Regional governance timeline

The Legislature set up the commission to study the transit problem. It took a traffic census in 1924 and warned in its 1926 report that New Jersey “must give immediate and thoughtful consideration to the transit problem.”

The North Jersey Transit Commission published an engineering plan for a loop rapid-transit system connecting Manhattan with the North Jersey railroads.

The Port of New York Authority and the North Jersey Transit Commission organized the board with railroad officials and the Westchester Planning Committee to coordinate plans for an area-wide solution.

After spending more than $220,000 on studies, the board produced another loop plan but adopted no program, and disbanded. The North Jersey Transit Commission ended the same year with a warning that the highway projects under way would not meet all the area’s needs.

The association’s 1935 report 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 by consulting engineer L. Alfred Jenny of Dumont.

Ordered in 1936 to make a new study, the Port Authority proposed a suburban rapid transit system for northern New Jersey that carried the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad from 33rd Street to 51st Street and across to New Jersey through a new tunnel. Its report said good rapid transit could add millions of dollars in property values. The New Jersey Legislature directed another study; in 1939 the Authority asked for more time, “and nothing more was heard of the proposal.”

Two articles date the plan to 1937; The Jersey Journal’s 1966 account gives 1938.

New Jersey legislators considered a bill to create a railroad authority. The proposal died when the Legislature adjourned.

Governor Alfred E. Driscoll suggested that commuter railroads share a terminal in the Hackensack meadows where riders could transfer to a rapid-transit line into Manhattan.

The New Jersey Regional Planning Commission, headed by State Senator David Van Alstyne of Englewood, recommended that a metropolitan rapid transit authority be created and report to the 1953 Legislature. Its report also recommended a new rail tunnel connecting North Jersey with Manhattan at about Forty-fifth Street.

Hearings before the New York Metropolitan Rapid Transit Commission, with New Jersey’s commission sitting in, renewed interest in seeing the region’s mass transportation needs whole. A subsequent New York Times editorial called the question of subsidizing commuter railroads the first to decide.

After the separate commissions issued almost identical reports, both Legislatures adopted their recommendation and the New York–New Jersey Metropolitan Rapid Transit Commission came into existence, with $50,000 from each state. Its vice chairman dated this to June 1954; a 1955 New York Times editorial gives June 14, 1953.

A memorandum of understanding between the Port Authority and the Metropolitan Rapid Transit Commission was made public. The Authority would furnish up to $500,000 for engineers to study rail rapid transit between New Jersey and New York. The memorandum urged a “constitutionally sound, financially practicable and politically feasible plan of meeting deficits.”

Governor Meyner announced he would approve a $150,000 appropriation for the commission. With $150,000 approved by New York and $500,000 available from the Port Authority, the Times wrote, “an inquiry of respectable thoroughness should be possible.” Meyner also named a new set of New Jersey members.

Henry K. Norton, chairman of the New York, Susquehanna & Western Railroad, presented the commission with a plan for rapid transit lines from the tri-state suburbs running on overhead tracks in New York. Real estate operator William Zeckendorf objected that the city would not stand for another elevated railroad.

The New York, Susquehanna & Western Railroad petitioned New Jersey’s Public Utility Commission to abandon its entire passenger operation, then running 60 trains a day. The application brought another North Jersey commuter line into the regional fight over whether existing rail services should survive while the metropolitan transit study was under way.

Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr. convened the Metropolitan Regional Conference, later known as the Metropolitan Regional Council. This voluntary association of the top elected officials of the counties and major cities of the tri-state region discussed shared problems such as regional traffic control and water and air pollution. New York City paid most of its $50,000-a-year cost.

William Miller’s 135-page financing study for the commission found that the two states could legally authorize the Port Authority to undertake rail rapid transit, but that the Authority’s lack of taxing power and its self-supporting policy “deprive the Port Authority of competence to undertake such a project.” He recommended a Metropolitan Rapid Transit District.

Project director Arthur W. Page recommended two new Hudson River tunnels, at about Fifty-ninth Street and at the Battery, carrying a rail loop that would connect New Jersey’s commuter lines with Manhattan over BMT subway tracks. A new bi-state district with a 32-member council would run it and assess counties for an estimated $12 million annual deficit.

