[Busy Bee]

This^

A PATH branch should have been built in lieu of the Hudson County southern leg of HBLR (and really ideally all of HBLR) though Bayonne and across to Staten Island. Any other place of planet earth would have realized this is what was needed, but of course the toxic combination of lack of political will and aggressive investment in transit as a national priority means it never happened.

While we are on the subject I've often thought that it's possible The TriboroRX scheme isn't ambitious enough. Instead of terminating at the bay it should dive into a trans-Hudson tunnel, cut across the north shore of SI, jump under or over the KVK though southern Bayonne and over the Newark Bay to Newark Airport. Of course this suggests the obvious question, why not have the "TriboroRX" be a PATH heavy rail line that connects Manhattan-EWR-SI-southern Brooklyn-JFK (with a split at Broadway Junction sharing tracks with Atlantic Ave LIRR until a new trench or tunnel under Conduit Ave an into JFK or a split at Linden Blvd with a tunnel under Linden until Conduit Ave). Certain trains would run to JFK from New Jersey and certain continuing up to the Bronx. This would effectively serve as a transit belt line for the dense core and in my opinion exactly the kind of massive Crossrail level investment that is necessary for the future of the city. To maximize the efficiency of new infrastructure the Conduit Ave route would also be shared by the proposed JFK super express to Manhattan.