NJ: Transforming ‘zombie tracks’ into an 8.6-mile bike-and-walk greenway for North Jersey

Kennedy Fuller, a Girl Scout with Troop 10910 in Jersey City, looks forward not only to riding her bike on the planned Essex-Hudson Greenway, but to the environmental benefits the 8.6-mile bike-and-walk path and ribbon of open space is intended to provide to people in the eight urban and suburban communities it will connect.

“The Greenway will provide many organisms with a space to live, grow and, most importantly, breathe,” Kennedy, 16, told about 80 people, including her old friend Gov. Phil Murphy, gathered in Newark for a groundbreaking for the project’s first phase.

“An increase in plants and trees will remove thousands of toxins from the air that we need to live, providing us with a safer environment for our students, families, employees and pets,” added Kennedy, who’ll be a junior this fall at Jersey City’s McNair Academic High School. “The Greenway also provides better access to public transportation, which will help combat the emissions made every day by our personal vehicles.”

The groundbreaking was held on a gravel lot that once housed the North Newark Station in the city’s North Ward, along the Old Boonton Line, a defunct passenger and freight line in Essex and Passaic counties.

The first phase is a mile-long stretch in Newark’s North Ward, estimated to take 18 months to complete once construction begins this September, said Shawn LaTourette, the state environmental commissioner.

LaTourette said the first phase would cost about $60 million out of a total cost of $200 million for all 8.6 miles of the project, noting that cleanup costs make the price of the initial phase much higher than the overall project’s average per-mile cost. The construction cost is in addition to the $65 million price of the right-of-way property.

The entire greenway would run from an area near the Bay Street Station along NJ Transit’s still-active Montclair-Boonton Line in Montclair, to a spot a few blocks from the Hackensack River on Jersey City’s West Side. In between, the greenway would run through Glen Ridge, Bloomfield, Belleville, and Newark in Essex County, and Kearny and Secaucus in Hudson, before entering Jersey City.

The greenway, which will have state park status, will occupy the 100-foot-wide railroad right of way, surrounding a 10-foot-wide dual-use path for running and cycling in both directions, east and west. A separate walking path will wend its way among trees and other plantings within the right-of-way, LaTourette said.

With frequent public access points and spaces to sit and rest, have something to eat or drink, and even take in a concert or other performance, officials said the greenway will be a common thread helping to unite the communities it runs through.

Kennedy introduced “my fellow New Jerseyan, Gov. Phil Murphy,” whom she had met in Trenton during his presentation of the state’s 2023 budget, when he talked about the greenway after presiding over the right-of-way’s purchase in 2022.

The seller was Norfolk Southern Corporation, the freight carrier that had received permission from federal rail officials to “abandon,” or sell, the property for non-rail use.

After briefly addressing two fatalities in Plainfield and other impact of Monday night’s flooding, Murphy said the greenway project, “among other attributes, will strengthen our environmental resilience.”

“It will dwarf the High Line in New York City, which is a mile and change,” the governor told the gathering, referring to the abandoned elevated subway on Manhattan’s West Side that’s been turned into a popular pedestrian thoroughfare and spurred economic development in surrounding neighborhoods.

“That’s not to one-up New York City, but it’s to make the point that that has been an incredible community and economic win for New York City.”

Though the project’s first phase won’t be completed for at least a year after Murphy steps down at the end of his second term in January, he said he would be back with First Lady Tammy Murphy to run on the path.

State Sen. Theresa Ruiz, the Senate majority leader, and Assemblywoman Eliana Pintor Marin, both Democrats who represent parts of Essex and Hudson counties in the 29th Legislative district, talked about the benefits of the project to urban families like theirs badly in need of open space.

Ruiz thanked Newark City Council President C. Lawrence Crump, South Ward Councilman Patrick Council, and Councilman-at-large Luis Quintana for their early advocacy of the project

Newark North Ward Councilman Anibal Ramos recalled working at a Food Town supermarket along the defunct rail line, where Norfolk Southern would lease the right-of-way property to a hodge-podge of temporary businesses. He said neighbors used to call the defunct line “the Zombie Tracks.”

Essex County Commissioner Brendan Gill of Montclair, an early proponent of the greenway, said that during one of his first meetings as a new county commissioner in January 2012, he met with a group of advocates for what they called the “Iron and Ice Trail,” named for the two principal commodities that freight trains originally carried on the Boonton Line.

 “They presented a very, very big idea,” Gill recalled. “An idea that almost every elected official who could do something about it, at the time, or even some other advocates, said, ‘It’s impossible. It can’t happen. It will never happen. It’s too much money. It’s too hard. We can’t bring communities together. There was excuse after excuse after excuse as to why this project was never going to happen.”

But after 15,000 letters and emails to the governor’s office, and lobbying by the mayors of municipalities involved, he said, the project was finally underway.

Looking at Kennedy and the two fellow scouts with her, Gill added, “when an adult tells you it can’t happen, it can.”

“We are still a highly segregated state” Gill said. “It’s very easy to live in Montclair and Glen Ridge and never set foot in the great City of Newark. And it’s very easy to live in the City of Newark and never set foot in Glen Ridge or Montclair.”

“And this project,” Gill added, “is going to address that issue head-on.”

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