About 100 county leaders in Teaneck heard the commission’s executive director outline the plan. Bergen’s share of the deficit would be $1.84 million a year, the largest of any county. Formal hearings were set to begin June 18 in Newark.

The Interstate Commerce Commission granted requests to discontinue Hudson River ferry lines used by riders on three railroads serving Bergen County. A federal court order kept the ferries going pending a final decision.

The Jersey City Merchants Council called the Page plan a threat to the city’s business community. It objected to Hudson County paying about $1,560,000 a year toward the deficit and said a loop into Manhattan would bypass Hudson County shopping centers.

The commission opened hearings in Newark on what The Record called “the nineteenth New York area transportation survey since the early 1920s,” moving to New York on September 17. Critics, including Representative Frank C. Osmers Jr. and engineer L. Alfred Jenny, pressed lower-cost alternatives.

At the Arden House conference on metropolitan problems, Robert Moses said that if any agency was needed to unify rapid transit it should be the Port Authority, and called the railroads “a busted, lazy and backward private enterprise.” The Port Authority’s executive director rejected the idea at once, saying transit would wreck the Authority’s credit.

The panel included the chairman of the New York City Transit Authority, the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad’s trustee, and the president of the Central Railroad of New Jersey. Morris Pesin of the Jersey City Merchants Council planned to ask “what Jersey is going to get out of it.”

The commission’s modified plan dropped the BMT tracks for a new subway up Fifth and Madison Avenues and routed the line through Journal Square, raising the cost by $100 million and the annual deficit to $14.5 million. Critics called it “disappointing,” “wasteful,” and “monstrous.” New York’s attorney general said a constitutional amendment might be needed.

After three years and more than $1 million of study, the commission recommended a $500 million loop and, as its one legislative proposal, a bi-state transit district to plan and negotiate a system. It concluded that a coordinated, modernized system of transit by rail and bus between New York and New Jersey was essential.

Two reports are dated January 1959. Articles from February, November, and December 1958 describe the final report as already delivered, supporting a January 1958 date.

The Senate passed the Jones bill, S-50. Opponents later said the necessary eleventh vote came from Senator Sido Ridolfi of Mercer County, and that seven of the eleven senators in favor represented counties that would bear none of the deficit.

The council’s Committee on Housing and Redevelopment started updating housing data last collated in 1950, when 10.2 percent of the region’s housing units were sub-standard, as part of a push for federal housing funds.

In a letter to the Governor and Legislature, the commission said the transit district act “does one thing only—it creates a public agency, based on local representation, to develop and to negotiate such a public plan.” The Herald News noted that Congress had since given the Interstate Commerce Commission jurisdiction over railroad passenger service, and the ICC was letting railroads curtail it.

Lyle C. Fitch, First Deputy City Administrator, told the National Tax Association that the only clear benefit of the half-billion-dollar loop would be to its users, who should pay the entire bill. He called transportation “a region-wide problem” needing coordination of agencies and pooled revenues. He spoke for himself, not the city administration.

The Jersey City Commission adopted a resolution opposing the bill. Morris Pesin of the Jersey City Merchants Council called the loop “a noose around the neck of Jersey City” and urged the Assembly to compel the Port Authority to connect New Jersey’s railroads to the Hudson & Manhattan tubes instead.

Governor-elect Nelson A. Rockefeller said he would seek an early meeting with Governors Meyner and Ribicoff. “Something has got to be done about transit and transportation before the end of the year,” he said. Meyner said he would be “delighted” to join, and that he was willing to amend the district bill to meet objections.

Frank H. Simon told the Hackensack Area Development Association that “you and I will not in our lifetimes see them take on rapid transit projects.” He called a comprehensive regional agency the desirable ultimate, but said anyone attempting it “would be like Don Quixote attacking the windmill.”

Port Authority executive director Austin J. Tobin argued for more than two hours that the Authority could not spend on transit and submitted a 46-page memorandum. The Assembly’s economist, Dr. Salomon J. Flink, countered in a 57-page report that the Authority could set aside earnings to cover part of a transit deficit. The commission’s co-chairmen asked for action; the Regional Council asked for a tri-state approach.

