Well, Jerry Nadler has to be beaming today. The NYT reports that moribund plans for a Cross-Harbor Freight Tunnel are seeing new signs of life:
Two years after turning its back on $100 million in federal funds for planning better ways to move freight, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has spun around and decided to accept the money.
This is good news. The CHFT would provide a much needed way to efficiently move freight east of the Hudson River. Currently, rail freight has to go hundreds of miles out of the way (north, and back south) or be barged across the harbor, which is inefficient. The unfortunate result for us is excessive truck traffic on our roads and bridges, which severely damages our infrastructure, creates traffic jams, and leads to health problems due to exhaust levels.
This is a plan whose time has come. The tunnel would run from an existing rail yard in Jersey City to an existying rail yard in Sunset Park.
And wikipedia has a good primer on the proposed tunnel here.
Image credit http://www.moveny.org/
For rail geeks, here's a pdf on the history of the CHT idea.
5 comments:
The Selkirk Hurdle is the reason that there is so much truck traffic clogging our city. A freight train in New Jersey (or anywhere else in the continental U.S. south of west of NJ) has to travel 280 miles out of its way to get to NYC, Long Island or Southern New England. This project MUST go forward.
Thanks for the specificity . . . I was writing this in a hurry today and couldn't recall exactly the detour that trains are forced to take to get east of the Hudson.
I agree, this must be done.
I live on Caton Ave in Brooklyn , which receives a huge amount of truck traffic along Route 27, a very residential street. Do you think this will reduce truck traffic in my area?
ocean ave guy, I think so. At least some truck traffic coming into Brooklyn across the Verrazano would be diverted to rail.
Of course, you're local deliveries would still be by truck, but the through traffic would be eliminated. That's huge.
I'd love to see this go through. Maybe I'll have a chance to see it by the time I'm dead.
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