Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) and Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen) today sharply questioned new Port Authority plans to add a $400 million hotel, conference center and retail showcase to LaGuardia Airport when critical Trans-Hudson transportation needs are still unfunded.
“The Port Authority pledged to get out of the real estate development business and focus on its core transportation mission,” Sweeney said. “This plan seems to run directly counter to that commitment. The Port Authority needs to get out of the real estate development business, and focus on finding funding for the new Gateway rail tunnel and rehabilitation and expansion of the Port Authority Bus Terminal.”
“You can’t have hundreds of thousands of bus commuters crammed into a substandard terminal every day and spend hundreds of millions of dollars building another Taj Mahal like we did with the white marble PATH station at the World Trade Center,” said Weinberg.
The new plans for a grandiose “central entry portal” at LaGuardia’s Central Terminal Building were recommended by an outside panel appointed by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and would add $400 million to the $3.6 billion cost of the LaGuardia Airport overhaul. The proposal includes a hotel, conference center, retail stores and a “people mover.”
One Port Authority commissioner defended the grand design by saying it would be “the front door to our region, and when people come here they should say, ‘This is what New York stands for,’” the Wall Street Journal reported.
But Sweeney and Weinberg said the Port Authority should be more worried about getting people into New York City.
“Buses are creeping through the Lincoln Tunnel into the Port Authority Bus Terminal bumper to bumper, and the terminal can’t handle today’s traffic, much less the projected increase in growth over the next 25 years,” Sweeney said. “Rail ridership from New Jersey is expected to double by 2040, but Penn Station is at capacity and there’s no place to put any more trains.
“Even worse, one of the 105-year-old rail tunnels that were damaged by Sandy might have to close for 18 months for emergency repairs before a new rail tunnel is built,” he said. “If that happens, 75,000 rail commuters would have to find other ways into Manhattan, which would create tremendous traffic delays and flood the already overcrowded PATH system.”
Weinberg agreed. “New Jerseyans pay a disproportionate share of the bridge and tunnel tolls that fund much of the Port Authority’s operations,” she said. “We need to make sure that Port Authority dollars are spent where they are needed most.”
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