Guest Column
For the next several years, the Monmouth County Board of Free-holders will be paying lobbyists to secure federal funds for a project that defies common sense. It is the last in a trio sponsored by the late former Freeholder Director, Harry Larrison Jr. He called them his legacy.
The Lakehurst/Freehold suburban rail service to Newark via Monmouth Junction or, as they call it, the Monmouth-Ocean-Mid-dlesex line (MOM) will require record amounts of lobbying costs before construction dollars are finally wasted.
The first of the boondoggles was the Belford Ferry Terminal. It swallowed more than $23 million in public funds and replaced three privately developed Bayshore terminals run by taxpaying ferry operators. Its opening did not increase the numbers of ferry commuters, just consolidated them into subsidized locations.
The second prize for the freeholders was obtaining $50 million in federal and state grants for Monmouth County to buy the general aviation airport at Allaire (Wall Township). The change to public ownership will have no impact on the number or type of aircraft using the facility. The owner/developer, Ed Brown, will be replaced by an army of county government managers and professional (no bid) contractors.
After our freeholders have established Monmouth Executive Airport as a continuing field of patronage, MOM will become the pork barrel and campaign theme for the future.
When the freeholders first proposed the Lakewood, Freehold, Monmouth Junction rail route to Penn Station New York in the mid-1990s, NJ Transit (NJT) pointed out that the rail route distance from Lakewood to Manhattan via the Monmouth Junction section of South Brunswick was 74 miles. (The junction is closer to Philadelphia than to NYC).
In contrast, the highway distance from Lakewood to the Port Authority bus terminal and parking garage is only 56 miles. NJT pointed out that with the change of trains required, the rail trip would take more than two hours while highway congestion rarely added 10 minutes to an hour-long bus trip.
An annoyed freeholder exclaimed: “everyone knows that trains are faster than buses.” A federally funded Major Investment Study of the rail alternatives vs. highway improvements was ordered up using 1990 census data.
That study determined that MOM ridership could not justify the project. The freeholders then hired a new lobbyist, the former New Jersey Commissioner of Transportation, to change NJT’s mind.
When that didn’t work, they sent NJT’s then-executive director packing. The interviews for her replacement were designed to find someone who would bring a suburban railroad to Lakewood and Freehold. George Warrington got the job.
By 2002, a federally funded revision was under way. A Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) is being prepared on MOM using the 2000 census data. Warrington and company would recast MOM to make it look better on paper.
They would now start the line in Lakehurst instead of Lakewood and claim more New York City passengers. Since MOM was always to be diesel, which requires changing trains to get to Manhattan, destinations and travel times beyond Newark would not be discussed in the new MOM promotions.
The earlier study published estimates of existing metro area daily trips that might switch to MOM; this time they would use predictions for daily trips in 2025 (10 years after the line’s assumed opening).
Using the enlarged geographic area and based on the metro area workplaces reported in the 2000 census data with 25 years of growth added, modelers could claim to find 4,500 round trip commuters for the Lakehurst to Newark line. The really expensive consultants could say it without laughing.
However, the horror of 9/11 and other recent changes have rendered the 2000 census an absurd tool for predicting metropolitan New York City journey to work trips in 2025. Tens of thousands of Manhattan jobs have been relocated to places inaccessible from Newark.
If MOM could bring any significant number of additional rail commuters to Newark, there would be no capacity to take them on to Penn Station New York. New rail connections enabled NJT to fill the tunnels leading into Penn Station New York with peak period trains. The opening of the Secaucus Transfer has filled all available space on those trains.
It might seem that offering a rail trip from Lakehurst to Newark that took an hour and 50 minutes — and did not provide an opportunity to continue to 33rd St. — might discourage the politicians, or at least cause them to abandon their plans for the westerly route from Freehold.
Instead of giving the project any real thought, the freeholders simply claimed NJT’s ridership projections were wrong. MOM, they said, would carry four-and-a-half times NJT’s rosy 9,000 daily trip estimate. Never mind that the freeholders’ number, 40,666, couldn’t be carried on a 40-mile single-track line.
Robert J. Riker is a transportation consultant and a former resident of Mon-mouth County.