About 20 people attended a Newark hearing on how to tackle metropolitan problems; Newark was the only New Jersey municipality to send an official. The council, elected officials who had met informally for more than two years, was weighing whether to seek formal status, and a committee under Columbia’s Wallace Sayre was to report on January 13.

After two public hearings the bill was rewritten as a ten-member agency appointed by the two governors, with any property tax for deficits expressly barred. It reached the floor but lacked the votes. The Lehigh Valley and the Lackawanna then said they would seek to abandon most of their passenger services.

A Regional Plan Association committee of eight headed by Columbia’s Wallace S. Sayre urged that the voluntary council be established by identical statutes in the three states and a compact approved by Congress, with a small full-time secretariat. “The present mass transportation crisis,” it said, “is but a foretaste of the difficulties which will soon and increasingly press upon the region.”

With the commission preparing to go out of business, the Port Authority opposed, and the counties unwilling to be taxed, Senator Wesley L. Lance proposed a state Division of Railroad Transportation to act as a “catalyst agent.” He said the Port Authority should underwrite part of any deficit: “When we speak of rapid transit, we are speaking about a deficit operation.”

Governors Rockefeller, Meyner, and Ribicoff held a transit conference and heard railroads, labor, communities, and the Port Authority. Senator Walter H. Jones called it “a black day for New Jersey commuters and for the growth of regional concepts,” saying the governors of New York and Connecticut had washed their hands of the commuter problem.

The Senate passed the Assembly’s bi-state transit district bill 12 to 1, with most abstainers calling it futile, and the Assembly voted 53 to 3 for a State Division of Railroad Transportation in the Highway Department. The district bill could not become law unless New York enacted identical legislation. A bill to hand the problem to the Port Authority stayed in committee. In Albany the Senate voted 56 to 1 for an Office of Transportation in the governor’s executive department.

Governor Meyner signed the bill setting up a bi-state rapid transit agency. Two weeks later New York passed a different version, and New Jersey had to amend its law to match.

By 39 to 15 the Assembly approved a New York–New Jersey Transportation Agency with one member from each state and $25,000 from each, and by 36 to 16 let the Port Authority borrow $20 million from New York State to buy coaches for lease to three New York railroads. Opponents said the car program was meant to preclude a larger Port Authority role. Assemblyman Musto asked who Austin Tobin was “to tell us they can’t do it,” adding: “We created the Port Authority.”

The House unanimously passed a resolution granting Congressional consent to the compact. The agency was to prepare an interim and a long-range plan for commuter transportation across the Hudson, with recommendations due in June 1961.

The state’s Division of Rail Transportation proposed using $30 to $40 million in New Jersey Turnpike reserves, and annual sums after that, to help railroads pay their taxes and to lend for modernization. The plan needed approval from the Legislature, the voters, and two-thirds of turnpike bondholders. The Republican state chairman called it “half-baked.”

In a statewide referendum, New Jersey residents turned down the proposal to divert surplus New Jersey Turnpike Authority revenues to railroad assistance. The state began a railroad subsidy program in 1960.

The Division of Railroad Transportation proposed $6 million a year in state service contracts, consolidation of Shore passenger service under the Pennsylvania Railroad, and rerouting Jersey Central trains through Newark. It asked the Port Authority to buy 90 H&M cars for $8.55 million and lease them to the railroad, while placing H&M under bi-state control. The report opposed handing the Port Authority New Jersey’s entire rail problem; longer-term proposals included extending rapid transit and integrating services.

Colonel S. H. Bingham, a former executive director of the New York City Transit Authority, sent the three governors a plan for a tri-state agency to run a high-speed system built from linked existing lines, at a maximum of $317 million against at least $915 million for an entirely new system. A month later Newsday reported it had been “greeted with silence and apathy.”

Thomas M. Goodfellow told the Municipal Forum of New York that a three-state authority with the power and resources to plan and coordinate all commuter travel was the only solution. “Rail commuter service must be recognized and treated for what it is—a public service,” he said.

