| |
|
By RICHARD PEARSALL
Courier-Post Staff
BURLINGTON CITY
State Transportation Commissioner Jamie Fox lambasted the South Jersey Light Rail Line on Tuesday as an "ill-advised and poorly planned" project that the current administration would never have approved.
Noting that the cost of the 34-mile, Camden-to-Trenton line has risen to $1 billion, Fox said "that's $1 billion that could have been used more effectively to reduce congestion on Route 42 or 55."
Fox made his remarks at the opening of a public hearing convened here by Assembly Democrats to explore the selection of the route and approval of the line under Republican Gov. Christie Whitman's administration.
While criticizing the route, Fox and NJ Transit Executive Director George Warrington made clear they are committed to its success.
"If all goes well, it will open next year," Fox said, "and we are determined to make it work."
Fox promised a major marketing campaign and increased parking spaces to boost ridership.
Tuesday's hearing at the Keegan Center, a senior citizens' facility, was called and chaired by Assemblyman Jack Conners, D-Camden, a longtime critic of the line.
He and other Democrats insisted the purpose of the event was to learn from the past.
Republicans complained the meeting, a joint session of the Assembly Transportation Committee and the Assembly Light Rail Advisory Panel, was little more than a "witch hunt."
"From a pure transportation point of view, other alignments made more sense," Warrington testified, referring to two routes that had long been studied under a federally prescribed planning process.
When those routes ran into local opposition, Warrington said, the state "short-circuited" the federal process, thereby forfeiting any chance of federal funding.
In order to build something, to satisfy political pressure from South Jersey, and from the late state Sen. William Haines, R-Burlington, in particular, the state "took the path of least resistance," Warrington said.
That path was to build on the riverfront.
The route's defenders say it is justified by the economic development they believe it will stimulate.
Critics of the route disagreed at Tuesday's hearing.
"We don't have the luxury of building lines just for economic development," Fox said, noting that demand for mass transit projects far exceeds the resources to build them.
And by abandoning the federal planning process to select the Camden-to-Trenton alignment, Fox said, his predecessors placed a particularly heavy burden on state taxpayers.
"It is the only light rail system in the country being built without any federal funding."
Because the state had to borrow to finance it, the line will cost taxpayers $48 million a year in debt service for the next 17 years.
And because ridership is expected to be low, the line will need $25 million a year in operating subsidies from the state."
"That means each year we'll have to pay $73 million before we can buy a single bus or do anything to improve 55 or 42," Fox said.
Warrington said his agency is revising the 9,300-fare-a- day estimate the previous administration used to justify the line.
While the farebox supports 65 percent of the cost of mass transit statewide, Warrington said, it is expected to cover just 12 to 15 percent of the South Jersey line's operating expenses.
Assemblyman John Burzichelli, D-Gloucester, chided state and local leaders for giving up too early and too easily on a route into Gloucester County.
"A price was paid here because we didn't have the political courage to stand up and fully involve the public in the discussion," Burzichelli said.
Had the alternatives been pursued, Burzichelli suggested, " we might have gotten federal funds ... and people might not be sitting on Route 42 fuming."
Assemblywoman Rose Heck, R-Bergen, who was chairwoman of the Assembly Light Rail Advisory Panel that recommended selection of the Camden-to-Trenton alignment, defended the selection Tuesday as responsive to the wishes of South Jersey residents and likely to help revive the riverfront communities.
She and Assemblyman John Rooney, R-Bergen, urged people to look at the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail Line, which runs along the Hudson riverfront across from Manhattan, to see how mass transit "can rejuvenate our cities."
"Transportation was a side benefit" there, Rooney said.
Reach Richard Pearsall at (856) 486-2465 or rpearsall@courierpostonline.com