See if this sounds familiar:
A municipal council votes to oppose a commuter rail line that would run through the community, saying the added trains would create havoc with local traffic patterns, add cars and generally diminish the quality of life for residents.
It’s an argument we’ve heard before — but this time it is not being made by officials in South Brunswick, Monroe or Jamesburg. This is the Red Bank Borough Council talking.
According to The Asbury Park Press, the council in the Monmouth County town passed a resolution Tuesday night opposing the Red Bank alternative — one of three Central Jersey commuter lines under consideration by NJ Transit as part of its Middlesex-Ocean-Monmouth transportation study.
The lines — which also include one running from Lakewood through Freehold to Monmouth Junction and one running from Lakewood through Freehold to Matawan — are designed to take commuters primarily from the Shore area to Newark and New York City.
Shore area communities, state legislators from Monmouth and Ocean counties and the freeholder boards in both counties have been pushing the Monmouth Junction alternative — the most expensive of the three to build and run. Officials in Jamesburg, Monroe and South Brunswick, along with the Middlesex County Board of Chosen Freeholders oppose it.
Gov. Jon Corzine, at a February town hall meeting in Middlesex County, announced that the Middlesex alternative would not be considered, an announcement he later backtracked from. He now says he is personally opposed to the Monmouth Junction line, but would allow the process to go forward.
Red Bank officials make some compelling arguments. The MOM line would add another 30 trains a day to an already train-laden borough. Officials say that 80 North Jersey Coast Line trains already stop in the borough and that the added trips would only make things worse, according to The Asbury Park Press.
”It will strangle this municipality,” Mayor Pasquale Menna said in The Asbury Park Press. “This municipality will have no movement.”
We are sympathetic to the Red Bank council’s concerns, though Red Bank’s complaints should be taken with a grain of salt. The borough, after all, owes at least some of its current prosperity and reputation as a regional entertainment hub to the Jersey Coast line.
Nonetheless, Red Bank officials are making the same arguments made by officials in South Brunswick, Jamesburg and Monroe and they should be taken seriously.
But no more seriously than South Brunswick Township Councilman Joe Camarota, when he says that the line would be “detrimental to individual homeowners and to the landscape of the town,” or Jamesburg Mayor Anthony LaMantia, when he says that, “every time a train goes through, my town’s center would shut down.”
In the end, we think the argument boils down to who benefits most. It is Monmouth and Ocean county commuters who are the ones seeking relief. We believe they should be the ones to bear the brunt of the impact.