The bi-state transportation agency, two New York state offices and the Port Authority were jointly studying how 1.676 million people reached Manhattan’s central business district. The findings would inform a city review of staggered working hours. Deputy state transportation director Bayard Forster said the continuing research would then examine travel between suburbs, extending the inquiry beyond trips into Manhattan.

Highway Commissioner Dwight Palmer certified a crisis in travel between New Jersey and New York, a required step before New Jersey’s commuter-income tax took effect. The measure sought to redirect New York income taxes paid by New Jersey residents toward interstate transportation. Palmer proposed using the proceeds for rail and bus support, equipment, reroutings, park-and-ride facilities and related improvements; the plan was already expected to face a constitutional challenge.

The governors of Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey created the Tri-State Transportation Committee as a temporary body to study and act on the region’s transportation problems.

An October 1960 editorial describes earlier agreement on an interstate study committee. The February 1963 report and July 1965 retrospective date creation of the Tri-State Transportation Committee to August 1961.

The two states had the Port Authority take over the bankrupt Hudson & Manhattan Railroad, now PATH, alongside the World Trade Center. The statute included a covenant that further deficit financing of railroad projects would be undertaken only within set financial limits, which the Authority read as 10 percent of its General Reserve Fund.

In its third interim report, Tri-State described a $256,000 New Brunswick park-and-ride station, a proposed Manhattan–Idlewild rail-and-limousine connection, and a study of express buses on the West Shore railroad right-of-way. The busway proposal would preserve freight tracks and serve Bergen and Rockland passengers through local pickups and express running. The committee also outlined a major household and vehicle travel survey to support long-range planning.

The Public Service Commission granted Rockland Bus Lines authority for an experimental service linking New City, Nanuet and Nyack with the New York Central at Tarrytown across the Tappan Zee Bridge. The plan replaced four daily round trips with 24 on weekdays, coordinated with trains to Grand Central. State and federal support would cover operating shortfalls during the eighteen-month demonstration, which began that September.

A new Pennsylvania Railroad station off Jersey Avenue in New Brunswick opened with parking designed to spare commuters the congested downtown approach. The joint state, railroad and Tri-State demonstration tested whether an accessible suburban station could attract drivers and shift riders from the existing city-center station. By April 1964 it served about 150 commuters, and additional trains were being scheduled.

At the Regional Plan Association’s conference, a survey of 5,600 residents showed nearly two-thirds of those outside the city approving a metropolitan planning agency with limited enforcement powers. The Long Island Rail Road’s president complained that after three years “nothing has been done, but we’re still talking about the same things”; William J. Ronan, the Tri-State committee’s chairman, replied that “a great deal has been done.”

The Tri-State Transportation Committee had 587 employees and a budget totaling about $8.3 million since 1961, but existed by what one lawmaker called “a gentlemen’s agreement between the governors.” A version amended on February 5 to keep New Jersey out of any New Haven rescue passed in New York; New Jersey’s Senate Republican leaders opposed it, the majority leader warning of a super-agency able to control land use and condemn property.

Tri-State’s first six-month report on the Rockland–Tarrytown feeder buses recorded average daily ridership of about 420, up from fewer than 150 at the start. A November survey found that 52 percent of riders had previously driven all or part of their trip. The eighteen-month experiment was testing whether coordinated suburban bus and rail schedules could attract enough travelers to justify continuing the service.

President Johnson signed Senator Harrison A. Williams’s mass transit bill, providing $375 million over three years for transit equipment on a two-thirds federal basis. In Trenton, Senate Bill 222 for a Tri-State Transportation Compact failed. “I’m not opposed to a Tri-State Commission,” said Assemblyman J. Edward Crabiel. “But I am opposed to an operating one.”

Responding to a Long Island Rail Road fare request, Liberal Party candidate Stanley J. Levy called for public ownership of the railroad and a Tri-State Transportation Authority, “similar to the Port of New York Authority,” to operate the region’s commuter lines and integrate them with the city’s system.

New York created the Metropolitan Commuter Transportation Authority to take responsibility for the Long Island Rail Road and other commuter services. William J. Ronan, Governor Rockefeller’s secretary and chairman of the Tri-State committee, became its chairman. The authority purchased the LIRR from the Pennsylvania Railroad in early 1966, giving the state an operating body alongside the region’s planning commission.

