One detects a bit of scepticism in this series of queries, so herewith a bit of history. Twenty or so years ago, NJ Transit rail passengers who did not live along the Northeast Corridor commuting to Manhattan (whom I exclude from this narrative) -- I think this would include riders from the Boonton, Gladstone, Montclair and M&E Lines, even the old Erie line up to Suffern, NY -- I don't recall these lines' formal names -- took the former EL into the Hoboken Terminal. Here they hopped a ferry -- or maybe changed cars to the PATH subway -- for the rest of their journey into Manhattan, because, one will recall, Hoboken was the end of the line. All those riders had to pass through Hoboken. At that time, there were no places to change trains on the NJ Transit system for entry/egress into Midtown Manhattan (Penn Station). Knowing this, and wishing to rectify it, New Jersey rail planners long advocated a high-speed connection (I do not recall its name at the moment) from the lines heading into Hoboken and the Northeast Corridor so the NJ Transit could pump more trains directly into Midtown from locales where the service was not offered, and urged construction of a transfer station at Secaucus where the lines that didn't connect directly with the NE corridor service could change cars just once and ride anywhere in New Jersey and elsewhere that NJ Transit's rail service tentacles extended. When and if implemented, of course, these proposed servcie changes could only put more riders directly into Midtown, and reroute them away from Hoboken.
Such potential changes in ridership habits threatened the livelihood of interests in Hoboken who operated the candy and tobacco concessions, who faced a potentially whopping (for them) loss of revenue. Needless to say, they opposed with great vigor any capital expanditures that would threaten their business. Since they paid tax and concession fees to some governmental entity(ies) in Hoboken, they no doubt secured the attention of elected politicians in that fine area.
A good friend who held a senior finance/accounting/budget position at NJ Transit (he worked at the Other Newark Sation -- not Newark Penn Station) casually related to me more than once -- and this had to have been a dozen years ago -- that these capital projects both for the junction and the Secausus Transfer had been proposed something like 20 years earlier, and until a couple of years before dirt (or mud -- this station lies in the midst of the Jersey swamps) began to be moved, that the projects had been blocked by the most intensive lobbying from certain interests which were heavily invested in maintaining the status quo. My friend, I hasten to add, had nothing to gain by lying to me and his position was senior enough so that he was well acquainted with the whys and wherefores behind the delay.
Sooo...who did it? I can't name names, because I don't know the players. Were they large campaign contributors? Who knows? Clearly they had the ear of politicians in and around Hoboken -- delay of that duration seldom occcurs without the intrusion of politics. It's worth considering that aside perhaps from Chicago, local politics in North Jersey have to be about as murky as they get in the US. And have been since the early 1800s. Could some of the elected and appointed officials have participated in the ownership of those concessions? I personally wouldn't bet against it. How did they get beat? My best guess: rush hour traffic got so bad that political pressure built up to the point that they couldn't delay the work any longer -- the opposition just just wore them down. But consider: if the concessions lobby delayed construction, say, ten years (to be conservat5ive), think how much more the concessionaires pocketed until addtional Midtown service began. Have the concessionaires (not sure I'd call them a trust) procured the rights to sell their wares at the Secuasus Transfer? Couldn't say for sure, but my guess is probably yep. But do they have the concession at New York Penn Station, and thereby managed to retain their original share of their market? Since we're crossing a state line, I'd guess probably not.
It's worth mentionning here that lobbying per se is neither anything new nor is it anything but an All-American sport. Many readers of these threads lobby hard for commuter and intercity rail -- for people whether they want it or not. Moreover, the clout that a small, well-organized lobby or interest group can exercise never ceases to amaze: the operating brotherhoods, to cite one related example, did a terrific job in holding up construction of the Northeast Corridor electrification -- New Haven to Boston -- literally for years. In a brilliant lobbying coup, word was spread that all that electricity in all those wires would give nearby residents brain cancer (this, by the way, from an MD city medical examiner in Connecticut who lives a stone's throw from the electrified lines. There is no way of determining where the rumor started, but in thinking who had most to gain, or lose, the railway brotherhoods seem like a good bet), which, predictably, guaranteed a vocal, emotional opposition to that work (the fact that, concurrently, there was no widely reported incidence of brain cancer along electrified railway lines elsewhere in the US nor in Japan or Europe implies little, if any, analysis by respondents coming out against the project, but no doubt that's just a statistically insignificant observation). Nobody said lobbying is fair, or that special interests have to tell the truth.
