New Jersey Transit has recently decided to pursue the restoration of rail transit service on all three of the lines it had been examining in its West Shore Region Major Investment Study. It has recommended two electric light rail lines and one conventional diesel train service for presently freight-only routes in eastern Bergen County.

Residents of the county may be wondering when passenger rail service will be restored to their communities. Much of this will depend on negotiations between New Jersey Transit and the two rail freight companies, Norfolk Southern and CSX Transportation, that will take over Conrail operations in the state this year. NJ Transit doesn't own any of the three lines in the study, and the new freight operators want to maintain capacity for future increases of their own traffic. See Map

Northern Branch

CSX will be the new owner of The Northern Branch, now a single track line with about five freight trains per week. However, CSX may want to keep any light rail operations on a separate track. The company prefers not to "time share" its tracks by moving freight operations to the overnight hours because many of its shippers are closed at night. (Light rail cars of the type used in the United States are prohibited by Federal Railroad Administration regulations from mixing with regular railroad trains.) Mike Brimmer, an official of CSX, has stated that his company, "having purchased the right to operate over the Northern Branch . . . would like to develop additional rail freight business on it. Our Sales and Marketing people are currently pursuing a number of possibilities."

New Jersey Transit has proposed a double-track light rail line for the Northern Branch up to the vicinity of Tenalfy. On its southern end, the line would run into the Hudson-Bergen light rail system, possibly using a new connection to the proposed Vince Lombardi park-and-ride. This plan assumes that freight trains would use the track between midnight and 5:00 AM when passenger service is not operating.

New Jersey Transit might have been able to solve the freight train compatibility problem by using conventional diesel trains on the Northern Branch, but it has already rejected this option. Regular passenger trains cannot be pass through a bottleneck in North Bergen - the pre-1966 route of Erie-Lackawanna trains - because NJ Transit says that the right-of-way is needed for freight service, a possible extension of the future Portway truck highway, and the Hudson-Bergen light rail line. According to NJ Transit, "There is room through this section for only one passenger rail line. The Hudson Bergen [LRT] is a committed passenger project which will use this section..."

Passenger service north of Tenafly is no longer under consideration, along the route is still intact to a point just above the state line. Beyond there, the right-of-way through Sparkill in Rockland County has been converted into a recreational trail

Susquehanna Line

Norfolk Southern will have a stake on what happens on the Susquehanna Line (also dubbed the "Cross County Line"). The freight operator will use a portion of the route, along with the New York, Susquehanna, and Western Railroad, which now has five daily freight trains. NJ Transit's proposal is for a single-track extension (with passing sidings) of the Hudson-Bergen LRT from the Vince Lombardi park-and-ride to Hackensack and beyond. An adjacent track will be reserved for the freight service. An earlier version of the plan had light rail terminating at a new park-and-ride in Saddle Brook, the town where I-80 and the Garden State Parkway meet. (A connection to the present Bergen County Line service at that point was not included.) Last summer NJ Transit officials admitted to "reluctance" on the part of Saddle Brook because of concerns about traffic to the parking lot and blockage of grade crossings. The route was cut back to Maywood in the vicinity of Route 17, although it hasn't been decided if there would be a park-and-ride at that location.

There is a wild card in the Cross-County situation. NJ Transit has said that a 5.1-mile extension to Paterson, a city of 140,000, may be feasible. Their consultants have determined that going to the Silk City might increase ridership by 60%. Presumably street running would be needed to reach the center of the city. Having Paterson as the end point would take some of the pressure off Saddle Brook and Maywood. A transfer station with the Bergen County line could be built without a parking lot, and Saddle Brook could get the benefits of new transit service without the downside of having motorists coming into its streets from nearby highways.

West Shore Line

NJ Transit has settled on a single-track, diesel locomotive hauled service from Hoboken to West Nyack (with a possible extension to West Haverstraw) as the only viable option for the namesake route of the study. However, the West Shore presents some serious challenges for passenger service. It is notable that this is the only one of the three routes where NJ Transit presently has operating rights. However, CSX has told NJ Transit that it may want two tracks exclusively for freight service. (Conrail presently runs about 20 daily freights on a single track.) Thus a third track would have to be built for NJ Transit service. The right-of-way up to Dumont is wide (it once had four tracks), but north of there a third track may be difficult to construct; for example, bridges and crossings, including the one over the Oradell Reservoir, would have to be rebuilt or expanded.