Governor Hughes signed a bill giving the Tri-State Transportation Committee official status, calling the compact “modest though it is in some respects.” The commission could apply for and receive federal planning funds but had no operating, condemnation, or land-use powers. “For once New Jersey is a leader instead of a dragger in regional activity,” The Record wrote.

Tri-State recommended a regional network of 32 publicly owned airports for growing business and private aviation. The plan combined primary and secondary fields with Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark, and called for about $38 million in additional public investment. It proposed greater federal and state contributions while leaving county and municipal governments as airport owners, applying regional coordination to a transportation field beyond commuter rail.

The railroad announced that unless it was relieved of the financial burden, it would file to abandon commuter service at the end of 1965. Its newest commuter cars dated from the 1930s. “The commuter situation,” a New Jersey rail planner said, “has been studied to death. All it needs is money.”

Signing New York’s act, Governor Rockefeller noted that similar laws had twice been enacted there “only to fail of passage elsewhere,” and that enactment by New Jersey and Connecticut meant “organized transportation planning on a regional basis can go forward.” The commission would survey, plan, and recommend, continuing the work of the governors’ committee.

Transit Authority commissioner John Gilhooley proposed merging the Transit Authority, Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, city Traffic Department and ferry operations into one City Transportation Authority. It would set fares and tolls and pool revenues across modes, potentially helping preserve the fifteen-cent subway fare. He called for close coordination with regional agencies rather than proposing to absorb the Port Authority or Tri-State.

State Senator Thomas J. Mackell of Queens said he would prefile a bill to consolidate eight state and interstate agencies, among them the Port Authority, the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, and the Tri-State commission, leading to a Tri-State Metropolitan Transportation Authority. It would need passage in all three states.

The experimental New City–Tarrytown feeder-bus service had ceased operating by May 1966. Asked about it at a Rockland meeting, commuter-authority secretary Edward Kresky said it could not run without government subsidy, though he thought it might become economical in five years. The outcome qualified Tri-State’s earlier ridership gains: coordinated schedules had attracted passengers, but demand had not yet sustained the service commercially.

Governor Nelson Rockefeller asked Tri-State to review proposed Long Island Sound crossings and consider tunnels as alternatives to bridges, including a possible rail facility on either type. The review covered links from eastern Suffolk and Port Jefferson to Connecticut and from Oyster Bay to Westchester. William Ronan promised a report before the legislative session ended, extending the inquiry beyond the bridge schemes already under discussion.

In his State of the State message the governor proposed expanding the commuter authority to be “responsible for unified regional policy direction and control of mass transportation in the New York metropolitan region,” taking in the New York City Transit Authority and Robert Moses’s Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority.

An experimental Nassau County service began connecting low-income residents with jobs at Engineers Hill in Plainview and other destinations. Tri-State’s program combined subsidized bus routes with job counseling, information and reduced-fare tickets. Suffolk routes followed in July, though early ridership there was much weaker. The experiments addressed a regional transportation problem that Manhattan-bound commuter rail did not solve: reaching dispersed suburban workplaces without a car.

Bergen County’s Board of Transportation announced plans and specifications for a roughly 150-car park-and-ride lot at Oradell. Chairman Frank Tilley also indicated that the board had dropped the proposal to pave the West Shore right-of-way for commuter buses, while a rail-bus alternative remained under consideration. The decisions shifted the county’s immediate program toward station access and a different use of the existing rail corridor.

With Nassau’s job-access buses gaining riders and Suffolk’s struggling, Tri-State approved additional service contracts and a publicity effort for Suffolk routes. It also authorized $84,000 for county antipoverty agencies to interview and counsel residents facing transportation barriers, plus $10,000 for reduced-fare job-search tickets and information centers. The commission treated service design, affordability and outreach as parts of the same experiment.

State Senator Ned Parsekian proposed a rail hub near East Rutherford with radial and circumferential routes serving North Jersey, Rockland, New York City and major airports. He called for a joint planning and financing task force and substantial federal and state support. His proposal emphasized trips between suburbs as well as commuting to Manhattan, arguing that a regional network should follow people’s destinations across state and municipal boundaries.

