Regional governance timeline

Engineer L. Alfred Jenny proposed a loop rapid-transit line from the Hackensack Meadows under the Hudson to about 57th Street, down Manhattan, and back through Jersey City, with transfer stations wherever it crossed a New Jersey railroad. The New York–New Jersey Port and Harbor Development Commission turned it down. Jenny kept offering variations for 30 years.

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 Legislature established the Regional Planning Commission, headed by Senator David Van Alstyne. Its work developed a regional approach to the metropolitan rail problem and preceded the separate New York and New Jersey rapid-transit commissions created in 1952.

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.

Governor Driscoll appointed the commission’s members, among them Senator Van Alstyne. The legislation creating it provided $50,000 for studies of transit improvements. New York had set up a separate commission of its own.

Goodhue Livingston Jr. criticized the New York commission for “dragging its feet” and said it had been stymied by Governor Dewey. The commission’s vice chairman acknowledged that no staff had been hired; New York had given its commission $10,000 and New Jersey $20,000.

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.

New Jersey Senator Malcolm S. Forbes announced a redrafted resolution asking the Metropolitan Rapid Transit Commission to study existing and potential rail facilities. He proposed that the Port Authority finance the study and undertake no additional projects not already under construction until potential rapid-transit solutions had been examined.

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.

The Regional Plan Association recommended extending the BMT 14th Street–Canarsie line beneath the Hudson from its Eighth Avenue terminus to the western Jersey City meadows. The proposal would connect converging commuter railroads and parking areas with Manhattan’s north–south subways and direct service to Brooklyn.

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 Averell Harriman signed New York’s renewal of the Metropolitan Rapid Transit Commission and a $150,000 appropriation conditioned on an equal contribution from New Jersey. The measure restored the New York commission’s statutory authority after the previous Legislature expired at the end of 1954, but the funds still depended on action across the Hudson.

At Governor Robert B. Meyner’s request, the entire New Jersey membership of the Metropolitan Rapid Transit Commission resigned so that he could select a new delegation. Chairman Charles H. Tuttle said the resulting lack of a quorum prevented contracts, consultant appointments and other official action while the replacement members awaited Senate confirmation.

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.

The Monmouth County Planning Board adopted a resolution urging the commission to include the county in its study of New York–New Jersey transit problems, citing its growth in year-round commuter traffic.

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.

John A. Kervick of the commission told the Jersey City Real Estate Board that rail transit everywhere requires some public support, but that the commission expected a proposal costing “no way near the fantastic estimates of a billion and upward.” Co-chairman Charles H. Tuttle warned the same day that only a strong interstate body could keep a transportation policy going.

Paul W. Johnston told the Bergen County Chamber of Commerce that commuter railroads should be paid for unprofitable service as utilities are, with any excess cost spread among the municipalities that benefit. The Record concluded that the choice in rail commuter service “seems to be abandonment or subsidy.”

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.

Representative Frank C. Osmers Jr. proposed an alternative to building new Hudson tunnels: use Hudson & Manhattan’s tubes, the planned George Washington Bridge lower deck and, if necessary, a Lincoln Tunnel tube. The tentative proposal sought economies in a regional loop, but confronted capacity limits and prior commitments of the road crossings to motor traffic.

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.”

State Senator Walter H. Jones of Bergen County pledged to support a workable program after the commission’s final report, but hoped it would not carry “a $12 million deficit millstone around its neck.”

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.

The Transportation Act of 1958 expanded the Interstate Commerce Commission’s authority over railroad passenger-service discontinuances. The Metropolitan Rapid Transit Commission warned that reliance on state regulators and courts could no longer assure continued commuter operations, while Senator Clifford P. Case later called for an investigation of the drive to abandon services.

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.

A Metropolitan Rapid Transit Commission staff report recommended modernizing the existing New York Central and New Haven services rather than building a parallel subway system for Westchester. It favored a metropolitan district acquiring control of the suburban services and operating them directly or by contract, with Westchester and Fairfield supplying an estimated $1.706 million annual subsidy.

Senator Walter H. Jones introduced a bill to create a Metropolitan Transit District with a 32-member council, 16 from each state, and $150,000 a year from each state for five years. An identical bill was introduced in the New York Legislature the same day. Any plan would need approval from both Legislatures.

Democrats delayed a Senate vote on the Jones bill. Senator William F. Kelly of Hudson said: “I shall not let the Page report erase Hudson County from the map and run a loop around it instead of through it.” Jones replied that the new agency was meant to produce a plan more acceptable to the public.

