New Jersey's congressional delegation should support a $15 million federal grant to New York City to fund an environmental impact study of a cross-harbor freight tunnel. Funding this New York project is more important to the economic and physical well-being of New Jerseyans than any project in this state.Last year, New York City completed a feasibility study of a tunnel to connect Brooklyn and New Jersey. It found that such a tunnel would reduce city-bound cross-harbor truck traffic by the tonnage equivalent of 1 million tractor-trailers.
With a container port in Brooklyn, now needed due to a lack of space in Newark Bay, another half-million trailer loads would be diverted from highway crossings.
The city study did not consider the effect of a tunnel in diverting suburban Long Island and Westchester-Connecticut traffic. That is at least another half-million trailer loads a year. It also did not consider that all of these trucks would also be removed from New Jersey's highways.
Two million trucks is 5,480 vehicles every day of the year. Assuming that each truck occupies not less than 100 feet of highway space, each day a tunnel would remove a line of trucks over 103 miles long from the Hudson River crossings and New Jersey highways.
How is this possible? A modern intermodal train carries two trailer equivalents in every 65 feet; 5,488 containers fit on 110 trains, 55 each way each day, or more than two an hour in each direction through the city's proposed tunnel. A train car handling carload freight can carry over 100 tons, four times the capacity of a truck, all in 89 feet or less. Thus 103 miles of trucks would be well below the daily capacity of a double-track rail tunnel.
The air quality benefits to New Jersey from a tunnel would be tremendous. New York City found that by removing just a million trucks from city highways, 3,501 tons of toxic emissions would be removed from its air each year. Add in maritime and suburban traffic, and that figure becomes 7,002 tons. This benefit is to be realized even though diesel trucks would still deliver the freight locally from a central rail terminal in Queens.
For every truck mile or pound of pollutants reduced within New York City, New Jersey saves at least 4.5. All the freight diverted to the tunnel would have traveled about 15 miles on city streets but would have traveled over 70 miles on New Jersey highways to get to the city.
New York's tunnel is the only pubic work being considered in the tristate region that could have a material effect on congestion or air quality. Making sure New York get federal funds to implement this plan should be a top New Jersey priority.
John McHugh of Ho-Ho-Kus is a lawyer in New York.