What could deliver Amazon HQ2 to Newark? Maybe the transit system you ride (and loathe)

Newark, the smallest city that's a finalist for Amazon's second North American headquarters, may have a surprising advantage in comparison to its rivals.

It's not the billions of dollars in tax incentives. It's the region's mass transit.

Though Newark is competing with larger, wealthier communities across the country for the online retail behemoth, the city's abundance of mobility options make it an attractive choice, planners and other observers say.

"It’s one of Newark’s strongest assets," said David Behrend, communications and government affairs director at the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority.

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The assertion might come as news to frustrated riders of NJ Transit trains and buses who've endured a deteriorating quality of service in recent years.

But those problems may be temporary. With the right kind of investment, Newark's transit network may be primed to accommodate the 50,000 jobs Amazon would bring to the region.

"The bones are all there, clearly," said Rob Puentes, president and CEO of the Eno Center for Transportation, a Washington policy organization.

So what makes Newark's mass transit so attractive? Consider:

• Newark Penn Station sits in a prime spot on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor, which offers a 15-minute ride into midtown Manhattan on either Amtrak or NJ Transit.
• The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's PATH train connects Newark with the World Trade Center complex in lower Manhattan with a 20-minute ride. 
• NJ Transit's Broad Street Station makes Newark accessible to NJ Transit's heavily used Morristown and Montclair lines and offers another way to get to New York's Penn Station, in addition to Hoboken Terminal, and its PATH connections to Manhattan.
• Newark's often overlooked light-rail, also known as the City Subway, connects Penn Station and Broad Street, and cuts a five-mile path through the city's neighborhoods.
• Newark Liberty International Airport, the region's second-busiest behind JFK is about a 10-minute ride from downtown Newark by either train or bus. A planned expansion of PATH to the airport would give air travelers yet another option. 

"I think sometimes maybe we forget how robust this transit system is," Behrend said.

The challenges

It may be robust, but it is also aging.

"The infrastructure that makes that connection possible has some serious challenges, of course," Puentes said.

Amtrak estimates the Northeast Corridor, which stretches from Boston to New York, Philadelphia and Washington, needs $38 billion to bring the infrastructure to a state of good repair.

For Newark, the most critical piece of that is the Hudson River tunnel to New York's Penn Station. Completed in 1910 and inundated with seawater by Superstorm Sandy in 2012, it's nearing the end of its useful life.

The Trump administration has balked at contributing to the cost of a $13 billion replacement. New Jersey and New York were counting on the federal government to pay for half the project's cost.

NJ Transit has struggled in recent years with personnel shortages, equipment breakdowns and safety compliance issues, testing rail and bus commuters.

To be sure, the challenge of aging infrastructure confronts not just Newark, but also New York and Washington, which are also Amazon finalist cities.

"You neglect repair, you’re eventually going to have to fix it," said Moses Gates, director of community planning and design at the Regional Plan Association.

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New York's subways need a substantial investment, and the Port Authority must replace its obsolete bus terminal in midtown Manhattan.

Washington has neglected its subway system for years, leading to service and safety problems in some ways worse than any experienced by commuters in New Jersey or New York.

Puentes said that might not be a deal-breaker for Amazon, as long as the network it needs is there.

"I don’t know how much of an impact the condition of the infrastructure is going to matter," he said.

Everybody knows the problems need to be addressed, Gates said, but the sooner the better.

"Where we are is starting to look scary," he said. "If we let it go too much longer, we’re going to be in a very different situation."

The rivals

Cities not traditionally thought of as transit-dependent have been investing billions of dollars in their systems in recent years, well before Amazon came knocking.

In November 2016, voters in car-friendly Los Angeles County approved a measure that would generate $120 billion to expand transit over the next four decades.

Even before that, Los Angeles had been making investments in its commuter rail, subways and light rail, and has plans for more bus rapid transit.

Denver, another city long dependent on its highways, has built out a $5.3 billion system of light rail and commuter rail. To great fanfare in 2016, it opened a 25-mile rail line from its Union Station downtown to Denver International Airport.

Another finalist, Dallas, plans to expand the reach of its already extensive rail transit network by 2040. Additionally, private investors are looking to build a 240-mile high-speed rail line that could whisk passengers between Dallas and Houston in 90 minutes.

Behrend acknowledged that relatively new transit infrastructure gives those cities a leg up on their competition. But it still isn't nearly as extensive as what currently exists in northern New Jersey, he said.

"Those take a long time to develop and to build. We’ve got stuff in place," he added. "That’s the key advantage."

It may not be the kind of high-speed rail like Texas envisions, but Amtrak's Northeast Corridor provides easy access from Newark to other major population centers, including Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington.

"Newark has a good position and a great deal of access up and down the mid-Atlantic," Behrend said.

A contender

Newark, with a population of 280,000, ranked in the top 10 cities with more than 250,000 residents last year in a transit accessibility survey conducted by the nonprofit Center for Neighborhood Technology.

The survey considered how many residents live within half a mile of a transit stop, how many jobs are within a 30-minute commute and what percentage of commuters use transit, among other factors.

Of Amazon's 20 finalist cities, only New York, Boston, Washington and Philadelphia also made the survey's top 10. Newark's high score should be a selling point for any company, Behrend said.

"Even if Amazon chooses to go somewhere else, it is very good for Newark ultimately in terms of attracting various kinds of businesses and development," he said.