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.

At the Port Authority’s request, engineers Coverdale & Colpitts studied improved rail access between Newark Airport and Manhattan. Their proposal extended Hudson & Manhattan to the airport and reorganized rail connections around it; the Inter-Municipal Group for Better Rail Service later objected that the arrangement would lengthen Jersey Central commuters’ journeys.

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.

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.

New York Central president Alfred E. Perlman disclosed that the railroad was considering elimination of West Shore passenger trains and ferries to reduce losses. Assemblyman William V. Musto urged intervention by the governors and the Port Authority, while Weehawken officials said they would await a formal abandonment application before acting.

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.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

The Newark Citizens Committee on Municipal Government proposed that Newark, Jersey City, Hoboken, Harrison and New York City create a North Jersey Transit Authority to purchase the bankrupt Hudson & Manhattan Railroad. Bonds backed by the five municipalities would finance acquisition and connections to the Jersey Central and New York subways; local officials differed over whether the Port Authority should instead take the responsibility.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.”

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.”

The Senate gave unanimous consent, adding amendments that required Congressional approval of the agency’s long-range plan and of any change in the compact. The resolution went to President Eisenhower.

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.

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 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 Regional Plan Association endorsed the Port Authority’s proposed H&M acquisition as an emergency measure while calling for eventual coordination by a three-state commuter agency. It urged studying through service and connections with New Jersey railroads and New York subways before buying equipment or investing heavily in the uptown tubes. RPA also opposed acquiring the Hudson Terminal office building solely as a profit-making real-estate investment.

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.