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By RICHARD PEARSALL
Courier-Post Staff
NJ Transit waited until after its board endorsed the riverfront rail line before scheduling public meetings on the proposal.
And the purpose of those meetings was to disseminate information, not gather it.
NJ Transit would later claim it did not need to gather input because that had already been accomplished as part of a study of South Jersey rail alternatives in 1994 and 1995.
But that study, called a Major Investment Study, or MIS, examined two other routes, never looked at the riverfront corridor and therefore did not include the riverfront communities in its schedule of public hearings.
Though the 1995 study didn't look at the riverfront, NJ Transit's board of directors cited the study in its November 1996 resolution endorsing the corridor for a light rail line.
A 1998 report done by an NJ Transit consultant went so far as to describe the 1995 study as an examination of the " Camden-Trenton-Gloucester Corridor" even though in 1995 Trenton was not on anyone's radar screen as a light rail destination.
The earlier study was part of an application for federal funds and its hearings, in places like Mount Laurel and Woodbury, adhered to federal guidelines for involving the public in the early stages of the planning.
When it veered off to the riverfront route, NJ Transit abandoned its application for federal funds and with it the guidelines for public hearings. In their place, NJ Transit installed a program described in a prospectus prepared for bidders in 1998.
"A Community Outreach Program was initiated in December 1996 in accordance with direction from the NJ Transit Board of Directors," wrote Daniel, Mann, Johnson & Mendenhall, a consultant to NJ Transit.
"The purpose of the program has been the dissemination of information concerning the conceptual engineering and planning of the ... (South Jersey) project, as well as helping communities to understand the subsequent final design and construction phases."
DMJM further detailed the objectives of the community outreach:
•Provide information to citizens.
•Strengthen communication with elected officials and with business leaders.
•Support the needs of advocacy groups.
•Establish relationships and "pathways of communication" with project area media representatives.
There was no mention of public input.
And even the public hearings that NJ Transit hosted were short-lived, replaced by what NJ Transit dubbed "open houses."
In this new format, NJ Transit experts stationed themselves in various corners of a room, backed by charts and maps, and answered questions from anyone who happened to wander in over a period of three or four hours.
NJ Transit said it switched formats to facilitate the flow of information.
Critics said the change was meant to mute opposition.
"The idea was to prevent follow-ups and dissents," said Assemblyman Jack Conners, a Democrat from Pennsauken who opposed the line. "They didn't want a theater-style hearing where people really get into it."
At one of the first hearings, Palmyra resident Fred Dare listened as his fellow residents peppered NJ Transit officials with questions about the line and were told everything would work out.
"Are you here to hear our voices saying `no' to this," Dare finally asked, "or to sell us on this system?"
Jim Gross, a Riverton resident who has been an outspoken opponent of the light rail, recalled his reaction to the first hearing he attended: "Rubbish."
Nothing has changed his view.
"We were agin' it then, we're agin' it now, and we've ingested huge doses of cynicism in between," he said. " Public input didn't amount to a hill of beans."