Remember the hot minute when it looked like the derailed ARC tunnel project connecting Jersey and the city was going to be replaced by a 7 train extension? The dream isn't dead yet! The Daily News is reporting that the city has given a quarter-million dollar no-bid contract to an engineering firm to look at the idea. And the decision if this is a good idea or not should come in "a matter of months, not years," according to Deputy Mayor Robert Steel.
One plus for the project is that the really expensive part—digging under Manhattan—is already being done as part of the the current $2.1 billion 7 train extension to 34th Street and 11th Avenue. The total rough estimate to extend the line to Secaucus is around $5 billion, less than half of the $11 billion ARC project Jersey Governor Christie so gleefully killed.
The biggest problem for the proposal? Money. Everybody is cash strapped (the MTA in particular) and coming up with funds will be tricky. But we won't know how tricky until there is a real report on the project to work with. Parsons Brinckerhoff, got the no-bid contract to analyze the idea (looking into things like how many riders it could serve, how it could connect to NJ Transit in addition to cost) because they worked up the studies for the current 7 extension.
So maybe Secaucus is the next Bushwick?
