By Philip Newman
The proposed Bush budget also set aside $390 million for the East Side Access to bring Long Island Rail Road trains into Grand Central Terminal. Mayor Michael Bloomberg hailed the money for the Lower Manhattan-JFK rail. “It's good news for New York,” Bloomberg said. “Now we must get Congress to approve this money.” Like everything else in the Bush administration's $2.7 trillion budget, the New York mass transit proposals are subject to Congressional approval. The budget would offer $2 billion in federal aid provided after the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center for the rail link between Lower Manhattan and JFK. Bush, not renowned for his support of mass transit – he also proposes eliminating subsidies for Amtrak – is said to have been impressed with the concept of a rail line from Kennedy to Lower Manhattan, a project on which Gov. George Pataki, a fellow Republican, had lobbied the president. But influential House Republicans had shown little enthusiasm for use of the Sept. 11 funds for the rail link a few months ago. The funds for the JFK-Lower Manhattan rail connection would come from remaining elements of tax incentives intended to help in the recovery of Lower Manhattan devastated by the Sept. 11 attack. U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said the money the Bush administration had specified for the rail link was “one of the few positive areas in the administration's budget as far as New York is concerned.” Otherwise, Schumer referred to the overall budget as a “meat ax that cuts the core out of the Big Apple.” He said it was the worst budget in his 25 years in Congress. The administrations cuts would affect a wide range of programs in the state from student loans to Medicaid to home-heating assistance, among others. Although he did not originate the concept for a JFK-Downtown Manhattan rail link, Schumer has spoken out in favor of the project in the past. He suggested last year that it be funded from Sept. 11 federal money. “We can and should build a rail link from Lower Manhattan to the LIRR and Kennedy Airport,” Schumer told a Crain's New York Business magazine breakfast last year. “Using the city's cost estimates for the project in the $3 billion to $4 billion range, we have the federal dollars available to build it without tapping into city and state coffers.” The East Side Access project, with an estimated cost of more than $5 billion, would involve building seven miles of new tunnels beneath the East River and in Sunnyside. The LIRR station to be cut from solid rock more than 100 feet below Grand Central Terminal would be the first major new railroad station in the United States in 90 years. Planners estimate travelers bound for Manhattan's East Side would save 15 to 20 minutes with the East Side Access by not having to transfer from Penn Station to a subway. Transit advocates insist the Second Avenue subway must be built at the same time as East Side Access. Otherwise, the LIRR would pour thousands of commuters into the already overcrowded Lexington Avenue subway line.
