Township of Belleville v. Federal Transit Admin.
| Decision Date | 09 December 1998 |
| Docket Number | Civil Action No. 98-2836. |
| Citation | 30 F.Supp.2d 782 |
| Parties | TOWNSHIP OF BELLEVILLE, Plaintiff, v. FEDERAL TRANSIT ADMINISTRATION, Gordon Linton (Administrator), Thomas J. Ryan (Regional Administrator), Shirley A. Dellibero (Executive Director, New Jersey Transit Corporation), Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of New Jersey |
William C. Sullivan, Jr., Hardin, Kundla, McKeon, Poletto & Polifroni, Springfield, NJ, for Plaintiff.
Susan C. Cassell, Assistant U.S. Attorney, Office of the U.S. Attorney, Newark, NJ, for Defendants Federal Transit Administration, Linton and Ryan.
Patricia E. Willard, Deputy Attorney General, Office of the Attorney General, Newark, NJ, for Defendant DeLibero.
Plaintiff, the Township of Belleville, brings this suit to challenge the issuance of a finding of no significant impact (FONSI) by defendant, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA). The FTA issued the FONSI to New Jersey Transit (NJT), thereby authorizing the use of federal transportation funds for the construction and design of a project known as the Newark City Subway Extension (subway extension) Vehicle Base Facility (base facility) (jointly, the project). Plaintiff premises its cause of action on the theory that certain federal statutory provisions have not been met by defendants, making the grant of the FONSI illegal. In light of these alleged violations, plaintiff seeks an injunction halting design and construction of the project until the defendants remedy the alleged procedural deficiencies through the preparation of an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), 42 U.S.C. 4321 et seq., and a Major Investment Study (MIS) under the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA), Pub.L. No. 102-240, 105 Stat.1914 (). Plaintiff has named as the FTA's co-defendants: Gordon Linton, Administrator of the FTA; Thomas J. Ryan, Regional Administrator of the FTA; and Shirley A. DeLibero, Executive Director of NJT.2 This Opinion addresses a number of motions and cross motions made by the parties, including said motion for preliminary and permanent injunctive relief by plaintiff, summary judgment motions by all parties, and motions to dismiss by defendants DeLibero and the FTA.
Some familiarity with the background of this suit is essential. The Newark City Subway (the subway or NCS) is a light rail system maintained and operated by NJT that serves eleven stations between Franklin Avenue in Belleville and Pennsylvania Station in Newark on a 4.3 mile double track line. The subway operates daily from 4:30 a.m. to 12:30 a.m., provides peak hour service on two minute headways, connects to greater than fifty bus routes along the line, and carries over 16,000 passengers each weekday. It operates independently, without a physical connection to any other rail line.
The subway opened for service in 1935. Since 1954, all revenue service on the subway has been provided by thirty President's Conference Committee cars (PCCs), manufactured between 1946 and 1949. Over the years, the fleet has dwindled, and currently only twenty-four active PCCs remain. A minimum of sixteen cars are required in order to maintain the current level of peak period service on the subway.
The New Jersey Legislature created NJT as a public corporation in 1979, and on October 14, 1980, NJT acquired the former owner of the subway. NJT has operated and maintained the subway ever since.
In 1981, NJT commissioned an $18 million program to rehabilitate and refurbish the subway infrastructure and rolling stock, which program was completed in 1988. Modernization of the PCC fleet was designed to extend the fleet's life approximately ten years.
Currently, the PCCs are stored beneath Pennsylvania Station, where the subway maintenance facility is also located. The maintenance facility has one stub-end inspection/repair track. Space limitations in the maintenance facility allow only routine maintenance and minor repairs. More extensive work requires removal and trucking of the PCCs to off-site shops. The structural deterioration of the PCCs has led to considerable difficulty in their upkeep. Among the many problems with the PCCs, major car components are no longer manufactured, the cars have doors on only one side, and the design of the cars does not lend itself to compliance with the accessibility requirements mandated by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
Considering the advanced age of the cars, modification of the PCCS to make them ADA accessible has been determined by NJT to be both structurally unfeasible and economically unwise. Accordingly, NJT intends to replace the PCCs with sixteen new light rail vehicles (LRVs), which comply with ADA requirements and are compatible for use on two other proposed light rail systems, the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail Transit System (HBLRTS) and the Newark-Elizabeth Rail Link (NERL).