The southern end of the line also presents some problems. Until 1959 the New York Central operated trains through the Weehawken tunnel to a ferry terminal. Now the ferries are back, but the tunnel is reserved for the Hudson-Bergen LRT. In addition the North Bergen bottleneck affects the West Shore as well as the Northern Branch. Light rail could get through the area by using the future Hudson-Bergen LRT (like the Northern Branch would), but NJ Transit has ruled out light rail on the West Shore because it would have to share certain track elements with freight trains. With these constraints, the only option now under consideration is to build an entirely new right-of-way. This would turn off near Vince Lombardi station, run parallel to the New Jersey turnpike, pass through the Meadowlands sports complex, and connect with the Bergen and Pascack lines near Berry's Creek. From there trains would reach Secaucus Transfer and Hoboken Terminal. This new segment would cost about $135 million, with some of the price needed for the construction of an elevated trestle. It is a rather roundabout line for passengers headed for Manhattan. In addition, permits would be needed from the Army Corp of Engineers for extensive construction in wetlands.

The expensive new alignment on the southern end and heavy freight traffic to the north make the West Shore route a difficult place to get new service quickly. In addition, the route crosses the state line into Rockland County and would require the involvement of the New York MTA. The MTA already operates trains on the upper portions of the Pascack Valley and Port Jervis lines, but during its history the agency has not shown much interest in developing new services for the county.

Access to New York

Beyond the immediate concern of the West Shore study there is the question of how the crowded connecting services into New York City will carry more passengers given to them at Secaucus, Hoboken, and Weehawken. New rail lines in Bergen and Rockland may remove some riders from buses, giving relief for the Lincoln Tunnel express bus lane, but the load will then be shifted to the Northeast Corridor, the PATH system, and the cross-Hudson ferries. Recently New Jersey Transit, the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority, and the Port Authority have been conducting the Access to the Region's Core (ARC) study of the increasingly overloaded transit services from New Jersey into Manhattan. The ARC study has been evaluating adding capacity into Penn Station by increasing the number of tracks under the river from two to four. The Committee for Better Transit (CBT) has a tentative suggestion for converting two lanes of the Lincoln Tunnel into light rail tracks. However, the ARC and CBT concepts may not be mutually exclusive; they actually serve different markets. Light rail in the Lincoln Tunnel would be most beneficial for riders from Hudson, parts of Bergen, and possibly Passaic Counties. More capacity into Penn Station would also help Bergen, but it would be particularly useful for commuter rail riders from more distant points in Essex, Morris, Union, Somerset, Middlesex, and Monmouth Counties. Of course the Port Authority owns the Lincoln Tunnel, and it remains to be seen whether that agency would even consider reducing motor vehicle capacity across the Hudson River. It might be worthwhile to get public attention for both ideas. Considering the present difficulties in commuting across the Hudson, New Jerseyans might be receptive to some bold changes.

Prospects for the Future

Until recently the Bergen part of the Hudson-Bergen line referred only to the Vince Lombardi park-and-ride. Now that tracks are actually being built in Hudson County, the residents of Bergen and Rockland may increasingly see new rail service as a something tangible that could benefit their communities.

However, although eastern Bergen County is well supplied with rail lines, no passenger service has been run there for more than three decades. The rail infrastructure is now set up for freight service, and NJ Transit would be a tenant on all three lines. Issues involving CSX and Norfolk Southern will probably remain unclear until they complete their takeover of Conrail this year.

Although NJ Transit hopes to develop all three routes, it will likely have to build them in phases rather than doing everything in one large project. So far no funding is in place to actually construct what has been proposed in the West Shore study. In fact, the northern half of the Hudson-Bergen LRT hasn't been funded either, and that will have to be built before light rail can be extended into Bergen County.