The train will be a rolling down the tracks from Camden to Glassboro in about seven years' time if one believes the vice chairman of the Delaware River Port Authority.

That will be money in the cash register for the merchants of such small towns along the route as Gloucester City but a reminder of a public expenditure that could have gone to a more prudent use to one Mantua Township resident.

The DRPA’s commissioners heard a mixed series of voices Wednesday regarding a train line proposal — one with a $2 billion pricetag — that state Senate President Stephen Sweeney has labeled the region’s most “important” economic development catalyst.

“The system will be up and running in six to seven years,” proclaimed Vice Chairman Jeffrey Nash. While there has been talk about building the line in phases — first to Woodbury and then to Glassboro, Nash said he prefers heading straight down to Rowan University.

A $9 million contract to fund an environmental impact study of the line — necessary before a shovel is put into the ground — is expected to be placed before the DRPA’s Finance Committee in either November or December, said Chief Executive Officer John Matheussen.

While the study would take approximately two years to be completed, Nash offered to Gloucester City businessman Bob Booth “you will be very pleased by the results you see in the next year.” Nash is also a Camden County freeholder.

Booth came to the commission meeting on behalf of the Gloucester City Business Association. That group, representing 70 merchants, is embracing the rail line. To the association, the line will boost prospects for business from out of towners as well as attracting new residents to the city, Booth said.

“Can you pick up the pace?” he asked.

Mantua Township resident Carol Rhodes, a frequent critic of Matheussen, sees the line as a financial waste.

She chided both Matheussen and Nash for finding a way to “drive a $9 million pork project” through the DRPA’s supposedly sparse coffers.

The DRPA is fronting the $9 million although it expects to be reimbursed by NJ Transit. The DRPA has also said it will help advocate and plan the line but does not want to operate it. It runs the PATCO High Speed Line through a subsidiary. NJ Transit runs the RiverLine between Camden and Trenton.

Rhodes implored DRPA Chairman Tom Corbett, also governor of Pennsylvania, to stop the project.

Her prior pleas to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie have apparently fallen on deaf ears.

Rhodes suggested during her address to the DRPA commission that she is “probably the only person who will refer to Gov. Christie as a lightweight.”

Matheussen acknowledged the $9 million expenditure for the environmental study “is in our budget.”

“It will be reimbursed.”

Why not send the bill directly to NJ Transit?

NJ Transit Executive Director James “Weinstein has assured me that NJ Transit has the money,” Matheussen replied.

Nash said it is his belief that New Jersey intends to finance both an expansion of the Hudson-Bergen light rail line and the line into Gloucester County.

“If they are going to do rail up there, they will do rail down here,” Sweeney asserted.