Port Authority chairman calls for more transport spending

Port Authority chairman calls for more transport spending In two speeches this week, the chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Chairman, Anthony R. Coscia, discussed the need for increased spending on transportation in the country and region.
   Friday, in remarks to the Newark Regional Business Partnership, Coscia said a 10-year plan by his agency to spend $26 billion on infrastructure was needed in order to improve existing facilities and accommodate future growth.
   'There clearly is a crisis in this country, a crisis related to our inability to reverse the crumbling trend of our infrastructure. Unless we do something about it we will pay an incredible cost for it,' said Coscia, as he accepted the partnership’s Transportation Person of the Year Award.
   'Go into any major metropolitan area and you see crumbling bridges, roads, congestion, blackouts caused by insufficient power grids, gaping sinkholes. The leader of this world in so many different senses
should do better than that,' he said.
   He noted in its first 50 years the Port Authority had many significant accomplishments – construction of the George Washington Bridge, the Lincoln Tunnel, Port Newark and Elizabeth, three airports and the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan
   'Since then we have sort of lost our way and in the second half of our existence haven’t been as ambitious. We have taken the same kind of approach that nationally we have taken,' he said.
   'Fortunately, I think that is changing,' he added, pointing to the decision by the port authority to invest $2 billion and partner with New Jersey Transit to build the Trans Hudson Express Tunnel, and the agency's recent acquisition of Stewart Airport in Newburgh, N.Y.
   He noted the port authority in the past had resisted involvement in urban mass transit because of negative economic implications for an agency that is financially self-supporting and receives no tax revenue from neither New York nor New Jersey.
   But he said investment in mass transit was needed to address the growing congestion crisis in the region – congestion costs millions of dollars in lost productivity from workers sitting in traffic for hours or coming to work exhausted after their morning commute on a train where they can't find a seat.
   While the agency is spending heavily to increase capacity at its existing airports, Coscia said Stewart will give it lots of room to grow – noting that the 2,400-acre airport only had 500,000 passengers last year compared to Newark Liberty which handled 35 million at a 2,200 acre facility. But Coscia said a new mass transit link will have to be constructed to the airport which is located about 55 miles north of New York.
   On Thursday, Coscia gave the commencement address across town at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark where he announced plans by the agency to reduce the global warming impact of port authority ports and airports by 80 percent in the long term.
   He said the agency will develop a comprehensive strategy over the next two years to implement alternative energy solutions at its airports and ports.
   Coscia said while it was impossible to bring critical facilities like the airports and ports to zero-carbon emissions, their impact on the environment could be reduced through geothermal heating and cooling of buildings, on-site power generation using fuel cells, use of wind and solar power, having planes use docking stations to power up at airports rather than idling their engines, using electrified tugs and other alternative fuel ramp-side equipment, and use planes like the giant A380 to carry more passengers on flights that also are more environmentally efficient.
   Coscia highlighted plans by the port authority to spend $2 billion on state-of-the-art freight rail improvement that he said will increase the ability to move cargo entering our ports to distribution centers around the region and the nation, and remove 500,000 truck trips annually from our congested state and local roads.