Light Rail gets $166 million check A $166 million federal check [from fiscal years 1999 and 2000] was signed, sealed and delivered to NJ Transit officials yesterday at Jersey City's Martin Luther King Drive station of the Hudson Bergen Light Rail Transit System.
The funds will pay for a portion of the construction costs of the line's first phase of operation, which will start running sometime this spring. Originating at 34th Street in Bayonne, the initial line will stretch north to the Hoboken Terminal, but at first, service will extend only as far as Exchange Place in Jersey City.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater said the transportation system can benefit the local economy by getting people to jobs.
"Urban transit systems in most urban areas have become civil rights issues" because they link people to employment and other opportunities, he said.
Slater joined Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., in presenting the ceremonial check to NJ Transit Executive Director Jeffrey Warsh, a few steps from one of the polished, 90-foot-long light rail cars.
The slick, white cars can be seen darting through city streets as operators take the system on dry runs. NJ Transit and Jersey City emergency personnel have also set up mock emergencies sporadically throughout the city.
Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler said the rail system has already started a renaissance in the neighborhood surrounding the station.
Schundler credited the light rail system with attracting development, including CitiMarkets on Martin Luther King Drive, the first supermarket in that area in years. "Martin Luther King Drive is a drive that did not bring honor to Martin Luther King's name, but it is starting to do so now," Schundler told about 30 or so politicians, media members and curious neighbors gathered at yesterday morning's press conference.
Lautenberg, the top Democrat on the Senate Transportation subcommittee, said the light rail system should carry 100,000 daily riders through Hudson County. Once in full swing, the light rail would help reduce burgeoning traffic in this area, he added.
There are 60 million miles traveled by cars and trucks in the Garden State each year, he said.
"We will have less crowded highways tomorrow, and that means cleaner air and more efficient use of everyone's time," said Lautenberg, a native of Paterson.
NJ Transit officials have said they plan to push for the light rail to stretch northwest into Paterson, something the three-term senator said would help the financially strapped municipality.
But for now, the focus is on the first phase of operation, which cost an estimated $1.2 billion and will serve as a model throughout the country. The private-public partnership, the first of its kind in this nation to incorporate a number of firms into a single bid for the project, would be touted at an International Transportation Symposium, according to Slater.
One politician joked that the light rail would run as far north as government funding would allow it to.
In his most recent and last budget message, President Clinton committed $500 million to the light rail project [for phase 2 of construction, that would extend the line to the Vince Lombardi rest area in Ridgefield], making it the largest single federally funded transportation project in his budget.
Borrowing from a phrase used time and again in Clinton's speeches in the past, Hudson County Executive Robert Janiszewski said the light rail is Hudson County's bridge into the 21st century.