Andrea Bernstein

(Trenton, NJ -- Matthew Schuerman, WNYC) A day after canceling a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie says he'll take another look at it.

Christie promised a two-week review of several options that could salvage the tunnel after an hour-long meeting with US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

But the Republican governor, in a statement issued shortly after the meeting, insisted the project was "financially not viable" and likely to exceed its 8-point-7 billion budget "dramatically."

"This afternoon, Secretary LaHood presented several options to potentially salvage a trans Hudson tunnel project," Christie said in a statement. "At the Secretary’s request, I’ve agreed to have Executive Director of NJ Transit Jim Weinstein and members from his team work with U.S. Department of Transportation staff to study those options over the next two weeks.”

Christie's spokesman added that steps are still being taken to shut down the project.

The two-week review follows a 30-day review that Christie ordered last month to examine the likely cost overruns that the project will encounter. That review, instead of sharpening estimates of the tunnel's actual cost, ended up merely reiterating the broad range of figures that state and federal had come up with earlier in the summer, from $11 billion to $14 billion. The Obama administration has not confirmed those cost estimates, however.

LaHood left the meeting, held at Christie's office in Trenton, without commenting to reporters. But later his office issued a statement saying the two officials had held a "good discussion" and that the working group would give Christie a report within two weeks.

The tunnel, which broke ground last year, was expected to double the number of New Jersey residents who could travel each day by train into Manhattan from about 45,000 a day to 90,000.

(Andrea Bernstein, Transportation Nation)  Secretary Ray LaHood left Trenton without speaking to reporters, but an hour later Chris Christie issued this statement:

"The fact that the ARC project is not financially viable and is expected to dramatically exceed its current budget remains unchanged.  However, this afternoon Secretary LaHood presented several options to potentially salvage a trans Hudson tunnel project.  At the Secretary’s request, I’ve agreed to have Executive Director of NJ Transit Jim Weinstein and members from his team work with U.S. Department of Transportation staff to study those options over the next two weeks."

Christie's spokesman would not elaborate on the options, and said work shutting down the tunnel construction is still underway. LaHood issued an almost identical statement:

"Governor Christie and I had a good discussion this afternoon, during which I presented a number of options for continuing the ARC tunnel project. We agreed to put together a small working group from the U.S. Department of Transportation and the office of NJ Transit Executive Director Jim Weinstein that will review these options and provide a report to Governor Christie within two weeks."

It's unclear whether this is a face-saving measure for Secretary LaHood, a big advocate of rail and transit, or whether there will be a serious consideration of whether the project can be saved.

A day after New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called a permanent halt to construction of a new commuter train tunnel, and now he may reconsider.

(Andrea Bernstein, Transportation Nation) If you ride a bike in New York, you know that bike lanes are pretty much seen as suggestions, not rules. Now comes a report from Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer that says, in just two days, the bikes lanes they surveyed were misused 1,700 times. Stringer's researchers found unmarked police vehicles in non-emergency citations, "motor vehicle encroachment and speeding," a school bus, and "rampant pedestrian encroachment."

But bikers have their own problems. On Grand Street in lower Manhattan Stringer found there were more bikers going in the wrong direction than the right one.

Says Stringer (all caps his) "CLEAR THE PATH."

Read his press release below:

BOROUGH PRESIDENT SCOTT M. STRINGER RELEASES UNPRECEDENTED REPORT ON BIKE LANE INFRACTIONS

“Respect the Lane – Clear the Path” Survey Shows Flagrant Violations and
Infractions Plague Manhattan Bike Lanes

A day after New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called a permanent halt to construction of a new commuter train tunnel, and now he may reconsider. This comes following a meeting with U.S. ...

Listen to NJ Governor Chris Christie's news conference here.

(Washington, DC -- Todd Zwillich, Transportation Nation) New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez (D) has come out swinging against Gov. Chris Christie’s decision today to kill a planned transit tunnel across the Hudson River to New York City.

