The Republican Party Now! (And Then)

Before Chris Christie finally takes his single-digit approval ratings and heads home to beg Trump let him be his personal pizza delivery boy, remember that he’s the epitome of Republican priorities:

With the precarious condition of the century-old rail links between New York City and New Jersey threatening to disrupt lives for the rest of the summer, commuters may wonder what became of all the money that had been pledged for a new train tunnel under the Hudson River.

Well, courtesy of Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, several million dollars of it have been used to provide heavily subsidized boat rides for a very small contingent of Jersey Shore residents like Tim Halligan. For more than three years, New Jersey has been paying nearly $95 a day for Mr. Halligan and each of his fellow passengers to commute to and from work in Jersey City or Hoboken.

They make the 90-minute round trip on a fast ferryboat, operated by Seastreak, that costs them $12 each way. Mr. Halligan, who knows a good deal after 25 years at a Wall Street investment bank, grinned as he discussed one of the best commuting bargains around.

“Direct to Jersey City for $12, take it or leave it,” he said on a recent weekday morning as the ferry roared away from Atlantic Highlands, where he lives.

But those discounted fares do not come close to covering the costs of the operation. In addition to the ticket revenue, Seastreak has been receiving $7,200 a day, or about $1.8 million a year, from the New Jersey Department of Transportation.

That money did not come from the agency’s budget, but from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which had intended it to help fund a rail project that was known as ARC, or Access to the Region’s Core. The ARC project was designed to reduce congestion at Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan, the nation’s busiest railroad terminal, by doubling the capacity for trains crossing the Hudson River. It could have opened as early as next year.

But in 2010, Mr. Christie abruptly halted work on the project, saying that he feared New Jersey could have been stuck with big cost overruns. He demanded that the $1.8 billion the Port Authority had pledged to the tunnel project be redirected to road and bridge repairs in northern New Jersey.

That is how several million dollars of the Port Authority’s tunnel money wound up subsidizing the waterborne commutes of about a single busload of New Jerseyans.

On the one hand, if a major storm hits before the alternative rail tunnel is completed, the northeastern transportation network will be thrown into chaos. On the other hand, proceeding with vital transportation infrastructure would have mean less money for failed casinos and malls that will never be built because there is no demand for them. I’m sure history will vindicate him!