One of the unresolved questions about the Tappan Zee Bridge/I-287 corridor project is who will run the bus rapid transit and commuter rail systems planned for the corridor. Another big question, which MTR looked at earlier today, is who will pay for them. In the past, the NY State Thruway Authority has claimed that neither toll money nor bonds backed by toll revenue can be used to run transit over the bridge. While true, the statement overstates the Authority’s prohibition. Though operating a transit line is not within the statutory powers given to the Authority, the power to construct and maintain transit facilities is.
The founding statute (Laws of New York, Public Authorities, Article 2, Title 9) of the Thruway Authority limits the Authority to maintaining and operating the “thruway system,” which consists of the Thruway itself, the New York state canal system and the Tappan Zee ferry service. However, the Authority’s power over the “thruway system” extends to “facilities related thereto as the authority may determine.” Therefore, any infrastructure that achieves the Authority’s purpose of facilitating a smoothly running Thruway is within their jurisdiction. This can include bonding for transit across the Tappan Zee Bridge: as the Tappan Zee project website reasons, “adding transit to the I-287 Corridor could help minimize corridor travel delay, reduce travel times, provide travel choices, improve local and regional mobility, foster economic growth and improve air quality.”
As if to illustrate, in the early 1990s, the state legislature added section 386 to the Authority’s founding statute, which authorized the Authority to issue bonds in order to raise limited funds for “the construction, reconstruction, improvement, reconditioning and preservation of rail freight facilities and for the cost of intercity rail passenger facilities and equipment.” The section specifically notes that one purpose served by the projects would be to “provide rail access to relieve highway congestion.” (Interestingly, the section also authorizes bonds for aviation projects, stretching the connective fiber to the thruway even further.)
In the November 2008 Tappan Zee project financing report, the multi-agency study team didn’t make any assumptions about which agencies would pay for the project, but still seemed to suggest that transit funds wouldn’t be coming from the Thruway Authority:
“A unified public debt finance mechanism is assumed… No attempt is made to simulate specific MTA credit structures for the transit financing or Thruway credits for the bridge financing (emphasis added).”
But the transit planned as part of the Tappan Zee project would run along the Thruway and over the Tappan Zee, meaning it is strongly connected to the Thruway’s traffic congestion. Bonds may be insufficient to pay for even the transit portion of the project, given the huge cost of the project. Either way, however, the Thruway Authority shouldn’t be counted out as a source of transit funding.
Who Funds the Rail Bridge on the West Shore Line that goes over the Thruway in West Nyack, New York near the existing Tappan Zee Bridge, or Who Funds the Rail Bridge when the West Shore Line goes under the Thruway near Coxsackie, New York? Either way, It is about a rail line running under Thruway on the new Tappan Zee Bridge in which CSX on the West Shore or the MTA on the East Shore may not have any interest of running new Rail Lines or new Tunnels to the foot of that new bridge anyway. Now with the ARC project NJT does not either.
It is interesting you mention airports because the MTA wants to build a new rail line to the Port Authority Stewart Airport, But some proposed study routes are using Thruway Right of Ways.
MTA currently pays NJtransit to run the rail line to Port Jervis NY. This right of way comes up to ROUTE 287 just outside Suffuren NY. There is a frieght right of way that goes all the way to the Spring Valley line along route 287. At that point the rail is only 3 miles from the Tappan Zee bridge. It would also give direct access to NYC from the Catskills.
I forgot to add the right of way that PA wants to use fro Stewart Airport also merges with the Port Jervis line around the route 17 interchange with the thurway.
Plus, Plus, Plus all the way. But can you get the 3 groups. NY thruway, MTA & PA together?
Have PA work with MTA on right of way & running trains to Tappen Zee. Have NY thrurway just engineer so MTA can run the tracks.
Strange how transit advocates like getting bogged down in legal technicalities. (Similar thing happened with Airtrain, thus no intermediate stops.) This is a law passed by the NYS legislature…the NYS legislature (with the governor) can amend the law.
What happened to the idea that’s been going years of running passenger trains on the median strip of the thruway? In most instances I can see many of the overpasses and the bridges have room for track. Some preparation and track laying can be done on the median. The biggest expense may be replacement of the Tappen Zee bridge. At Buffalo one branch can go on to Cleveland on to Chicago. Another branch gos to Niagara Falls on to Toronto. The present freight corridor has too many curves and grade crossings that need to bee addressed. In places like Fairport they would need to acquire right-of-way. Construction of high speed rail on dedicated track could greatly affects lower speed freight traffic.