SecaucusJunction wrote:...the biggest portion of the riders will still go to NYC...Putting a commuter rail line across Westchester would be a costly disaster. Ridership would be very low and no where near a justification of building a costly route. Any commuter rail in the area needs to go to NYC.
Okay that's your opinion but I think a lot of your assumptions are wrong.
The fact is the majority of traffic (I think about 80%) across the Tappan Zee bridge is
not going to Manhattan. And probably as many Rockland commuters
work in Westchester as work in Manhattan.
And currently all the impetus is for Rockland-Westchester service. None of the people involved in this even mention getting to Grand Central.
The projections for the I-287 corridor is about 5,000-10,000 trips per day to start (for rail, BRT is lower) but I don't recall seeing projections for Rockland-GCT ridership.
Secaucus you yourself have written that the GCT routing wouldn't save the riders any time. IMHO
that might be the disaster. Routing service via the Hudson Line to an at-capacity GCT via a hugely expensive ramp and tunnel. And for how many riders?