The acquisition of the LRVs will pose new and different maintenance demands, unable to be met within the limited space of the Pennsylvania Station maintenance facility. A modernization study examined the possibility of expanding and retrofitting the existing facility, but concluded that this was neither feasible nor cost-effective. The study recommended that NJT construct a new base facility to replace the existing one at Pennsylvania Station.
The project was first advanced as a component of the NERL. In June, 1993, a NERL Options Study recommended construction of a single vehicle base facility in order to store, service, and maintain both the subway and NERL LRVs. In November, 1994, NJT notified the FTA that a new base facility would be required for the subway, regardless of whether the NERL system was ever constructed. The base facility was thereby advanced as an independent project, and an environmental assessment (EA) and technical report for the base facility, and extension of the Subway to reach it, were prepared in July, 1996.
The EA and Technical Report, upon which the issuance of the FONSI was based, detail the project. This Opinion will not duplicate what is already extensively reported upon in those documents. However, the general overview of the planned project is useful, and will be excerpted from the EA here:
The Proposed Action is the construction of a vehicle base facility (VBF) for replacement light rail vehicles (LRVs) for the Newark City Subway (NCS), an extension of the NCS tracks to connect with the VBF ..., along with three station options. The Proposed Action would be located in the municipalities of Belleville, Bloomfield, and Newark. The proposed improvements would be located primarily on abandoned industrial land, in existing transportation corridors and on open vacant land. Specific elements would include the following:
• Construction of a 0.3 mile (0.48 km) two-track light rail connection from the NCS Franklin Avenue Station to CONRAIL's Bloomfield Industrial Track (previously the Orange Branch).
• Rehabilitation of 0.60 mi (0.96 km) of CONRAIL's exiting freight only, single-track Bloomfield Industrial Track to a multiple track, 750 volt D.C. overhead electrified and signalized joint-use-freight and light rail transit line from Franklin Avenue in Newark, NJ to the vicinity of Bloomfield Avenue in Bloomfield, NJ.
• Construction of a new [Light Rail Transit (LRT)] grade crossing of Franklin Avenue in Newark.
• Reconstruction of existing at-grade freight railroad crossings (at Franklin Street in Belleville, Belmont Avenue in Belleville, and Grove Street in Bloomfield, NJ).
• Construction of an LRV maintenance shop and operations center building, storage yard, traction power substation, maintenance-of-way facility, police substation, and employee parking on an approximately 13 to 15 acre (5.3-6.1 ha) tract of vacant industrial property in Belleville and Bloomfield.
• Combining of the existing Franklin Avenue and Heller Parkway NCS stations into a single new station.
• Optional Intermodal station at Grove Street with park-and-ride facilities and bus transfer facilities in Bloomfield.
• Optional walk-on station at Belmont Avenue and Franklin Street in Belleville.
• Acquisition of property required for the proposed action.
The VBF shop and yard may be constructed initially to accommodate only the required NCS replacement fleet, which is currently estimated to be 16 LRVs. The VBF site (and design concept developed for the VBF) would allow expansion to accommodate a prospective combined NCS/NERL fleet of up to 39 vehicles. No future additional land acquisition is anticipated to accommodate the fleet expansion.
(EA, 1-1 to 1-3).
The EA states that construction of the base facility would require a level site of approximately thirteen to fifteen acres in order to provide adequate space for the facility, storage yard, and test track. (EA, 2-1). The document notes that such sites "are scarce in the densely built-up area served by the NCS and none exists adjacent to the line." (EA, 2-1).
Two sites were considered for the base facility in the EA: 1) the Nesbitt Street Site, located in Newark between Orange Street and the NJT Morris and Essex Lines, and between Nesbitt Street and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Boulevard; and 2) the Franklin Street Site, bounded by Franklin Street, Belmont Avenue, Bloomfield Avenue, Grove Street, and Watessing Avenue, and located on the Bloomfield/Belleville Township boundary. (EA, 2-1).
According to the EA, the Franklin Street site was selected as the preferred location for reasons pertaining to cost and construction. A main factor is the proximity of the existing CONRAIL Bloomfield Industrial Track (freight line), which passes about 400 feet from the northern terminus of the subway at Franklin Avenue. Accordingly, by obtaining...
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