Menendez fired off a statement this afternoon accusing Christie of wasting taxpayers’ money and killing jobs by nixing the multi-billion dollar-project.

“Instead of getting a major investment from the federal government, New Jersey taxpayers now owe the federal government $300 million plus interest and penalties as a result of the governor giving up on the tunnel. That’s on top of the $300 million our state has already spent. New Jersey taxpayers are now the owners of a brand new, $600 million Hole To Nowhere,” the statement read.

Menendez also took aim at Christie’s assertion that the $3 billion pledged by the feds for the project could be used for other programs in New Jersey. Menendez said he spoke with DOT officials.

“The Department of Transportation reiterated that the tunnel was a high-priority New Starts project and that this funding was dedicated for that purpose and can only go to a New Starts project, not to other state transportation projects in our state,” he said.

Federal DOT officials said they’re set to meet tomorrow on the turn of events.

New Jersey’s other senator, Frank R. Lautenberg (D) took a similar stance to Menendez earlier today. “Killing the ARC Tunnel will go down as one of the biggest public policy blunders in New Jersey’s history. Without increased transportation options into Manhattan, New Jersey’s economy will eventually be crippled,” he said.

Lautenberg is a member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.

Governor Christie Campaigning this Week With Illinois Gubernatorial Candidate Bill Brady. Photo: Sarah Smith

(Andrea Bernstein, Transportation Nation) Speaking at a hospital bill signing event in Newark today, NJ Governor Chris Christie, who is just back from a midwest swing where he was campaigning for fellow Republicans, says he hasn't had time to meet with his transit director and his transportation commissioner to "review cost estimates" of the 8.7 billion dollar ARC commuter tunnel.

Christie said he'll be doing "a cold-hearted analysis of whether New Jersey can afford," the tunnel.

Sources say he's already made up his mind to divert New Jersey's 2.7 billion contribution to the ARC to roads, forfeiting the $3 billion federal transit administration new starts funding.

Christie rejected the idea, as Senator Frank Lautenberg has suggested, that the Port Authority guarantee overruns, maintaining much of the Port Authority's revenue comes from New Jersey tollpayers. Full story here.

Speaking at a hospital ribbon-cutting in Newark, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is just returning from a multi-day midwest campaign swing with fellow Republicans, says he hasn't...

Andrea Bernstein, WNYC reporter and director of the Transportation Nation blog, and Zachary Fink, state house correspondent for NJN News, discuss the possibility of money intended for a New York-to-New Jersey tunnel under the Hudson being redirected to New Jersey's roads.

What do you make of these developments? Are you an NJ->NYC commuter? How would this affect your day? Let us know!

NJ US Senator Frank Lautenberg is making a last-minute pitch: he wants the Port Authority to guarantee to pay for any cost overruns on the ARC tunnel, thereby taking NJ off the hook. It's a bit of a Hail Mary -- and complex, because Governor Chris Christie controls half the Port Authority. (Paterson hasn't made a position on ARC clear, and the Democratic Candidate, Andrew Cuomo, says he hasn't taken one yet.)

Here's the letter.

Letter to Coscia and Baroni PANYNJ

The $8.7 billion trans-Hudson river transit tunnel project is expected to be killed later this week by Gov. Chris Christie, according to several sources familiar with the project. B...

(Andrea Bernstein, Transportation Nation)

Thanks to Chicago Public Radio's Sarah Smith, we caught up with Gov. Christie in Chicago. He said:

Governor Christie at a Chicago political event. He said:

I have not made any decision I have not been given the information yet by my executive director of NJ Transit or my commissioner of transportation regarding what the real cost of the ARC tunnel going from New Jersey to New York is going to be, and until I get those real costs I can’t make a decision. But what I do know is this: I was alerted to the fact that there were potential for significant cost overruns. And New Jersey's broke. And the federal government's made it clear that New Jersey will be on the hook for any cost overruns on the project.

