interstate co-operation."

That was in 1952 and it was not until 8 years later that the New Jersey Legislature gave serious attention to the setting up of the Division of Railroad Transportation within the State Highway Department.

BOUNDARIES MELT

The concept that the commuter crisis is tri-state, belonging to New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut, still resisted some State legislators.

Just about a year ago, former State Senator Wesley L. Lance of Hunterdon County remarked that New Jersey’s commuter problems are no more relevant to Connecticut’s than they are to Ohio’s.

While at the present time the exact nature of the relationship might be debatable, it is expected that by 1985 the 8,000-square-mile region from New Haven, Conn., to Trenton, will be jammed with 23.5 million people.

The New Haven-Trenton Metropolitan Area, with its population of 17 million, is considered the largest urban commuter region in the country.

In August 1961, with only New York State legislators fully appraised of the action, New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, New Jersey Governor Robert B. Meyner, and Connecticut Governor John N. Dempsey announced the creation of the Tri-State Transportation Committee, a temporary organization set up to study and act on the commuter crisis.

STUDY ALL FACTORS

For the first time, the Metropolitan Area had a body which would study the integration of all transportation throughout the region, not just the railroads, the highways, or the airports alone.

Originally set up with the purpose of eventually becoming a permanent commission with powers to engage in transportation operations, it defied definition for the next 4 years.

In 1963 and 1964 New York approved the inter-state compact scheme; the New Jersey Legislature turned it down because legislators felt that New Jersey’s commuter problems had nothing in common with Connecticut’s.

New York would not sign a bi-state compact with New Jersey because it believed that its commuter problems were more concerned with Connecticut and it was committed to working with the State on regional transportation problems.

Last year the New Jersey Legislature refused to pay its $80,000 share to the tri-state committee because of its foggy status which it had inherited from the governors, and because legislators felt the State was being shortchanged by the operation.

This year, both New York and New Jersey have approved a bill extending the life of the committee, which would have had its powers extended for another 4 years, but without the provisions which would have made it a supergovernment agency with powers to control land use, condemn property, and bypass the three states and lower levels of government for federal aid.

An identical bill is now awaiting the signature of Connecticut Governor Dempsey.

Under the compact, the Tri-State Transportation Committee is authorized only to engage in transportation operations on an experimental basis or as a demonstration project inolving mass transportation.

It also does not have the power to seek a subpoena to compel production of books and records or attendance of witnesses or any control over land use. It is a recommending body only.

It does, however, perform the crucial function for the three States by serving as an agency to apply for and receive federal funds earmarked for regional planning.

To date, Tri-State has sponsored five mass transportation projects with varying results, and is in the throes of beginning the final stages of a long-range transportation study of the Metropolitan Area.

It’s a massive study, which included photographing more than 140,000 blocks of land, interviewing 100,000 persons to find out how they get to and from work, and spot-interviewing 15,000 drivers to determine vehicular movements in the region.

CONSOLIDATION?

It has proposed consolidating rail freight movements in New York harbor which the area’s railroads have hailed as essential to the economic welfare of the port.

Talk of consolidation had been going on since the 1920s when Port Authority studied the possibilities. But it could not enlist the support of the railroads.

It was the last time for the next 30 years that the P.A. became involved in rail operations, concentrating its efforts on facilities for highway, air, and ocean-going marine transportation.

Earlier this year, it recommended a regional system of 32 publicly owned airports in the greater New York area so that no part of the area would be more than 30 minutes away from one by auto.

Tri-State will begin analyzing its regional study next year and it will serve as the basis for its report to the three governors in 1968. The comprehensive answers to the Metropolitan Area’s transportation needs will come out of this report.

NO ONE ANSWER

Even so, action on the answers may not be coming from the States for quite a while after that.

Professional planners are careful to point out that a master plan, no matter how comprehensive or farsighted, is never a permanent answer to an area’s needs.

Master planners of the 1890s could not possibly have foreseen the decentralization of New York City or the collapse of the railroads or the fact that within 70 years, the region would face the possibility of having a shortage of open areas to develop needed transportation facilities.

But, while the long-range planning continues, immediate steps must be taken to provide adequate highways and the railroads from dying of old age and starvation.

(Part IV — Plans and Some Short Range Answers)