by Dan Friedman

Transportation means commerce and prosperity," said Joseph Seymour, chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in an interview in New York Construction News last month.

His words articulate a reality that New York has always understood.

From the Erie Canal to Grand Central Terminal, to its world-famous bridges and tunnels, to its unparalleled 685 mi. of subway track and its vast network of expressways, New York has always thought-and built-big when it came to transportation infrastructure. Without it, a metropolitan area of 18 million people just couldn't work.

Despite a period of neglect in the 1960s and '70s, New York's history of thinking and building big does not appear to be over. Indeed, the metropolitan area seems on the cusp of an era of major infrastructure growth.

Gerry Bogacz, planning group director for the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council, an association of local governments and transportation pro-viders, said there are currently 11 major transportation infrastructure investment studies under way, more than any other region in the nation.

These studies, which are being conducted by various combinations of state and local government and transportation authorities, are looking into the feasibility of projects that could provide heavy construction jobs for decades. Taken together, they would vastly improve the metro area's transportation system for the 21st Century.

New transportation infrastructure being studied include the extension of the No. 7 Line west from Times Square to the Javits Center; construction of a new Second Avenue Subway; creation of a major rail terminal downtown that would bring together the PATH trains, the city's subways and the Long Island Rail Road; a new commuter line under the Hudson from Secaucus, N.J. to Midtown Manhattan; and construction of a cross-harbor tunnel that would move freight by rail from New Jersey-under the Hudson, Manhattan and the East River-directly to Brooklyn.

There are also studies under way to improve existing infrastructure, including the Staten Island Expressway and the interchange of the Major Deegan and the Cross Bronx expressways in the Bronx. Reconstruction or replacement of the Tappan Zee Bridge, which spans the Hudson between Rockland and Westchester counties, is also being studied.

All of these potential projects would be huge.

"The Second Avenue Subway alone is going to cost about $15 billion," Bogacz said. "In any other city that would be a whole new transit system."

Where the Money Comes From
Transportation maintenance and expansion is, of course, funded in a variety of ways. Public authorities such as the Port Authority, the Metropolitan Transit Authority, the New York State Thruway Authority and the New Jersey Turnpike Authority collect tolls and fares and turn them into maintenance and, when possible, expansion.

The states' Departments of Transportation rely on their state budgets. In New York, for example, Gov. George Pataki's proposed budget would have cut $100 million in Department of Transportation funding, along with $37 million in engineering spending and another $34.9 million to the Consolidated Highway Improvement Program. The Legislature, however, overrode the governor's veto and restored most of the transportation funding.

The NYSDOT's 2003-04 capital budget from the state wound up being $1 billion, down only $100,000 from the previous year. "We did very well considering everything that's going on," said Peter Graves, a spokesperson for the NYSDOT.

New Jersey's Transportation Trust Fund, which provides the state's contribution to transportation capital projects, is expected to be $1.1 billion for fiscal year 2004, the same as last year, despite a $5 billion deficient in the state's budget.

"The governor (James McGreevey) asked the DOT to make a 10 percent cut in our budget this year," said Anna Farneski, a NJDOT spokesperson. "It all came out of operations, not the capital budget. The governor understands that the strength of our economy relies, to a large extent, on our transportation infrastructure. Unfortunately, we have a history in New Jersey of deferring maintenance. That won't happen with this administration."

In Connecticut, Michael Lonergan, construction administrator for the DOT, said the state's contribution to the DOT's capital budget would also be the same this year as last-$66 million.

In New York City, the city's DOT is directly responsible for the maintenance and renovation of all of the East River and Harlem River bridges, while it contracts out street maintenance and improvement to the city's Department of Design and Construction.

Given the severity of New York City's budget crisis, it might be expected that the city's transportation infrastructure work would be seriously wounded. However, learning from the last budget crisis in the 1970s, during which basic maintenance work on the city's infrastructure was forced to a halt, the Big Apple's capital budget has been separated from its annual operating budget. Once a project is under way, it can't be abandoned.

What can be cut, however, are new projects, and that is where the NYCDOT has been forced to scale back.

The annual capital budget for the NYCDOT is $1.1 billion. This allows it to continue its renovation work on the Williamsburg Bridge ($375.7 million) and the Manhattan Bridge ($175.4 million) as well as the Macombs Dam Bridge ($136.7 million) and the Third Avenue Bridge ($118.8 million), both over the Harlem River.

"We wound up taking a hit on two projects we were hoping to start this year," said Tom Cocola, a spokesperson for the NYCDOT. "We had hoped to replace the Willis Avenue Bridge, which would have been a $200 million project, and we had plans to add a two-lane ramp off the FDR Drive onto the Brooklyn Bridge, which would have cost about $300 million."

Those projects have now been deferred to later capital years.

The Role of the Feds
The region's transportation projects picture would not be complete without including the role of federal money.

In fact, the ability of the region over the last decade to catch up on its transportation maintenance and begin the process of expanding its infrastructure capabilities would not have been possible without the passage in 1991 of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act. The major architect of this legislation was the late New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moyinhan, who realized that New York and other big cities could not shoulder their transportation burdens alone.

