NJ Transit and the Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH) were awarded $235 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Transportation to build a start-of-the-art Emergency Operations Center and repair damage caused by Hurricane Sandy. Alan Vorhees Transportation Control Founding Director and former Port Authority official Martin Robins told NJTV News Anchor Mary Alice Williams that the $66.8 million granted to NJ Transit is going to be of tremendous value because without an efficient operations center, the transit company cannot perform properly.
When asked if $66.8 million for NJ Transit alone is enough to cover the costs of repairing and preparing for the next disaster, Robins said, “It’s a hard question to answer. I am sure that this money is going to be of tremendous value. Of particular importance is the operations center. That is the brain of the NJ Transit rail system. It was in the Meadowlands maintenance facility and it was vulnerable and overwhelmed during Hurricane Sandy when the river backed up. Without an efficient operations center, NJ Transit can’t properly preform the way that it ought to. So that is a very good use of the money and exactly the kind of thing that was destroyed and must be replaced.”
As for preparing for future disasters, Robins said that he imagines that NJ Transit still has a list and there probably are Sandy programs that are not yet fully tapped, that probably can help NJ Transit. He said that he doubts that this is the full picture of the money that will go into transit.
PATH received $100 million more than NJ Transit but it seems that NJ Transit has more specific plans for the money. Robins said that PATH money goes into restoring the tunnels. He said there is quite a story there because when the river waters got into the PATH tunnels, the water also got into the tunnels for Amtrak — the Hudson River tunnels into New York Penn Station. He said there is a great deal of concern by people in railroads about being breached by the rivers and this money is vital to try to shore up the tunnels and protect the signaling systems.
Robins said that the president of Amtrak just announced that the tunnels to New York Penn Station, which had been damaged, may be so seriously damaged that they may have to be totally taken out of service in the next 10 to 20 years. Robins said that would be a catastrophic development if there were not other tunnels in place. He said he is sure that the PATH money is being applied to prevent that particular occurrence.
When asked if the Port Authority has always been in the real estate business, Robins said people have been asking that constantly. He said that the Port Authority really got seriously into the real estate business back in 1962 when the deal was brokered to build the World Trade Center in return for the Port Authority taking on the PATH operation. Then the Port Authority built the original World Trade Center and went off into several other ventures in the 1980s, said Robins. He said that the Port Authority has been backing away from real estate to a considerable degree ever since then but got very much involved in the rebuilding of the World Trade Center after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.