Clarifications

All,

Please be aware, that while I had previously sought the assistance and guidance of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign in regards to our efforts, I am now and will continue to do so going forward, refuse and disavow any connection to this organization.

I believe any organization willing to continue to work with the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) after this past electoral cycle is not one that I want myself or my work associated with.

I do not make this decision lightly, nor do I wish to make this a political decision. I believe that any organization with the amount of negative information swirling about, that makes no effort to address key questions about its workers and staffing, and that has significant legal questions surrounding its hiring practices and actual work performed, is not one that I wish to be associated with.

Therefore, since TSTC refuses to dissassociate themselves from ACORN, I must distance myself from TSTC and advise that you do the same until such time as they can be counted on to stand apart from organizations such as ACORN.

Welcome CarWars readers!

Welcome friends! To give you a short idea of what this is about, this image depicts (in blue) the current Newark City Subway (or Newark Light Rail, whichever name you choose to use), as well as (in red) the expansion plan we are proposing, and finally (in black) where we hope it will one day go, should the initial expansion be as wildly successful as we all believe it can be.

It doesn't look like much but it will definitely be enough to pull people off of congested roads in and around North and Downtown Newark, as well as area roads like Route 21, Route 280, and Route 3.

This image doesn't exactly do its northern terminus justice - we're holding our plans down to the towns that have actually signed on and agreed to help in whatever way they can - Newark, Belleville and Kearny. Eventually the line could go as far north as the Clifton / Paterson border, and as far west as Bay Street Station in Montclair.

That requires future support for this project. If you're interested in helping this along, speak with your local representatives or direct them to this site, and ask them to support us now by petitioning NJ Transit to get this service off the ground, and in the future by helping to smooth out any red tape involved in lighting this line back up. You could remind them that property values around rail stations (light and standard) are about ten percent higher, on average, within walking distance and five percent higher within driving distance (NorthJersey.com, retrieved 6/3/2009). You could also remind them of the positive environmental impact that this would have - residents around the light rail extensions would more than likely make use of the light rail than fight traffic going into Newark and New York, and this is true for both electric light rail (best case scenario) and biodiesel-fueled light rail (probable scenario).

Of course, baking cookies and asking nicely might work too.

The actual proposal is available as a Google Doc (to allow it to be editable and downloadable as a PDF or Word document, and to allow environmentally friendly distribution) here.