NJ Transit’s First New Station in Years Risks Adding Congestion

(Bloomberg) -- New Jersey Transit’s first new station in almost two decades for the nation’s busiest train line promises to ease Manhattan commutes, boost property values and unclog highways. But skeptics warn that the project could actually worsen congestion.

The plan omits a crucial traffic reliever, a $300 million flyover track that would let trains make U-turns near the new North Brunswick stop. It also skips bidding by potential private managers, giving control to a local public agency that’s a political stronghold with a mixed record on its projects.

The station would serve what has been New Jersey’s longest Northeast Corridor stretch without a passenger station. It’s the centerpiece of a transit village, a concept that aims to design communities around mass transportation.

The plan also is a glaring reminder of NJ Transit’s financial struggles. After decades of insufficient public funding and declining service, the agency can’t pay for the project itself.

“NJ Transit’s not having the money for this is a very scary prospect,” said Martin Robins, who helped create the agency in the early 1980s and is director emeritus at Rutgers University’s Voorhees Transportation Center. “We raised the gasoline tax many cents and suddenly we turn around and NJ Transit is crying poverty in its capital program.”

Central Jersey

While other U.S. passenger railroads in recent years have forged public-private partnerships for major infrastructure work, NJ Transit went with its first public-public partnership for North Brunswick. It hand-picked the Middlesex County Improvement Authority, which manages and finances projects including public golf courses and a recycling program for the central Jersey region.

“This project is a shining example of how state, county and local governments can work together to bring large-scale projects to fruition, and affect real change for New Jersey’s commuters,” Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, a Democrat, said at the Oct. 30 announcement of the project agreement.

The arrangement will cut costs and delivery time, NJ Transit says, though it declined to estimate the price or disclose how it evaluated any savings. The agency, which for decades shifted at least $8 billion from its capital-improvement accounts to cover day-to-day operations, is relying on $50 million for the project from New Jersey’s gas-tax-fed Transportation Trust Fund and $20 million from Middlesex.

The plan leaves out the Mid-Line Loop, an elevated track on a 23-mile Northeast Corridor stretch between Trenton and New Brunswick where trains reach their highest speeds. The loop was to complement work by Amtrak, which spent at least $450 million on the Northeast Corridor tracks it owns and shares with the state agency.

No Loop

Instead, NJ Transit plans to build a side track that would offer easier North Brunswick access, but could exacerbate Northeast Corridor logjams at a New Brunswick track crossing. At the same time, NJ Transit is looking to add passengers as existing riders endure scarce seating and tie-ups.

“That plan is like having a two-track railroad that’s a dead end, and that benefits no one but the developer of that North Brunswick project,” said Joe Clift, a retired Long Island Rail Road planning director and frequent NJ Transit critic.

Main Street North Brunswick, a mixed-use redevelopment of former Johnson & Johnson property, has been in the works for years. The state transportation department accepted Main Street into its Transit Village grant-and-loan program, but the designation was unusual: Almost all of the state’s 32 other such developments sprung up around existing stations or bus terminals.

In North Brunswick, the station is among the last parts of the village. In 2016, homebuyers raced to pay as much as $500,000 for luxury townhouses in the first phase of 1,875 planned housing units. A Costco, Target, restaurants and a hotel followed. Residential real estate soared in nearby towns, whose commuters drive on traffic-clogged Route 1 to reach out-of-the-way Princeton Junction or New Brunswick stations.

“It is a new model for NJ Transit,” Diane Gutierrez-Scaccetti, the state transportation commissioner and NJ Transit chairwoman, said at the deal announcement. “We become better partners, we become better collaborators -- and when we do that, we are going to get, naturally, a better product.”

Private Contracts

U.S. railroads increasingly are partnering with private firms. California on Oct. 23 approved borrowing $3.25 billion to support a Virgin Trains high-speed line to Nevada, and the Hudson River train tunnel’s planners shaved $1.4 billion off the proposed cost estimate after they solicited experts’ opinions on geotechnical data.

NJ Transit itself on Nov. 7 met with dozens of private contractors, potentially to operate mass-transportation service to the new American Dream megamall west of Manhattan. Since 1999 it has awarded private contracts for two new Northeast Corridor stations, in Hamilton and Secaucus, and the renovation of another, in Elizabeth.

The agency chosen to build the North Brunswick station, the Middlesex County Improvement Authority, enacted reforms after a 2012 state audit documented wasteful hiring, loose contract oversight and hundreds of thousands of dollars in executive bonuses based on vague performance goals. Its $430 million in debt is ranked AAA, the highest step, by S&P Global Ratings.

North Brunswick Mayor Francis Womack III said the township partnered with the authority on a water project. “I don’t have any reason to think that they won’t be able to work with NJ Transit and get it done,” Womack said in an interview.

Still, the authority has challenges.

Golf Courses

Last year it relinquished operations of its two nursing homes -- one of which was ranked among the worst in the state by federal regulators -- to a private operator. It outsourced management of its three golf courses in January, after reporting a $1.8 million annual loss. It carries a Caa2 Moody’s Investors Service rating, third from bottom, on revenue bonds for the Heldrich, a hotel in New Brunswick.

“The improvement authority has no experience with this kind of thing,” state Senator Sam Thompson, a Middlesex Republican, said of the station construction. “It’s rather strange that NJ Transit would select them without seeking any other proposals.”

The authority is closely connected to Middlesex County’s Democratic Party, with a record of helping elect members to the governor’s office and legislature. The authority’s board is appointed by the Democratic-controlled county freeholders. Its legal counsel is Rainone Coughlin Minchello, a firm founded by Coughlin, the Assembly speaker.

“We had no involvement with respect to Middlesex County’s or the improvement authority’s discussions with the state concerning North Brunswick transit village and never had any intention of performing any work in connection with this project,” Coughlin said in an emailed statement.

NJ Transit’s board members made no public comments on the agreement before approving it at a Nov. 13 meeting. The agency will review designs, approve procurement and provide technical assistance, Nancy Snyder, a spokeswoman, said in an email.

In Atlantic City on Nov. 21, Governor Phil Murphy lauded the partnership.

“I am proud that NJ Transit and the Middlesex County Improvement Authority came together so North Brunswick can finally get a long-overdue rail station to complete its transit village,” Murphy said in a speech.

Senate President Steve Sweeney, a Democrat from West Deptford, said commuters who had expected a station in 2018 could have continued waiting a decade or longer. Now, groundbreaking is targeted for 2021.

“NJ Transit’s in crisis,” he said. “I look at this as Middlesex is making an investment in Middlesex.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Elise Young in Trenton at eyoung30@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Flynn McRoberts at fmcroberts1@bloomberg.net, Stacie Sherman

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