After the state’s transportation department warned that the traffic situation “would be hopeless without rail commuter service,” the public approved a $640 million bond issue with $200 million reserved for mass transit. The money went largely to repairs and replacing old rolling stock.

Mid-Island Transit reported that it would continue three Nassau demonstration routes after their subsidy period ended. The Hempstead–Plainview and Hicksville–Engineers Hill services were at or above break-even; the Massapequa route was still losing money but would continue while patronage developed. Tri-State surveys found that many passengers depended on the buses to reach work, offering a concrete result from the commission’s job-access experiments.

Governors Cahill and Rockefeller established a task force of Austin J. Tobin of the Port Authority, William J. Ronan of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and John C. Kohl, New Jersey’s transportation commissioner.

A reverse-flow bus lane began carrying New Jersey commuters along the 2½-mile I-495 approach to the Lincoln Tunnel. Coordinated by Tri-State and operated by the Port Authority with state and federal support, the demonstration let about 800 buses carrying 35,000 daily riders bypass morning congestion.

After Governor Cahill threatened to veto the Authority’s Kennedy Airport rail link unless it did as much for New Jersey, the commissioners agreed to survey a rail tunnel under the Hudson at Weehawken, and rail access to Newark Airport, and to examine improving and operating Penn Station in Newark.

Tobin told legislators from both states that the Port Authority could not enter mass transit on an unlimited deficit projection. Governor Cahill called it a “negative, defeatist attitude” and told New Jersey’s commissioners he regarded them as “the policy makers.” Theodore W. Kheel sued to void the 1962 covenant; the federal courts dismissed the case. Tobin retired in December.

Tobin, Ronan, and Kohl reported that connecting the Erie lines to the Penn Central at Harrison and Secaucus would give through service to Penn Station “possibly a decade sooner” than a new rail tunnel, but that “the long term needs of trans-Hudson travelers could best be met by a new rail tunnel into mid-Manhattan north of 42nd Street.”

Tri-State approved three contracts totaling $651,000 to improve bus travel between New Jersey and the Port Authority Bus Terminal. The program combined park-and-ride facilities, preferential bus access to Route 3 and equipment intended to identify buses and bill tolls without stopping them, with the Port Authority and New Jersey Turnpike Authority supervising the tolling work.

The Middlesex County Planning Board recommended that Tri-State withhold support for a $180,000 feasibility study of a 2½-mile monorail between Metropark and Woodbridge Center. County planners argued that the proposal was premature and inconsistent with the interstate plan’s emphasis on wider bus service, transfer facilities and park-and-ride connections.

After a successful one-year trial, the participating agencies agreed to retain the Lincoln Tunnel exclusive bus lane. Tri-State reported that it cut morning journeys by 10 to 25 minutes and attracted an estimated 2,300 additional daily peak-period bus riders; permanent traffic-control equipment was being prepared.

Tri-State revised its development plan to reflect county planning more closely while retaining a regional pattern of moderate growth separated by open land. The new map expanded development areas in parts of Middlesex County but kept several proposed housing sites open, illustrating how regional review of federal aid could influence local land-use choices.

The Department of Transportation presented a master plan with an estimated $3.1 billion in transit improvements, including a Weehawken tunnel to be built “by others.” “We have seen neither a plan nor a program but many projects lumped together,” said the Ridgewood Transportation Committee’s chairman.

Estimates by the Tri-State Regional Planning Commission through 1990 came to $12.2 billion for New York, $2.9 billion for New Jersey, and $256 million for Connecticut. Ridgewood’s newspapers proposed their own plan, starting with an Erie Lackawanna–Penn Central interchange at Secaucus for direct entry into Penn Station.

Governor Malcolm Wilson signed legislation repealing the covenant that barred the Authority from investing bondholder funds in “unprofitable” mass transit; New Jersey had already enacted it. A legal challenge by bondholders was expected. The repeal was said to open about $1 billion in bonding capacity for transit.