Prior to ISTEA, New York City received an annual allocation of $30 million in "urban system" funds, based on a federal formula, and on average, another $25 million annually in unpredictable discretionary bridge funding through congressional earmarks. Under ISTEA, New York City received an average of $137 million annually for transportation projects.

Before ISTEA, federal money could only be used for capital construction or reconstruction projects; with ISTEA the majority of federal funds could be spent on a variety of transportation projects.

By increasing the authority of metropolitan planning organizations such as the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council to distribute funds, ISTEA made local governments and authorities active partners in federal transportation funding and planning decisions.

In 1998, building on the framework provided by ISTEA, Congress passed the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century, which, among other things, increased funding for transportation projects. Under TEA-21, New York City received $185 million annually and another $143.8 million in high-priority earmarked funds.

More than half of the New York State DOT's capital funds come from the federal government-$1.6 billion of a total $2.6 billion budget.

"We usually get an average of $500 million a year in federal funds," said Connecticut's Lonergan. Last year it was less but constituted the bulk of Conn DOT's capital budget-$333 million was federal money, $66 million came from the state and $8 million from other sources.

In New Jersey, while the numbers are much higher, and the state contributes more, the role of federal funds is substantial. Projecting into fiscal year 2004, the NJDOT said that the state is expected to provide $1.1 billion and the federal government a total of $1.2 billion.

"Over a five-year period between $12 billion and $15 billion in federal transportation funding comes into our region," Bogacz said. "It represents a significant portion of transportation funding for our members."

SAFETA
With TEA-21 set to expire on Sept. 30, construction and transportation interests are gearing up to ensure its reauthorization and increase its endowment.

In May, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta unveiled the Bush Administration's proposal for renewing the law. Dubbing it the "Safe and Flexible Transportation Efficiency Act" or "SAFETEA," it calls for a total of $247 billion for highway and transit programs over six years, which roughly maintains spending at current levels.

In a statement issued soon after SAFETA was unveiled, Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said, "There simply isn't enough funding in the administration's bill to address our efforts to address our nation's growing congestion problems." In the weeks that followed, Young and others pointed out that if the plan is adjusted to constant 2003 dollars, the SAFETA proposal provides less real funding than did TEA-21.

The amount of money to be allocated isn't the only point of contention. Some transportation lobbyists, including Anne Canby, president of the Surface Transportation Policy Project, expressed concerns that SAFETA would weaken protections on clean air, historic preservation and funding commitments to mass transit.

The Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee recently held hearings on the SAFETA package. Much of the testimony focused on the proposed bill's shift in federal funding for new starts from 80 percent under TEA-21 to 50 percent under SAFETA. At the same time, the new bill maintains the 80 percent federal share for highway maintenance projects.

"We have $2.5 billion worth of bridge repair and replacement in New Jersey that must be done within five years and have not identified where that funding is going to come from," said NJDOT's Farneski. "We are working closely with our congressional delegation to help insure that New Jersey and the region get the transportation funding needed."

An Open Question
With reauthorization looming on the horizon, industry forces interested in particular projects are also organizing.

In June, 19 leaders of construction, transportation and environmental groups came together to form MoveNY to advocate for the Cross Harbor Tunnel Project, the plan to build a freight tunnel from New Jersey to Brooklyn.

Among the members of the group are Richard Ravitch, former chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and Dick Anderson, president of the New York Building Congress.

"Freight traffic is projected to grow by 70 percent over the next 20 years," said Alice Meaker, a MoveNY spokesperson. "There's just no capacity for our highways to handle it. Now all rail freight stops at the Hudson. At Jersey City it gets transferred to trucks. With a new tunnel it would not have to be trucked through Manhattan to get to Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island, the Bronx or the southern tier of Connecticut."

Whether the Cross Harbor Tunnel and other grand plans will actually get built remains an open question.

The will certainly is there.
All of the region's DOTs and transportation authorities speak of the need to improve the capacity of their transportation infrastructure. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has made the expansion of the No. 7 Line and the redevelopment of the far-west side of Midtown Manhattan a centerpiece of his administration.

New Jersey Gov. McGreevey has put transit improvements on the front burner. In June he opened a new 500-space "park and ride" lot in West Orange, the first of what will be 20,000 new parking spaces adjacent to commuter rails in the state.
There is also momentum.

In addition to McGreevey's initiatives, the Port Authority has almost finished the reconstruction of the temporary PATH station at the World Trade Center site. It is working with the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. and Silverstein Properties Inc. on the design of a permanent station that will link the PATH with the New York City subway system. With federal emergency money available, the construction of a downtown transportation hub seems probable.

In addition, at least one of the grand projects that have been talked about in recent years is under way.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority's East Side Access project got started late last year. It will link the Long Island Rail Road, which currently only goes to Penn Station in Manhattan, to Grand Central Terminal. It involves digging a new tunnel from 63rd Street at the East River to Grand Central.

Will and momentum, however, are not always enough. The feasibility of many of the infrastructure projects now being studied depends, to a large extent, on the availability of federal funds.

"Reauthorization of T-21 is vital to all these processes," Bogacz said. "All we have is the administration's version of the bill. It's too early to tell what will happen. It's a huge open question and it's impossible to say if we're going to get what is needed."