The Red Bank Borough Council passed a resolution that puts it on record as officially opposing the Red Bank route for the MOM line. The argument, as reported in The Asbury Park Press, sounds eerily familiar:
RED BANK — The Borough Council officially opposed the Red Bank route of the proposed Monmouth-Ocean-Middlesex rail line because its 30 trains a day would gridlock local streets when added to the current 80 North Jersey Coast Line trains that stop here.
The council voted to oppose that route and support the Monmouth Junction route, which would serve western Monmouth and southern Middlesex County towns.
“Trains cross (borough streets) 80 times a day. The amount of train service they’re asking to add will create havoc,” Council President Arthur Murphy III said. “We are not in favor of this; it impacts parking and a lot of things.”
There’s more:
Borough officials said adding a second commuter line to Red Bank would affect the quality of life in an already congested municipality. It would send commuter trains over two additional railroad crossings, adding to the four Coast Line grade crossings.
“It will strangle this municipality,” Mayor Pasquale “Pat” Menna said. “This municipality will have no movement.”
Councilwoman Mary Grace Cangemi, who lives near the North Jersey Coast Line railroad tracks, said that it’s the wait at the grade crossings, not train horns or bells, that affect her and her neighbors.
“It’s the six to seven minutes it takes to get out of my street,” Cangemi said. “There are so many grade crossings — this is not optimal.”
I’ve heard officials in South Barunswick, Jamesburg and Monroe make this argument dozens — hundres? — of times. But when these arguments are made in southern Middlesex County, it is decried as the worst form of NIMBYism.
The hypocrisy of it blowes my mind.
South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
E-mail me by clicking here.
Hank Kalet 