Well I gotta know what those cost overruns are gonna look like, and whether we’re going to have the money to pay for it or not. So that’s why I put a thirty day halt to construction said go back sharpen your pencils and come back to me. The thirty days runs up this week. When I get back to New Jersey tomorrow I’ll be meeting with my transportation commissioner and my New Jersey transit executive director and they’ll give me information and I’ll have to make a decision. But no I haven’t made any decisions yet at all.

(Andrea Bernstein, Transportation Nation) Three sources familiar with the $8.7 billion tunnel under the Hudson river from NJ, say, barring an unexpected, last-minute change of heart from Governor Chris Christie, the ARC transit tunnel under the Hudson river is dead. The sources say Christie will likely announce this week that he's restructuring NJ's portion of the money to go to roads. The FTA and the Port Authority will recoup their $3 billion each, though the Port's money will likely go into other regional projects.

Governor Christie's office, NJ Transit, the FTA, and the Port Authority of NY and NJ all decline comment.

More soon.

(Andrea Bernstein, Transportation Nation) -- Supporters of the federal government's largest transit new start are steeling themselves for an announcement that could come this week that NJ Governor Chris Christie will not fund a transit tunnel under the Hudson River, the nation's largest transit new start project in the works.

Christie has said he's worried the $8.7 billion project could run over by as much as $5 billion, and that if that's the case, he says NJ doesn't have the funds to back it. And he's said, with the NJ highway trust fund broke, the roads need the money.

But though this project has always been more a child of NJ than NY, NYC stands to benefit by one of the tunnel's promises -- doubling the number of New Jerseyans who live within a 50 minute transit commute of New York City. That brings more workers and shoppers to the city, and serves an off-stated Bloomberg goal of reducing carbon emissions.

Today, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, NYC won't step in and keep the project from dying, if that's what Christie decides.

"We are not party to this," the Mayor said at a City Hall news conference. "It is a Port Authority Project," he added, before saying some nice things about Port Authority staff. "They have their own financial problems, and they can afford some things and not others. "

The Port Authority, a bi-state authority, it should be said, is fully behind the project -- it's Christie who has indicated he may take his $2.7 billion and re-purpose it to roads.

The death of this project would be a major blow to the Obama administration, which has made quite clear that it believes that denser, more transit,oriented development, prioritized over road-based sprawl, is what's needed for a more sustainable future.

(Andrea Bernstein, Transportation Nation) Matt D. wrote on Friday about  Indianopolis's flirtation with privatizing its on-street parking.  Turns out former Indy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith, now the Deputy Mayor of NYC,  is eying it too, as first reported in the New York Post.  But his boss, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, sounded a little iffy about the idea at a press conference on Governor's Island, in the NY Harbor.

"We're trying to think outside the box and look at everything," the Mayor said, preparing for the big BUT. "What we're not going to do is sell our birthright, take some money to balance the budget toady and leave our kids with a greater liability.  If the private sector can do something better than the public sector then we certainly would talk  to them. What's generally done with these privitization things is to take all the money for budget balancing, leaving those cities or states without assets and with an obligation going forward.  That's just terrible fiscal planning."

(Matthew Schuerman, WNYC)

(This post has been updated.) A number of transit advocates suspect New Jersey Governor Chris Christie wants to use money allocated for a commuter train tunnel under the Hudson River and apply it to roads and bridges in his state.

His transportation commissioner Jim Simpson said today that wasn’t the plan, but it might come to pass.

Under questioning from state Senator Paul Sarlo, Simpson said he “hadn’t thought about it that way,” but he went on:

I don’t know but let’s look at the source of the money. You’ve got a billion dollars of federal money that comes to the New Jersey Department of Transportation that would normally be associated with highway projects. You’ve got that billion coming in—100 million a year—that is rededicated, flexed to ARC. So if ARC didn’t happen there’s a billion dollars for roads and bridges and things like that.