The Institute for Public Transportation proposed that the Tri-State Regional Planning Commission write a binding transportation master plan, with zoning review and power to withhold federal funds, and that an expanded Port Authority coordinate service across three states. “This would end the present practice of transit authorities writing their own plans,” its director said.

Tri-State released a five-year program for maintaining, operating and modestly expanding the region’s roads and public transportation, including $3 billion in North Jersey improvements. Chairman Raymond Schuler said it would guide federal transportation assistance while public comments were gathered, making inclusion in the plan a condition for receiving Washington’s funding.

The Hackensack Meadowlands Development Commission obtained support for approximately $177,000 in studies of internal travel and connections to outside rail and bus lines. Working with Tri-State, NJDOT and the Port Authority, it would refine engineering and passenger-demand estimates for a proposed Berry’s Creek transport center and a wider public-transport system.

The Institute for Public Transportation proposed a six-year program to cut fares, integrate transfers and extend subway service over commuter-rail tracks into the suburbs. Robert Rickles’s plan combined $3 billion in fare support with $3.4 billion in improvements, funded through redirected highway and airport-rail money, a regional payroll tax, bridge tolls, parking charges and operating efficiencies.

Transportation commissioner Alan Sagner asked federal officials to approve a $749 million rail program led by the Newark–Plainfield PATH extension. New Jersey coupled that project with electrification on the Morris and Essex and North Jersey Coast routes, arguing that studies of a future operating authority should not hold up capital approvals.

Changes in state law reshaped New York’s five-member Tri-State delegation to include representatives from Long Island and the lower Hudson Valley. The two suburban seats would join New York City’s representative and two state officials from January 1, 1979, reducing state-agency dominance and giving Long Island its first vote on the commission.

The Office of Management and Budget designated the Nassau-Suffolk Regional Planning Board to review federal-aid applications affecting only the two counties, effective immediately. About 85 percent of Long Island applications were expected to move out of Tri-State review; projects with wider regional effects, including Long Island Rail Road investments, remained subject to metropolitan review.

The Tri-State Regional Planning Commission, which supplied about half the Metropolitan Regional Council’s $500,000 budget, voted to end its support and continue payments only month to month. The council by then spent most of its effort on a closed-circuit television network linking local officials.

Tri-State unanimously approved executive director Frank T. Johnson’s reorganization, effective immediately. It combined road and transit planning in one division, added economic development to land-use planning and created a local-government assistance division to help communities find federal aid, responding to criticism that the agency was remote and ineffective.

A televised series asked how the region’s transportation should be managed. A columnist wrote that the Tri-State commission’s staff had “presided over the disasters” of unfinished projects “with nary a public whisper,” because it was “a planning commission with no responsibility to implement.”

The commission declined for a third meeting to explain how it approved Westway against its own plan. Connecticut passed laws letting towns petition to leave its jurisdiction, and the three governors appointed a 15-member task force. Of more than 2,500 Town Meeting participants, 98 percent wanted regional decision-making imposed on the splintered transportation agencies.

The council, the region’s only association of local governments, discontinued operation after losing its Tri-State funding. Its planning director wrote that “the voice of local government in this complex region of ours has been effectively silenced by governmental appointees.”

A staff report for the governors’ task force recommended dropping outer counties, including Somerset, Middlesex, Morris, Monmouth, and Passaic in New Jersey, on the ground that their economic ties to the New York core had weakened. “It flies in the face of every definition I have ever seen of the New York region,” said Middlesex County’s planning chairman.

Tri-State announced an $83,300 study program to find new uses for a factory in Danbury, a commercial building in South Norwalk and a vacant school in Shelton. The commission would provide $42,200 and local and Connecticut partners the balance, testing practical ways to reuse older buildings without financing the construction itself.

The 223-page report called for stronger commission leadership and a Tri-State Regional Forum to respond to communities. The panel’s director said one commissioner had never attended a meeting. The commission then had 220 employees, spent $14.7 million a year, three-quarters of it federal, and reviewed federal funding requests for 586 local governments.

Fifteen business officials from the three states, including the states’ economic development commissioners, formed a Tri-State Council of Economic Advisors to seek common approaches to interstate economic issues, among them deteriorated rail freight and passenger service.

