Call it blackmail.
Jeffrey Warsh, executive director of NJ Transit, has told South Brunswick officials that if they want a train station built along the Northeast Corridor rail line, it will have to take the Lakehurst-to-Monmouth Junction line, as well.
Mr. Warsh said last week a South Brunswick rail station would only worsen traffic in the area. He said without the Lakehurst line, Shore area commuters would have no choice but to pack South Brunswick roads on their way to Monmouth Junction.
"The worst thing that could happen to South Brunswick is to get a station on the Northeast Corridor without an artery for it to go to," he said. "It would be a traffic nightmare with all the people trying to avoid Route 9 traffic."
Apparently, he believes residents of Freehold Borough and Township, Howell and other Monmouth County towns would travel 45 minutes west by car on narrow local roads to avoid the trip north on Route 9.
Has he seen a map?
NJ Transit is considering two rail alignments, one running from Lakehurst in Ocean County through Farmingdale to the North Jersey Coast Line in Red Bank, the other running from Lakehurst to Farmingdale and then west to the Northeast Corridor in South Brunswick.
South Brunswick residents and officials – and their neighbors in Monroe and Jamesburg and the Middesex County Freeholders – have been fighting the west-bound rail proposal since it was proposed in 1996. Opponents fear the train – known as the Middlesex-Ocean-Monmouth, or MOM, line – will create noise and safety problems for those living near the line, while doing nothing to alleviate local traffic problems. They say folks in Monmouth County, who will see the greatest benefits from the line, should be made to live with the inconveniences.
Legislators from heavily Republican Monmouth and Ocean counties, however, have been pushing hard for the line to run to South Brunswick. And politics being what it is, the Whitman administration – in the guise of its NJ Transit chief – is all too willing to do their bidding.
Mr. Warsh has spent the last two years on the stump trying to sell the rail plan to residents of southern Middlesex County. It was a chicken in every pot – or at least a train station in every town. Cost appeared to be no object.
His sales pitch in Jamesburg included not just a rail station in the borough, but the complete revitalization of the central business district including a boardwalk-style business area along Thompson Park.
The hard sell hasn’t worked. The towns opposed to the line remain opposed, and there is growing opposition to the line among residents of both Monmouth and Ocean counties.
So apparently, it’s time to play hardball. Mr. Warsh plans to hold talks about a South Brunswick rail station hostage until he gets his way on the MOM line – a foolish stance given South Brunswick’s location at the center of the busy Route 1 corridor and yet another indication that he has little sense of the region’s transit needs.
The empirical evidence would seem to support the need for a South Brunswick rail station, independent of the Lakewood line.
South Brunswick residents appear interested in a local station. There is a high volume of commuters using the Park and Ride bus facility in South Brunswick and the Princeton Junction and two New Brunswick rail stations – the three nearest to South Brunswick. And Route 1 is fast becoming a parking lot.
A more scientific study does need to be conducted and other factors – including the station’s cost to build and operate, who would operate it, what kind of road access it would need and who would build it – need to be weighed before any decisions could be made.
For Mr. Warsh to tie the projects together is nothing short of blackmail and indicates he is more interested in what legislators in Monmouth and Ocean counties want than in what is best for residents living and working here.