Simpson said the decision on the ARC tunnel—the acronym for the pair of tunnels that NJ Transit broke ground on last summer—would be made on its own merits. But he said if the tunnel’s canceled, using the money on road projects would be “the other end of the equation.”

Christie halted work on the tunnel Sept. 10 and is expected to decide later this week whether to cancel the project. He said the state didn’t have enough money to cover cost overruns from the $8.7 billion tunnel.

Simpson appeared at a hearing that the Joint Budget Oversight Committee called after the Christie administration cancelled more than 100 road and transit projects around the state. That halt came on Friday, because the Democratic-controlled legislature was refusing to approve a $1.7 billion bond deal that’s supposed to keep the construction projects underway until next spring.

After today's hearing, two Democrats broke ranks with leadership and voted, along with two Republicans on the panel, in favor of the borrowing. About 2,000 construction workers are expected to go back on the job Tuesday.

(Matthew Schuerman, WNYC) Thousands of New Jersey construction workers are expected to go back to work tomorrow after the legislature broke an impasse with Governor Christie.

The Joint Budget Oversight Committee voted 4 to 1 in favor of a 1-point-7 billion financing package that the Christie administration said was necessary to keep projects going until the spring. Democrats on the committee had refused to approve the financing last week, leading Governor Christie to suspend about hundreds of road and transit projects as of this morning.

Assemblywoman Nellie Pou from Paterson was one of two Democrats to break ranks with the party's leadership and approve the borrowing.

"I'm not happy the way things are working out," Pou said, " and I'm not happy with how we got to this situation, but my vote is yes for the purpose to making sure the right thing is done today and getting those jobs back in order.

Another Democratic Assemblymember, Louis Greenwald, voted against the measure, saying the state needed to fix the nearly bankrupt Transportation Trust Fund before it borrowed more money.

The vote came as Governor Christie is mulling whether to go forward with another large transportation project -- a trans-Hudson tunnel which would increase NJ Transit's capacity, but which Christie fears may cost too much.

(Andrea Bernstein, Transportation Nation)  In a sign of how tense things are getting in New Jersey as planners and transportation groups await the outcome of Governor Christie's 30-day review of ARC tunnel spending, the planning group New Jersey Future, a project proponent and advocate for denser, more transit-oriented communities, has issued a newsletter debunking what it's calling "myths" about the tunnel, which will cross under the Hudson River.  (ARC stands for "access to the region's core.")

Planners have long advocated the ARC tunnel, saying it will double transit capacity, ease road congestion,  create some 6000 construction jobs, and increase real estate values along NJ transit lines.  But Governor Chris Christie, a Republican elected on a belt-tightening platform last fall, is behind a 30-moratorium on new contracts for the project, citing concerns about who will pay for cost overruns.

Christie has also hinted he's making roads a priority -- the NJ highway trust fund is broke, and Christie had made it clear he has no intention of raising NJ's gas tax.    In this context, regional planners  -- and even the NY Times editorial page --are expressing serious concerns the tunnel may be spiked altogether, with some of the money redistributed for roads.

Into this context comes the NJ Future bullet points -- the kind of thing you often see in political campaigns, maybe less so in planning discussions.

Here they are:

"* The ARC tunnel project cannot connect directly to New York's Penn Station, as some critics have insisted, because Penn Station has reached its capacity and there is no room to expand platform space.

* NJ Transit service cannot be extended directly to Grand Central Terminal because Manhattan's principal north-south water tunnel blocks an east-west connection.

* Amtrak is not planning to build its own tunnel under the Hudson River in the foreseeable future; in fact, Amtrak is counting on the ARC tunnel to provide it with additional capacity for decades to come.

Penn Station is Full
The National Association of Railroad Passengers and other critics contend that the additional NJ Transit service made possible by the ARC tunnel project should tie directly into New York's Penn Station, rather than terminate at a new "deep cavern station" more than 100 feet below 34th Street. NJ Transit would prefer this alignment, too - if it were logistically possible. Platform space at Penn Station has reached capacity, however, and