NJ Transit doesn’t get it: Rail route makes no sense

As if the half-billion dollar cost of routing NJ Transit’s proposed Monmouth-Ocean-Middlesex rail line to South Brunswick weren’t enough, another good reason to derail this bad idea is in the news this week.

Five companies that want to build a ferry terminal and start commuter service to Wall Street have presented plans to South Amboy and Middlesex County officials. The winning firm will be announced at the end of the month.

If NJ Transit wants to get 1,500 commuters from the Lakewood area out of their cars or off buses in Monmouth and Ocean counties, the new rail line should go due north on existing tracks — through Farmingdale and Red Bank to Matawan. There, the North Jersey Coast Line would take the commuters to South Amboy, where they can board ferries to lower Manhattan or continue on the trains to North Jersey and midtown Manhattan.

That makes more sense than running trains westward through Monroe and Jamesburg to the Northeast Corridor Line in South Brunswick for a two-hour trip from Lakewood to Manhattan. New Jersey taxpayers would have to subsidize such a zig zag route with $1 million a month for the benefit of just 1,500 people. The actual number of commuters willing to spend four hours a day on trains would probably be much lower.

South Amboy is the latest of several coast towns which have or will have ferry service to New York City. Perth Amboy, on the North Jersey Coast Line, is another.

NJ Transit doesn’t get it. Previous feasibility studies have proved that a convoluted route through Middlesex County doesn’t make sense and will certainly lose dollars.

The required economic and environmental studies for the latest attempt to railroad this idea across our local roads and through downtown Jamesburg will kill it again.

Richard Wieland

Monroe