New York’s Public Service Commission authorized New York Central to end passenger service on its Putnam Division. The decision sharpened the regional debate over whether to preserve existing commuter lines while New York and New Jersey considered a new metropolitan transit district.

Governor Harriman approved New York’s participation in the bi-state district. Mayor Wagner, as chairman of the Metropolitan Regional Council, had urged more study. “I do not believe we should wait for another year,” Harriman said. The district still needed New Jersey’s approval and ratification by Congress.

The Moonachie Borough Council circulated a resolution asking Bergen County freeholders to appoint a committee on the merits of municipal consolidation. The proposal entered a wider debate over the county’s fragmented local government, as Hackensack Area Development Association director Walter D. Head urged planning for land use and services beyond individual town boundaries.

The council of elected officials voted unanimously to oppose the bill. The Times called it a “curious subversion of stated purpose.” The council’s secretary, Maxwell Lehman, answered that members wanted a tri-state approach that included Westchester and Fairfield from the start and did not separate transit from traffic, and that the council had authorized itself to draft a new measure.

Most legislators from the North and Central Jersey counties that would join the district, apart from Bergen, opposed it, reasoning that any commuter rail service would run a deficit their constituents would pay. Assemblyman William V. Musto of Hudson introduced a bill to make the Port Authority take on the task instead.

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.

At a Trenton conference over commuter service, Governor Robert B. Meyner suggested a separate Port Authority rapid-transit division whose bonds would be guaranteed, and deficits met, by New York and New Jersey. The proposal sought to preserve the Authority’s credit while giving it a rail role, though Meyner acknowledged the difficulty of obtaining public approval.

Herman T. Stichman, trustee of the bankrupt Hudson & Manhattan Railroad, told a Bergen County group that the Port Authority “has never concerned itself with the rail transportation problems of the metropolitan area.” He said connecting Erie and Susquehanna trains to the tubes and subways could be done for less than $100,000,000.

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.

Jersey City Mayor Witkowski, who had led the council’s opposition to the district, called its traffic and transportation committee together: “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.” Senator Clifford P. Case called for a Senate investigation of efforts to rid railroads of commuter service.

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.

Asked by Senator Lance whether the Authority might help pay for a connection between the Jersey Central and the Hudson & Manhattan, estimated at $15 to $40 million, Austin J. Tobin replied that it was legally impossible to contribute from present revenues or reserves.

The Plainfield Common Council voted unanimously for the resolution despite a letter from Tobin warning that involvement in the rail crisis “could well lead to the destruction of the Port Authority as a useful agent.” The sponsor answered that “the Port Authority was created to do this job.”

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 association endorsed the Metropolitan Regional Council’s effort, through Mayor Wagner, to establish an agency representing the three states, New York City, and the council. It said the bi-state agency, “while in being is not yet in operation,” could be enlarged or replaced, and urged applying for federal highway planning funds for a comprehensive study.

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 Port Authority agreed to devote up to 10 percent of its general reserve fund annually to commuter-rail improvements under legislation prepared for New York and New Jersey. The proposal marked a departure from its resistance to rail subsidies, but its financial limits soon became a central dispute in the legislation to acquire the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad.

Assembly transportation chairman J. Edward Crabiel opposed the H&M purchase bill he had co-sponsored, promising to overhaul restrictions on further Port Authority rail commitments. He also challenged the linkage between acquiring the railroad and approving the World Trade Center, arguing that New Jersey should receive comparable benefits. The dispute exposed disagreement over whether the H&M rescue would begin a broader transit role or limit it.

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.

The 1962 Highway Act required federally aided metropolitan highway projects to emerge from a continuing, comprehensive planning process carried out cooperatively by states and local communities. The cutoff for projects outside that process was July 1, 1965. Tri-State’s land-use and transportation work offered a way for the three-state region to qualify, making durable regional cooperation a condition of access to federal highway money.

As the council sought formal membership agreements, the Westchester Board of Supervisors voted 26 to 7 against joining and Suffolk also refused. The council’s secretary said “hate literature” was being circulated. Mayor Wagner and Westchester’s county executive defended it as a voluntary agency; the latter said, “If it weren’t for the council, New Haven Railroad probably wouldn’t be operating today.”

