American Dream

NYTimes.COM

August 3, 2005
$100 Million for a Tunnel. What Tunnel?
By SEWELL CHAN

Quotes:

Hours after the House of Representatives approved a big transportation bill on Friday morning, Representative Jerrold L. Nadler informed the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey that it would get a $100 million federal grant to design and engineer a freight tunnel under New York Harbor.

Usually, news of such largesse would be cause for celebration. But the Port Authority did not ask for the $100 million, says it did not know about the grant, and is not very interested in the project.

"For us to say that we're committed at this point in time and can commit any funds to it would be premature," the authority's executive director, Kenneth J. Ringler Jr., said this week.

The unusual circumstances surrounding the $100 million grant - which dwarfs all other individual appropriations for New York - reveal much about the peculiarities of federal transportation spending, in which huge appropriations are approved every few years in a manner that some deride as a pork opportunity for individual lawmakers.

In contrast to other projects in the $286.4 billion transportation spending bill, the cross-harbor tunnel is viewed by many planners as a worthy endeavor that could sharply reduce traffic congestion, reduce air pollution and improve the movement of goods throughout the region.

But no agency has agreed to build the tunnel, which could cost $4.8 billion to $7.4 billion, depending on its width. Under the most optimistic estimates, construction would begin in 2009 and last at least four years.

To complicate matters, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, in a sharp reversal, has come out against the project, citing the objections of residents in and around Maspeth, Queens, where a freight terminal would be built.

The tunnel has been the dream of Mr. Nadler, one of the most prominent Democrats on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and it would run from Jersey City, N.J., to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. From there, trains would continue on to Queens using existing tracks that connect with the Long Island Rail Road and CSX, the giant freight railroad.