June 10-16, 2004

cityspace

A Tale of Two River Lines

DERAILED: With the stalling of plans to join Philadelphia to Reading via MetroRail, state officials could learn from New Jersey's River Line, which connects Camden to Trenton. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

New Jersey's already on the path to mass transit, while Pennsylvania is still stuck in traffic.

by Steve Conn

Boondoggle. Fiasco. Pork barrel. These are just a few of the more polite descriptions that have greeted the opening of NJ Transit's new River Line. After many delays, and at a cost of more than $1 billion, the light rail has been making the 34-mile journey between Camden and Trenton since March.

What the River Line promises to do is not simply reinvigorate two of the most depressed cities in the nation, though it will surely help to do that. More than this, the River Line could revitalize a string of small towns along the Delaware by turning them into transportation nodes, creating what people in the biz call "transit-oriented development." In the most sprawling suburban state in the country, the River Line could also catalyze the re-urbanization of Camden, Trenton and the towns in between.

Still, the River Line provides lots to complain about, and its cost is only the beginning. Even the rosiest ridership projections leave the line in need of heavy annual subsidies, thus draining NJ Transit money from other projects, especially in the north of the state.

The line's initial schedule has it running late after 9 p.m. only on Saturdays, ensuring that those who are attending a Tweeter Center event or a Riversharks game on any other day will still have to drive. Worst of all, perhaps, the project seems to be entirely the creation of politicians, driven more by their sense of political geography, rather than by the traffic patterns and transit needs of the region. Even John Pucher, an expert on transit and a professor at Rutgers University who is an advocate of mass transit, has called the River Line "probably the worst transit investment in the entire country."

Right now, all of these criticisms seem justified. But 20 years from now, I suspect, we will have largely forgotten them all. Maybe in the future, we won't much care about the cost of the River Line. If the promises of economic revitalization are fulfilled in the coming years, if small towns experience a rebirth around their transit hubs, and if the River Line manages to reconnect New Jerseyans to their side of the Delaware — not with six lanes of asphalt but with an elegant sliver of track — then perhaps the dollars spent will make sense. After all, no one really remembers how people scoffed at the idea of putting a subway in Washington, D.C. Back then, people cried boondoggle, fiasco and pork barrel.

Then again, according to a study, D.C. has seen more than $30 billion in new investment within one quarter-mile of its subway stops.

Meanwhile, across the Delaware, plans for MetroRail — SEPTA's version of the River Line connecting Center City with Reading along the Schuylkill River — are dying a slow, ignominious death. While New Jersey's political establishment managed to get it together to make the River Line happen, Pennsylvania's political delegation hasn't yet been able to get this job done. And with the president spending federal money like a drunken sailor, finding the funding for this rail line is only going to get harder.

MetroRail is a bigger project — almost twice as long — but its payoff is potentially bigger as well. The line really could ease the horrific traffic congestion along the Sure-Kill Expressway. There are already travel destinations along the route: The Schuylkill River Valley between Philadelphia and Reading is dotted with small struggling industrial cities that could be revitalized into small urban gems with transit-oriented development.

The future, at least in the Northeast corridor, lies in mass transit despite whether Americans want to admit. As concerns about the disappearance of farmland and open space grow, as the era of big road projects comes to an end and as gasoline tops $2 per gallon, we need to recommit ourselves to the efficiencies offered by mass transit. Light rail concentrates development, gets people out of their cars and guarantees that you won't ever be stuck for hours because of a jackknifed truck.

These two river lines, one complete and one still frustratingly out of reach, also remind us that this whole region grew up, in the 18th and 19th centuries, along its two river corridors. Sadly, those rivers have largely disappeared from our collective consciousness. Our region is stagnating — its population is not growing very much, it is aging and jobs aren't being created here in any great abundance. Turning all this around will require broader regional cooperation. Rediscovering our two rivers, through two new river lines, could act as the tie that binds the region together.

Back in New Jersey, the early reports on the River Line are interesting. Weekend ridership is exceeding predictions and property values are rising along the length of the line. Let's hope SEPTA and Pennsylvania can build its own boondoggle along the Schuylkill that will transform this region in the next generation.

Steve Conn is a Philadelphia native and an associate professor of history at Ohio State University.