Governor Dempsey proposed $1 million in state aid to the bankrupt New Haven railroad, available only if Connecticut’s Legislature approved the Tri-State Transportation Commission compact. New York had approved the compact; Connecticut’s Senate had passed it and its House had sent it to committee. Connecticut would bear 10 percent of administrative costs and the other two states 45 percent each.

At a joint Senate–House subcommittee hearing in New York, Arthur M. Cromarty of Suffolk County called himself “an outspoken foe of the Metropolitan Regional Council,” and two New Jersey county officials warned of a weakening of home rule. About 50 opponents from New Jersey counties attended.

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.

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.

A Bridgeport Post columnist argued that the bankrupt railroad’s plight was part of a larger problem of treating transport as a unit, and that “a Tri-State Transportation Authority for the New York Region makes sense.”

In a 12-point memorandum the association recommended that the three states establish a public corporation to maintain, modernize, and consolidate all rail commuter service, with the states bearing current deficits. Its president said any faltering of New Jersey’s railroads “would have several times the effect” of the New Haven’s.

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.

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.

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.

County Executive Nickerson urged Vice President Humphrey to support a tri-state transportation authority with power to make and enforce decisions. He praised the Tri-State commission as a step forward but said its “limited authority” kept it from putting projects to work.

The governors of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut unveiled a 20-year transportation program prepared by the Tri-State Transportation Commission. The proposal combined rail, highway, and bridge improvements and raised the possibility of unified regional operations and financing.

Contemporary accounts disagree on the total: The Record and Newsday reported $10 billion on May 19, while The Star-Ledger’s May 20 editorial described a $20 billion program.

Governor Hughes proposed that the Port Authority study how to hook up the railroads crossing the Meadows, by physical connection or transfer stations. The Jersey Journal recounted 45 years of failed “master plans” and quoted Governor Dempsey on the Tri-State committee’s founding: “Today we are going to appoint a committee to study the study committees.”

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

The Regional Plan Association began its Choices for ’76 television series, asking residents across the three-state region to vote on housing, transportation and other planning alternatives. The films linked land use with travel behavior and invited group discussion, with results intended for public officials as evidence of regional preferences.

Tri-State authorized a $250,000 study of proposed faster rail service between Suffern and New York, sponsored by the MTA and funded two-thirds by the federal government. It would examine the Erie Lackawanna right-of-way, stations, parking and road access, with Rockland County and affected municipalities contributing to the review.

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.

The New Jersey Supreme Court upheld the two states’ repeal of the 1962 covenant restricting Port Authority investment in deficit-producing transit. The majority held that the agency could enter mass transportation but was not obliged to do so; Justice Morris Pashman urged a court order requiring regional transit planning, while Governor Brendan Byrne called for the authority to expand its financial involvement.

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.

Governors Hugh Carey, Brendan Byrne and Ella Grasso urged federal officials to reject Nassau and Suffolk’s bid for a separate federal-aid clearinghouse. Carey argued that Long Island remained an integral part of the metropolitan region, while local leaders vowed to continue their campaign and criticized the absence of a Long Island vote on Tri-State.

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.

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.

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.

The Legislature’s Appropriations Committee deleted the $140,000 that would have been Connecticut’s share. New York and New Jersey began work to continue as a two-state commission. Tri-State’s director said withdrawal could cost Connecticut more than it saved.

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.

NJPIRG and allied organizations announced the Alliance for Transportation Reform at the State House as New Jersey’s Transportation Trust Fund approached renewal. Its platform tied new revenue to stronger transit, demand management, road pricing, bicycle and pedestrian funding, and land-use changes that reduced dependence on cars.

NYMTC’s Program, Finance and Administration Committee adopted a candidate list for major-investment studies that omitted the Cross-Westchester I-287 widening, Gowanus Expressway reconstruction and Goethals Bridge expansion. Advocates challenged the exclusions as evading ISTEA’s alternatives analysis; director Ray Ruggieri subsequently offered discussions on how projects were defined and selected.

The Federal Transit Administration agreed to a $2.6 billion grant for East Side Access as the project’s estimated cost reached $6.3 billion. Although a Sunnyside station had been included in the earlier environmental approval, no portion of this grant was specifically set aside for it, leaving the local station outside the project’s primary budget.

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 MTA canceled the planned Sunnyside commuter-rail station to save time as East Side Access faced mounting costs and delays. Removing it allowed work on Harold Interlocking to advance by a year, but left western Queens without the promised Penn Station connection.

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.