Rapid Transit: Groups Didn’t Overlook This

Rapid Transit: Groups Didn’t Overlook This

The Public Just Forgot In Excitement Over New Highways

The Record

September 4, 1957

Thousands Spent

Rapid transit has been called the forgotten plan of the New York City area, the victim of big highway projects and other costly improvements which have drained off public funds.

Forgotten as it may have been by the general public at times, rapid transit nevertheless was not ignored by commissions and citizens' groups. A check shows that hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent from the 1920s on for studies of this transportation problem.

The North Jersey Transit Commission, created by the State Legislature in 1922, recognized the transit question as acute. Commissioners made long studies, and said in their 1926 report:

“...New Jersey must give immediate and thoughtful consideration to the transit problem in order that its growth and prosperity shall be continued and that its natural development may not be retarded.”

In 1924 the Commission took a traffic census. In 1927 it made a report giving an engineering plan for a loop rapid-transit system to connect Manhattan with North Jersey railroads.

No 1-State Job

Again and again the Commission reports emphasized that New Jersey couldn't solve a bi-state problem all by itself. Finally, in 1928, the Port of New York Authority and the Commission organized what they called the Suburban Transit Engineering Board. Together with railroad officials and members of the Westchester Planning Committee, the two agencies attempted to co-ordinate plans toward an area-wide solution.

On Mar. 31, 1930, after spending more than $220,000 on studies, the Board came up with another loop plan, but adopted no particular program. Then, after this report, the Board disbanded. The North Jersey Transit Commission died the same year after issuing a final warning that highway projects then under way would not meet all the needs of the area.

If the region was to grow the way it should grow, said the report, a comprehensive electric rail mass transportation system was needed too.

Tireless Jenny

During the Thirties the studies went on. The Regional Plan Association, which had been working on the problem since 1920s, issued a 1935 report which said: "Motor vehicles cannot supplant rail facilities as a means of commuter transportation between New Jersey and Manhattan.”

The North Jersey Transit Committee, formed the same year, backed a transit plan proposed by L. Alfred Jenny, consulting engineer from Dumont. The Port Authority, ordered in 1936 to make a new study of rapid transit, offered still another plan in March 1937. The report also said that millions of dollars in property values could be added in the region if a good rapid-transit system were developed.

Bergen County had its own committee going at the same time, and the County Board of Freeholders passed resolution after resolution asking for action. Merchants and businessmen formed the Bergen County Rapid Transit Association, a group which advocated high-speed rail service into Manhattan over the George Washington Bridge. They hoped to see trains running on that line by 1940.

Talk And More Talk

Talk went on through the years. New Jersey legislators in 1940 considered a bill to create a railroad authority, but the proposal died when the Legislature adjourned. When World War II came, rapid transit was shelved for the duration, but it returned as a postwar problem. Jenny, in one report after another, kept hammering away. Governor Alfred E. Driscoll suggested in 1948 that commuter railroads have a Hackensack meadows terminal where riders could transfer to a rapid-transit line into Manhattan.

Slowly events took us to where we are now. The New Jersey Regional Planning Commission, headed by State Senator David Van Alstyne of Englewood, recommended in 1952 that a metropolitan rapid transit authority be created and that it make a survey and full report to the 1953 Legislature. But things didn't move that quickly. The present bi-state Metropolitan Rapid Transit Commission was created in 1954. The recommendations of its project director were announced only this May, and the Commission won't have its final report ready until the beginning of next year.

Looking back over 30 years, some old-timers say this had better be the last study. Look how long it took us to get this far.