Regional governance timeline

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.

After two years studying commuter transportation, the Regional Plan Association recommended a special interstate commission to examine the regional transportation system as a whole. President Paul Windels later presented that proposal as the basis for a fresh approach to rail investment and Manhattan congestion.

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.

Senator David Van Alstyne introduced a metropolitan rapid-transit commission bill in New Jersey on February 11; Senator Greenberg of Brooklyn introduced its counterpart in New York on February 21. The Regional Plan Association endorsed the two bills on March 3, arguing that rail improvements were essential to relieving road congestion.

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.

Hudson & Manhattan Railroad president William Reid proposed a five-year, $250 million program combining the existing downtown Hudson Terminal loop with a new uptown loop serving Rockefeller Center, Grand Central and Herald Square. A new New York–New Jersey public authority would take over the railroad as the nucleus of the system.

Former New York State Senator John A. Hastings presented the transit commissions with a proposal to use the Long Island Rail Road and new routes linking Long Island, Manhattan, New Jersey and Staten Island. He proposed a bi-state authority financed with tax-exempt revenue bonds and advertised trains capable of 150 miles an hour.

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.

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 Metropolitan Rapid Transit Commission voted to study New Jersey routes linking Newark, Passaic, Paterson and Hackensack, north–south travel in Hudson County, and transit associated with the Essex County Freeway. These investigations would be coordinated with interstate work and newly contracted studies for Westchester, Long Island and Staten Island.

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.

The Citizens United Transit Committee adopted a resolution seeking preservation of metropolitan passenger rail and ferry services until the Metropolitan Rapid Transit Commission completed its study. The group asked regulators to withhold abandonment approvals and urged legislative intervention if they had not acted by June 30.

Representatives of West Shore, Erie Northern Branch and Susquehanna commuters formed the Suburban Transit Association at Teaneck to coordinate resistance to service abandonment. James P. Birch became temporary chairman of the organization, which initially represented about 8,000 riders and planned to bring in additional railroad groups.

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.

The chamber announced it would present its program to the commission on September 10. Three points, including a new East River tunnel at 76th Street, were already in engineering studies the commission had authorized.

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.”

Regional Plan Association vice president C. McKim Norton called on New Jersey, New York and federal regulators to maintain existing rail and connecting ferry facilities until the metropolitan transit study and commission recommendations were available. RPA argued that physical facilities and, wherever possible, current service levels should be retained during that work.

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.

The New Jersey Legislature passed Senator Malcolm S. Forbes’s resolution asking that decisions on passenger-service curtailments wait until the Metropolitan Rapid Transit Commission reported. The resolution sought to preserve the operating rail network while a coordinated regional replacement was being considered.

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.

New Jersey’s Public Utility Commission deferred decisions on passenger-service reductions until the Metropolitan Rapid Transit Commission delivered its year-end report. Applying the Legislature’s resolution to the Susquehanna’s pending petition, the commission said the future of the region’s entire transportation system had to be considered.

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 Bergen County Chamber of Commerce announced opposition to Arthur W. Page’s $400 million rail-loop proposal, calling its prospective operating deficits economically unsound. The chamber urged continuation of the Metropolitan Rapid Transit Commission, with additional money if needed, to study more practical alternatives using existing facilities.

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 proposed shifting Queens and Brooklyn riders to expanded rapid transit so that the Long Island Rail Road could give Nassau and Suffolk faster service. The recommendations included eventual rapid-transit use of the Port Washington branch, fewer suburban stations, stronger feeder-bus service and additional station parking.

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.

Governor Robert B. Meyner declined to endorse the Metropolitan Rapid Transit Commission’s $500 million loop, calling construction a Herculean task while warning that Hudson & Manhattan might soon shut down. He pressed the need for an immediate alternative for commuters as Jersey City sought cost estimates for a Jersey Central connection to the tubes.

Hudson & Manhattan trustee Herman T. Stichman outlined a $190 million alternative connecting the existing downtown tubes to the Lexington Avenue subway and the uptown branch to the Sixth Avenue subway, with a new Hudson tunnel near 59th Street. He proposed public acquisition of the profitable Hudson Terminal buildings to offset much of the system’s subsidy requirement.

The Metropolitan Regional Conference postponed specific action on the proposed transit district after a Hunter College debate. A committee led by Jersey City Mayor Charles S. Witkowski had urged inclusion of Connecticut and coordination through the conference itself; members called for further study after transit director Frank H. Simon defended a district with statutory powers.

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.

The Joint Committee of Municipal Groups of Northern New Jersey publicly opposed creation of a separate transit authority. Counsel Augustus S. Dreier argued that the Port Authority’s existing revenues and coordinated control of rail and road facilities offered a way to sustain commuter service without new local taxation.

At a three-hour meeting convened by Senator Donald C. Fox, Essex County representatives resisted an appeal from transit co-chairmen Edward J. O’Mara and Charles H. Tuttle to support the bi-state district bill. They objected to deficit financing, New Jersey’s prospective share of costs and New York City’s representation; only the Glen Ridge representatives supported the plan.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In his annual legislative message, Governor Robert B. Meyner endorsed the Assembly’s substitute for the rejected 32-member transit district. The revised approach called for a ten-member board, excluded a real-estate tax and left room for Port Authority financial assistance; Meyner required responsiveness to local groups and veto powers protecting each state and its governor.

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.”

Section 4.5 of the New York–New Jersey Transportation Agency compact ended the Metropolitan Rapid Transit Commission’s existence except for winding up its affairs and directed that its records pass to the new agency. New Jersey’s statutes date the commission’s expiration to May 4, 1959, when the state completed its enactment of the compact (chapter 13 of the Laws of 1959, as amended by chapter 24); Congress consented on September 21, 1959. A 1963 Daily News retrospective later said the commission had “quietly expired in March, 1959.” Its work on adapting Long Island Rail Road lines and building an East River crossing remained part of later New York City transit debates.

The Inter-Municipal Group for Better Rail Service voted unanimously to revive the Metropolitan Rapid Transit Commission’s independent loop proposal. Representing eighteen municipalities along the Jersey Central corridor, the group criticized Highway Commissioner Dwight Palmer’s handling of passenger service and sought direct access to Manhattan through new Hudson tunnels and an uptown–downtown subway. The vote kept the larger loop alternative alive as the state pursued consolidation of existing rail services.