After initially seeking reform, the governors’ task force unanimously concluded that Tri-State could not meet the region’s needs and recommended abolishing it. A letter delivered December 14 called for financial oversight, an orderly reassignment of federally required functions and a new framework for regional planning and policy analysis.

Connecticut’s withdrawal took effect and the commission, which for more than 20 years had been the conduit for about $3 billion in federal aid, was gone. The New York Metropolitan Transportation Council took its offices, serving New York City and five New York counties. “Without Tri-State there isn’t that kind of framework,” one planner said.

A New Jersey transportation panel proposed a high-speed commuter trolley line from a Meadowlands park-and-ride through a Weehawken tunnel and south along the waterfront to Hoboken, Exchange Place, and Jersey City, with a busway and limits on parking, at up to $850 million. The Regional Plan Association’s “River City” report called for a waterfront planning agency able to override local zoning.

Six major transportation agencies released a regional program for easier transfers, coordinated fares and electronic toll collection. The plan proposed shared NJ Transit–ferry and NJ Transit–PATH tickets as steps toward a regionwide pass, and a joint bridge tolling trial, while warning that existing public funds could not cover the region’s transport needs.

North Plainfield officials secured a one-year moratorium on New Jersey’s Route 22 widening project after it had reached final design. The pause allowed consultation over a scheme that would remove a substantial part of the town’s business tax base and affect its high-school grounds, giving local opposition time to reshape a state highway project.

The MTA board delayed adoption of its roughly $5 billion operating budget amid objections to funding monthly passes and free bus–subway transfers before Governor-elect George Pataki took office. Chairman Peter Stangl agreed to give the incoming administration time to review the Fare Deal, leaving fare integration tied to unresolved city, state and federal subsidy decisions.

The association’s 25-year plan called for folding the two agencies into a Regional Transportation Authority for New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, and for $25 billion in new rail lines. The Giuliani administration “expressed scant enthusiasm”; Port Authority executives said “melding them together will prove difficult.”

NJ Transit began weekend service through the Secaucus transfer station, connecting trains serving places such as Paterson with direct trains into Penn Station. By December the agency was preparing to extend the connection to all seven days, shortening the Paterson–Manhattan trip to about 45 minutes while local leaders continued to seek a one-seat ride.

Governor Chris Christie canceled the ARC trans-Hudson tunnel project, which had $3 billion in federal New Starts funding. A Record columnist later wrote that he “killed a trans-Hudson rail project without offering any alternative.”

After an NJ Transit fare-increase forum at Secaucus, The Record’s Alfred P. Doblin wrote that “the current mass transit model is not working” and that big projects “could be funded more easily if the costs were shared across a wider area.”

A deal between the federal government, New York, and New Jersey to fund Amtrak’s Gateway Project was brokered. The project included two new Hudson tunnels, a Penn Station south annex, a second Portal Bridge, and a loop for Bergen County trains.

The U.S. Department of Transportation proposed requiring multiple metropolitan planning organizations in one region to merge or draft a unified plan. Since Tri-State’s end the New York region had splintered into as many as ten such organizations, none crossing a state line. Three associations of planning organizations asked that the proposal be withdrawn.

Senator Charles Schumer said federal financing for two new Hudson rail tunnels could be in place in two years, with construction beginning in 2019. The preliminary cost estimate was $23 billion. “We need the states of New York and New Jersey, working through the Port Authority, to come through,” said Senator Robert Menendez.

The Regional Plan Association released a three-phase rail vision linking services across New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. It called for Gateway and direct access for the Pascack Valley and Port Jervis lines, followed by revived West Shore passenger service and a Manhattan rail tunnel toward Brooklyn, with closer MTA–NJ Transit coordination rather than a merger of the three commuter railroads.

Governor Kathy Hochul proposed accelerating reconstruction of the existing Penn Station instead of waiting for the new Hudson tunnels. The plan would remove part of the upper concourse, add daylight and a glass atrium, and improve access to platforms; its estimated cost was at least $6 billion, with New Jersey, Amtrak and federal cost sharing still under discussion.