Going Coastal

For decades, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was a bastion of patronage and a hulking bureaucracy living on its past success in building much of the region’s transportation network.

After its creation in 1921 and a burst of construction in the 1930s that included the George Washington Bridge and the Lincoln Tunnel, the agency largely languished, inheriting politicians past their prime, along with members of their extended families and circles of friends.

At times, the governors of New York and New Jersey — who share responsibility for the agency, though their agendas are often competing — refused to approve substantial investment, and in some cases they tried to pull the agency apart and dilute its sway. But in the aftermath of the destruction of the World Trade Center the headquarters of the Port Authority and its last major construction project, more than 30 years ago, it has at least started to chip away at the nepotism and displayed a renewed vigor in launching projects not seen in decades.

With the backing of both governors, Jon S. Corzine of New Jersey and Eliot Spitzer of New York, and of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg — three pragmatists who view a healthy Port Authority as a driving economic force for the region — the agency has taken on a robust agenda, which includes spending $26 billion over 10 years to rebuild and expand its airports, bridges, ports, railways, tunnels and the trade center.

“This is the best alignment in leadership we’ve seen in many years,” said Martin E. Robins, director of the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center at Rutgers University. “The sky is not falling, but the agency has been underachieving for a number of years and is now poised to do something very significant.”

The agency does not have the power to tax, so its officials, appointed by the two governors. must rely on bond issues, tolls, fares, fees and leases to finance projects.

So far, the agency’s checklist includes rebuilding the World Trade Center, helping finance a second rail tunnel under the Hudson River (the first was built a century ago), revamping the moribund PATH system, replacing the Goethals Bridge, giving Kennedy International Airport a major face-lift and linking the region’s ports to the freight rail network.

Last week, another piece of the agenda took shape when the Port Authority took control of Stewart International Airport in New Windsor, N.Y., the agency’s first major acquisition in nearly 40 years. The agency wants to expand Stewart, a sleepy regional airport in Orange County, about 65 miles north of mid-Manhattan, as a way to ease congestion at the region’s three major airports.

However, not everyone is pleased to see the agency flexing its muscles, and its ambitious plans are rekindling longstanding suspicions that it is abusing its independence with little regard for the needs of those it is supposed to serve.

Not surprisingly, commuters and lawmakers pounced on the Port Authority over its plans to raise tolls on its bridges and tunnels by at least one-third next year, the first increase since 2001. Drivers without E-ZPass would pay $8 or $9, up from the current $6, to cross into New York on the George Washington Bridge and in the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels; or to cross to New Jersey from Staten Island on the Goethals and Bayonne Bridges and the Outerbridge Crossing — which was named after the first chairman of the Port Authority, Eugenius H. Outerbridge.

“I can’t see, no matter how you slice it, how the motorist is going to gain from a toll hike helping finance other projects,” said Stephen G. Carrellas, the New Jersey chapter coordinator of the National Motorists Association, a group based in Wisconsin.

“I can’t say for a fact that these projects will be more responsive to the needs of those using them, but they seem to be trying to do the right things,” said Gene Russianoff, the lawyer for the Straphangers Campaign, a rider advocacy group. “Like other transit advocates, I hope for the best but I am on guard for the worst.”

Toll and fare increases are rarely popular, and the governors of New Jersey and New York have often used their veto power to stymie initiatives. But these days, the Port Authority has more political cover. Last week, Governor Corzine — who has appointed a new leadership team — all but endorsed the higher tolls and rail fares.

“The cost of maintaining just the operations are substantial,” he told reporters in Hamilton, N.J. “I’m sure what Governor Spitzer and I would like to do is keep that cost to the lowest possible level that will allow us to accomplish safe provision of services at the tunnels and bridges and develop the port.”

The backing of the governors has bolstered the agency’s ability to pursue ambitious goals like the Hudson rail tunnel, which is expected to cost about $8 billion; the agency has agreed to contribute $2 billion, in the belief that moving Amtrak and New Jersey Transit passengers more efficiently will spur economic growth and reduce the wear and tear on existing facilities.

To be sure, many of the agency’s steps are more incremental and less glamorous, like establishing high-speed toll lanes at the Outerbridge Crossing in Staten Island. Two lanes have been equipped with devices, mounted to an overhead gantry, that can read an E-ZPass tag in vehicles going 45 miles per hour, instead of the maximum of 25 m.p.h. at other gates.

In the offices overlooking the bridge’s toll plaza, David Boyle, a supervisor, monitored the traffic flow one recent afternoon. In 15 minutes, nearly 300 vehicles streamed through the high-speed gates, twice as many as passed through the other five booths combined. The goal is to eliminate all of its manned tollbooths to reduce bottlenecks. “The push to go to higher speeds lets us move traffic that much faster,” said Paul Pittari, general manager of the Port Authority bridge crossings on Staten Island.

But with the highways and Manhattan becoming increasingly clogged with traffic, the Port Authority is shifting its emphasis from cars, trucks and buses to rail lines. The agency built the AirTrain to run from the Jamaica Long Island Rail Road station to Kennedy Airport and is considering a rail link from Stewart Airport to run along the west side of the Hudson, connect with the Port Jervis line and then come into the city.

Nor can the authority afford to ignore its original mission, operating and unifying the ports in New York and New Jersey. Those ports’ dominance on the East Coast is being challenged by cities like Baltimore and Norfolk.

In April, the agency reopened a rail spur on Staten Island that had been shut for 15 years, so containers unloaded at the port at the Howland Hook Marine Terminal could be transported to New Jersey by train instead of being loaded onto trucks. In all, the agency is spending $600 million to improve rail services at all of its ports.

Anthony R. Coscia, the chairman of the Port Authority since 2003, said he recognized that the agency’s expanded agenda could arouse fears of an unchallenged juggernaut, in the mold of Robert Moses’ Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority. For that reason, he said, he and Anthony E. Shorris, the Port Authority’s executive director since early this year, helped rewrite its bylaws, for the first time since 1981. Changes include opening all board and committee meetings, to encourage public comment.

Both men are mindful of what Mr. Shorris calls “a pretty bad 12 years” at the agency during the Republican administrations of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Gov. George E. Pataki.

“Pataki didn’t think of using the Port Authority to promote regional growth,” said Jameson W. Doig, who reached that conclusion in “Empire on the Hudson,” a history of the agency he wrote in 2001.

But in the end, it comes down to travelers, whether on the roads, on the rails or in the air. It is a battle that cannot be won.

“Criticism of the Port Authority comes from the type of operations they run,” Mr. Doig said. “It’s almost inevitable there would be some of this. They’d have less of it if they built fewer projects, but they wouldn’t get any of the benefits.”

By KEN BELSON

NY Times