No looming deadline for 3rd track funding

Noah Manskar

While it took about three years for plans for a third track the Long Island Rail Road to be derailed in the mid-2000s, local opponents now say they have about three weeks.

Leaders of an effort against plans for the track along 9.8 miles of the LIRR’s Main Line between Floral Park and Hicksville said at a Feb. 18 meeting they must convince Gov. Andrew Cuomo to halt the project, estimated at $1.5 billion, before a 2016-17 state budget is finalized in April.

But the opponents’ concerns about the April date may be unfounded since there is no funding for the project in Cuomo’s executive budget, according to state documents, and it’s not yet included in the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s 2015-2019 Capital Program, LIRR President Patrick Nowakowski said at an MTA board meeting Monday.

“It is not in that program at this point in time,” he said.

The third track, announced Jan. 5, is part of a $100 billion infrastructure package Cuomo included in his 2016-17 budget presentation and hopes to undertake in the next five years.

They would be funded by existing and proposed new state funds, as well as federal money, settlements, money from public authorities, private funds and other sources, according to the state Senate finance committee’s staff analysis of the executive budget.

Neither that analysis nor the state budget division’s briefing book mentions the third track among the $10 billion in transportation expenditures proposed for the fiscal year starting April 1.

The MTA has funding left over from its 2005-2009 Capital Program, which funded a 2005 environmental study that was “stopped midstream,” to pay for a new environmental study, Nowakowski said Monday, the first step toward Cuomo’s new plan.

“(W)ith the governor(‘s) support, it is important that (we) move very aggressively and expeditiously since we do have funding for this environmental study to advance this project as far as we can as quick as we can,” he said.

The MTA has hired an environmental consultant to do the study, Nowakowski said, and expects “to have them aboard by next week.”

“That will very much involve continued outreach to the affected communities because the environmental facts that we are talking about are things that affect the quality of life in those communities,” Nowakowski said at the meeting.

An earlier plan for a third track met intense community opposition when the MTA proposed it in 2005 before it was shelved in 2008 for lack of funds.

A local campaign to get the governor to remove the new project from his budget was the focus of last Thursday’s meeting, hosted by a Floral Park village task force.

The task force and opposition coalition Citizens Against Rail Expansion have started a Twitter campaign to convince Cuomo to stop the plan, and are encouraging residents in Floral Park, New Hyde Park, Mineola and other Main Line villages to call and write to Cuomo.

A CARE leaflet distributed at the meeting says the opposition needs “urgent action” and lists the potential negative impacts a third track would have “if this line item in the governor’s budget is not withdrawn.”

“The hard part about this one is you almost feel you’re in this diminished capacity of not being able to have that kind of opportunity to negotiate,” Floral Park Chamber of Commerce President Michael Jakob told the crowd of about 70 at the village’s recreation building. “All we’ve got is a short-term opportunity to fight.”

Cuomo transportation spokeswoman Beth DeFalco has said the new third track plan is “radically different” from the one the MTA previously proposed and bears “increased community benefits.”

It will be built entirely within the LIRR’s right of way where possible and will require about a fifth of the property acquisitions, minimizing impacts on surrounding communities, MTA and state officials have said.

Proponents also say there’s a large economic impetus for a third track, which they argue would ease east- and westbound commutes and complement the LIRR’s East Side Access project to put an LIRR station at Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan.

A 2014 study by the Rauch Foundation Long Island Index found over 10 years, it would add 14,000 jobs, 35,000 new residents, $3 billion in personal income, $5.6 billion to Long Island’s gross regional product, $40 million in sales tax revenue and $103 million in property tax revenue.

DeFalco has said the project will include an extensive outreach effort involving door-to-door conversations and a website with updates and direct access to planners.

CARE spokesman Bill Corbett said it’s unlikely any changes to the earlier plan would convince him the third track would benefit Floral Park.

“We’re not Hollis, we’re not Bel Air, we’re not Jamaica,” he said. “We’re something different, and we work hard to keep it that way.”

Based on the old plan, village and school district officials and business leaders said Feb. 18 construction would still hurt quality of life and potentially threaten health in the affected area.

Construction would cause major disturbances for schools in the Floral Park-Bellerose district, which all abut the railroad tracks, said Lynn Pombonyo, a Floral Park village trustee and former school district superintendent.

It would also make it more difficult for businesses to function, Jakob said.

The Floral Park Chamber of Commerce and the Floral Park-Bellerose school board have passed resolutions opposing the project, Corbett said, as have village civic and political groups.

CARE has received about $1,500 in donations and is working to get more organizations and elected officials to publicly oppose it, he said.

Village Trustee Archie Cheng, who leads the task force, said there would be more informational meetings like Thursday’s.

The Village of New Hyde Park is holding a similar meeting March 3 at 8 p.m.

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