In your opinion, how clearly must a large infrastructure project like ARC have determined its need, costs, and so forth before being approved?

If the criteria are too stringent, what is the implication for future projects of this type? Would any ever be built? When dignitaries broke ground on the Access to the Region’s Core (ARC) project in northern New Jersey in 2009, it was supposed to be a celebration to signal the start of a bright new future. Creating a commuter rail tunnel under the Hudson River was not a particularly new or difficult idea, but it was viewed as a critical need. The project was first proposed in 1995, and every New Jersey governor after that time had publicly supported the need for the tunnel. The reasons were compelling:

The entire commuter rail system connecting New York and New Jersey was supported by only one congested 100-year-old, two-track railroad tunnel into overcrowded Penn Station in midtown Manhattan;

both tracks had reached capacity and could no longer accommodate growth. Passengers were making more than 500,000 trips through Penn Station every day, with station congestion and overcrowding the norm. The project was especially critical for New Jersey residents because their commuter ridership to New York had more than quadrupled in the past 20 years from 10 million annual trips to more than 46 million annual passenger trips. In the peak hours, the New Jersey Transit Authority operated 20 of the 23 trains heading into or out of New York. Building the ARC would double the number of New Jersey Transit commuter trains, from 45 to about 90, that could come into Manhattan every morning at rush hour.

In the face of such congestion and perceived need, the ARC project was conceived to include the following elements:

• Two new tracks under the Hudson River and the New Jersey Palisades

• A new six-track passenger station, to be known as “New York Pennsylvania Station Extension”

(NYPSE) under 34th Street, with passenger connection to Penn Station

• A new rail loop near the Lautenberg Secaucus Junction station to allow two northern New Jersey line trains access to New York City

• A midday rail storage yard in Kearny, New Jersey Proponents also argued the environmental advantages of the project, noting that the ARC project would eliminate 30,000 daily personal automobile trips, taking 22,000 cars off the roads and resulting in 600,000 fewer daily vehicle miles traveled. The project was expected to thus reduce greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 66,000 tons each year.

The ARC project was anticipated to take eight years to complete, coming into service in 2017. The cost of the project was significant, as the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) reported the project cost as $8.7 billion in their Annual Report. To share the burden of the project costs, the funding as originally proposed included the following sources:

• Federal government: $4.5 billion

• Port Authority of New York and New Jersey: $3.0 billion

• New Jersey Turnpike Authority: $1.25 billion