To the Editor:
If Lyndhurst Mayor Robert B. Giangeruso plans to take any action at all regarding NJ Transit’s proposal to close the township’s Kingsland rail station, he is playing his cards close to the vest.
His recent “statement,” published in The Observer’s Aug. 28 issue, struck me as simply a pathetic, weakly worded attempt to pacify residents and business owners who are concerned about losing the Kingsland station in 2025 – while making no commitments to do anything himself.
As of this writing, nearly 350 people have already signed a Change.org online petition, urging NJ Transit to keep the Kingsland station open. That’s a big number in a township where it took only about 1,900 votes for Giangeruso to win the most recent election.
Most of Giangeruso’s claims about the supposed benefits of NJ Transit’s forthcoming new station in Lyndhurst simply defy logic. The holes in the mayor’s thinking are obvious from his statement in The Observer.
“We are exploring options to support business owners near the old station,” Giangeruso writes, without providing a single example. Would the township offer some kind of tax break to the Ridge Road businesses that stand to lose foot traffic after Kingsland closes, perhaps? He doesn’t say. (And would that mean homeowners would pay MORE taxes to subsidize a deal with the business owners?)
“The location (of the new station) has been carefully chosen to improve connectivity,” the mayor writes. What in the world is he talking about? Connectivity to what? (Sounds like empty, trendy “buzzword” jargon to me.)
The new station will also “serve more residents, potentially reducing your travel time,” he adds. How exactly would cramming the users of two old stations into one single new station reduce anyone’s travel time? The NJ Transit train schedule would remain the same, wouldn’t it? Lyndhurst to Hoboken would take exactly the same amount of time as it does now – unless a secret “bullet train” is in the works.
At morning rush hour, it’s conceivable that the platform of the new station may become too crowded to accommodate all the passengers who currently board from two stations. Any time savings from having trains stop at one station instead of two would be negated by the extra time it would take to board more passengers at the one station.
As for Giangeruso’s claim the forthcoming new station “could attract new businesses, increase property values, and contribute to the growth of our community,” that just seems silly. The new station is being built in a more remote and residential part of town. Where would those hypothetical new businesses open? And why would one new station spur new business when two existing stations haven’t done so?
Also: Notice the mayor wrote “could” instead of “will.” (Why make promises that voters would expect him to keep?)
In recent years Lyndhurst has lost a TD Bank branch, two Subway sandwich shops and several other businesses, while a number of other storefronts around town have remained vacant for years. I can’t see how the new train station would make a difference – unless the mayor and Board of Commissioners suddenly begin flexing business-attraction muscles that they haven’t been using.
I’ve been a resident of Lyndhurst for more than a decade. In all that time, I don’t recall Giangeruso taking much visible action regarding the decay and neglect at the Kingsland station. He COULD HAVE led a fight over the years to get elevators installed there. (If he did lead such a fight, he needs a better PR team because I never heard about it.)
At the very least, Giangeruso could have used the bully pulpit of the mayor’s office to pressure NJ Transit to do something about the constant flooding that occurs at “Lake Kingsland” every time it rains. But there’s no visible evidence that he ever lifted a finger to do anything about that either. (I’ve never once seen Giangeruso at the station, talking to NJ Transit customers about their concerns.)
Maybe Giangeruso should consider working harder to convince NJ Transit to keep the endangered Kingsland rail station open.
Actions — not neutrally worded pablum-like statements designed to calm the public into accepting a pre-ordained, inevitable outcome — are what voters would appreciate most.
Dom Calicchio
Lyndhurst
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