Buried deep in NJDOT’s 423-page draft 2010 Capital Program is $30 million for the “Cross-Harbor Freight Movement Project,” an enhancement of the Greenville Yard/Brooklyn railcar float system. This is the biggest chunk of rail freight funds in the program, which also includes $12.5 million in statewide rail freight funds and $750,000 for a freight information technology project.

The existing railcar float system moves freight on barges from Greenville Yard in Jersey City to Brooklyn.  What was once a thriving industry is now limited to a single entity, the New York New Jersey Rail, which moves about 80 railcars per day.  But environmental documents for the proposed Cross-Harbor Freight Tunnel suggest that expansion of the railcar float system would annually divert about 450,000 tons of cargo from the largest trucks to freight rail.

Furthermore, some of these planned improvements could help ease the way for the cross-harbor tunnel, since Greenville Yard would be the tunnel’s western terminus. The Port Authority took over the tunnel’s environmental study in 2007 and “re-launched” the project last year, adding momentum to a project which could cut trans-Hudson truck traffic by more than 10% and divert millions of tons of cargo to rail annually.

Union County Freight Rail Projects Still Unfinished

Not far away in Union County, however, some longstanding freight rail projects are languishing. According to the Independent Press, refurbishments of the Staten Island Railroad (in blue on the map at right) and Rahway Valley (in red) freight lines have been delayed because of budget cutbacks.

Some of the improvements have been on the table since 1997, when the plan was to reconnect New York City to the national freight network by rehabilitating the entire 8 miles of the SI Railroad between Cranford and Staten Island (see MTR # 132).

After that plan lagged, the Port Authority agreed to connect a short section of the SIRR (in green on the map) to Conrail’s Chemical Coast Line line instead. The SIRR opened two years ago and has been an early success, taking tens of thousands of trucks off the road per year.

The slow progress may just be a matter of priorities. The rehab of the Union County portion of the SIRR is no longer necessary to connect NYC to the national freight network, though it would help county industry and is reportedly almost complete. Work on the Rahway Valley Line, however, is not. County officials are also lukewarm on the freight improvements, with the county manager telling the Press that “this has been a state project from day one… the county’s interest [is] simply to protect local residents as much as possible.”