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Port Authority set to approve $400 million PATH investment
Star-Ledger, Thursday, October 18, 2007
By Ron Marsico
The PATH rail system will receive a nearly $400 million signal-system upgrade to help increase capacity 20 percent by 2014, officials said yesterday.
Commissioners for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the system, plan to pass a resolution today authorizing the expenditure.
Together with an already-approved $809-million plan to purchase 340 new rail cars, the signal project will help bring the 99-year-old line into the 21st century by allowing more trains on the line, running closer together. Roughly another $100 million eventually will be targeted for about 75 more rail cars.
Port Authority Chairman Anthony Coscia said the agency is putting "$1.3 billion into a system that is going to promise a 20-percent capacity increase."
Asked if the project would necessitate a hike in the $1.50 PATH fare, Coscia issued his usual reply: There will be no increases through 2007, but it would be "unrealistic to think" PATH fares and bridge and tunnel tolls will remain stable over the life of the agency's current 10-year capital plan.
PATH trains run along 43 miles of tracks through Newark, Harrison, Jersey City, Hoboken and Manhattan, with passengers making 240,000 separate trips daily. Roughly 60 percent of those trips occur during the morning and evening rush hours, the times when the new signals will best help put more trains on the tracks.
Mike DePallo, PATH's director and general manager, said the work will provide "a computer-operated train system as opposed to a system (of) electro-mechanical devices to control the trains."
DePallo said the system is nearing capacity, and the project is designed to help meet future demand. For example, he said, during peak hours between the Exchange Place and World Trade Center stations, trains currently run 3.8 minutes behind each other. The upgraded system will lower that time to 2.8 minutes, he said.
For the Port Authority, which reluctantly took control of PATH in 1962 as part of the deal for building the World Trade Center, the project represents a significant investment in a mass transit system that loses money every year. Last year, for example, PATH lost $187 million.
Coscia said the signal system is not the most attractive financial investment for the bi-state agency, "But somebody has to do it."
The chairman said the agency does not anticipate the project will create any long-standing construction problems, though "undoubtedly there will be some" related delays.
"It needs to be done in a way that's safe, efficient, reliable," Coscia said.
Meanwhile yesterday, Anthony Shorris, the Port Authority's executive director, said the agency would study a proposal by U.S. Rep. Jerrod Nadler (D-N.Y.) to build a freight rail tunnel between Jersey City and Brooklyn. The cost was estimated in January 2006 at between $4.8 billion and $7.4 billion.
Nadler had secured $100 million in federal funds for the early stages of the project, but until this week the Port Authority had rejected exploring the concept, with officials saying they had too many competing proposals.
But Shorris, who joined the agency earlier this year, reversed that stance, saying the Port Authority should at least consider the idea. The development was first reported in Wednesday's New York Times.
Shorris said he has not taken a position on Nadler's proposal, but said, "The right agency to answer the question is the Port Authority."
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