The Port Authority Bus Terminal is currently the busiest bus terminal in the world, and it’s running at capacity. It is clear that something needs to be done.
First and foremost, let’s deal with this argument that we don’t have the money. From 2010-2019 the United States built 2103 new miles of transit and 21,950 new miles of roads, according to StreetsBlog.
We have the money, we just don’t have the political will.
Is transit worth investing in? Well, given that highways can carry up to 2000 cars per hour per lane, and light rail (which is less efficient than heavy rail) can carry 12,000 passengers per hour per track, according to Seattle Transit blog, a highway expansion would have to be 1/6 the cost per mile to have the same cost efficiency as building another mile of rail.
| Mode | Cost per mile | passengers per mile | Cost per passenger mile |
| Light Rail | $50 million | 12,000 | $4,166 |
| Heavy Rail | $100 million | >24,000 | lowest |
| Highway | $10 million | 2,000 | $5,000 |
Given that heavy rail serves the most people at the lowest cost per passenger mile, routes that can properly fill a heavy rail car reliably should be candidates for building new heavy rail by any cost-optimizing transit agency.
Nowhere in North America could so benefit from a heavy rail connection like the connections between New York and New Jersey.
It is estimated that the cost of building two new Hudson River tunnels will cost $16 billion dollars (or $8 billion per tunnel) and this should obviously be heavy rail because of the larger numbers of people that tunnel can carry. For comparison, the I-405 improvement project in Southern California cost over $2 billion dollars and will carry probably fewer than 10% as many people, making the Hudson River tunnels, even though $16 billion sounds like a lot of money, a far better investment than a typical highway improvement project. It should be built. As Seattle Transit Blog cites, bus service is almost always more expensive than rail service in the long run, controlling for the number of passengers it will carry. Having lower costs means you can have better service in other places, and spend money more efficiently to serve more people in more places. This will allow better transit service in New Jersey, allowing more local connections to more people.
One of these tunnels should connect near the Port Authority Bus terminal, and give easy connections to the New York Subway.
The bigger question however is where should that rail line go? Looking at a population density map, no area of New Jersey in the Greater New York City area has a population density under 5000 people per square mile (according to the 2010 census).
So what I propose is this… you would have a small spur which connects up with existing train lines which lead to Newark and south of their, this will be low cost and significantly increase capacity on this extremely crowded route. There would be 4 trains running out from the 34th street station into New Jersey. They will terminate in the largest suburbs in the northern New Jersey section of the Greater New York metropolitan area:
- Newark (low cost, high reward)
- Paterson
- Clifton
- Passaic
We can run those 4 trains at 2 minute headways leaving the station, allowing for one train for each of these four routes every 8 minutes, or around 9 trains per hour to each of these four cities. This will free up space for more conencting bus routes in New Jersey and allow for more bus routes heading into the Port Authority Bus Terminal, leading to a smoother experience for everybody.
This will significantly increase the capacity of the tunnel, making for a more efficient experience. As long as the cost of the project is below $20 billion, it will still be a more economical project than many highway projects we routinely fund around the country.
We should invest in the Hudson River tunnels and finish them as soon as possible, without spiralling budgets.
References:
https://www.trb.org/publications/tcrp/tcrp_webdoc_6-c.pdf
Rebuilding the Busiest Highway in America: The I-405 Improvement Project