The Bergen Arches are a piece of New Jersey’s transportation network you’ve never heard of. But there are many ideas being floated for redeveloping the defunct line for light rail and a long “High Line” like park.

First, they aren’t in Bergen County or even North Bergen.

The Bergen Arches are tunnels and an 85-foot deep cut built in 1906 below street level in Jersey City to carry Erie Railroad trains under and through the Palisades to a Hudson River terminal located where the Newport development is now. Trolley cars, the ancestor of today’s light rail, used part of the arches.

Named for the arches in the stone tunnels and the bridges that carry local Jersey City streets over the line, the “arches” are now a jungle-like, tree-lined right of way.

“Inside it, nature has taken over what was there,” said Rahid Cornejo, a board member of the Bergen Arches Preservation Coalition.

This mile-long canyon has survived pretty much undisturbed since the railroad abandoned service on the route in the late 1950s, the same time it stopped running trains to the Pavonia riverfront terminal.

An amazing urban forest grows in the heart of Jersey City- next to a highway, but all you hear are singing birds. Abandoned in 1957, nature is reclaiming the Bergen Arches/Erie Cut, a mile-long railroad trench built in the early 1900’s (Note: not sure on the legality of visiting) pic.twitter.com/jmMgzOuVsW — Juan Melli (@juanmelli) August 25, 2019

A strange urban paradise

As Jersey City and the Hudson River waterfront develop, the Bergen Arches are far from forgotten. The former rail line has been coveted for a variety of uses, from a highway, a light rail line and as part of the East Coast Greenway for hikers and people on bikes.

The arches are a pretty and a gritty place, said William Benzon, co-founder of the Bergen Arches preservation coalition, who’s hiked them.

“People throw trash over the edge, homeless people build huts, and graffiti writers paint on the walls,” he said. “It is a strange urban paradise. It is invisible and easy to dismiss. People need to see and feel (it) in order to arrive at a good decision.”

Even a hike through them today has its challenges.

“The Arches is its own world, lush vegetation, crumbling masonry, rusting rails, trash strewn about here and there, mud and muck,” he said.

But being 85 feet below street level has a different feel than other natural places. Only the sight of the tallest buildings, One World Trade Center, give away your location.

“When you’re down there you feel profoundly isolated from the city, more so than when you are in New York City’s Central Park,” Benzon said.

Restoring the arches for transportation

Two trolley cars trail on a line through the Palisades in Jersey City. Known as the Bergen Arches, the right-of-way still exists and a number of ideas are proposed for its reuse.

Ambitious plans have been proposed for the arches, two as recently as last year. The Regional Plan Association suggested running trains from Manhattan to New Jersey, using the Bergen Arches to link with NJ Transit lines as part of a “Jersey Loop” of rail lines in a plan dubbed “T-Rex” or Trans Regional Express.

A group called New Jersey Commuter’s Alliance revived an idea to use the arches as a highway to offices on the Jersey City and Hoboken waterfront. The alliance promoted the idea on social media in 2018, but organizers never answered questions about the group. Residents and advocates expressed skepticism on social media about the proposal and its unidentified backers.

That idea built on another highway proposed as one of several options for the arches in a 2002 NJDOT study about reusing the arches. Ideas included building a “locals only” highway to Jersey City’s waterfront.

That idea would have reused the former Pennsylvania Railroad “embankment” a six-block dormant elevated rail line as a highway. An alternate would have sent traffic down 18th Street to the waterfront.

Other ideas in the study included using the arches as a busway, for a light rail line, for freight trains and for a combination light rail line and biking-hiking trail.

Several proposals would return trains to the arches, either light rail trains, linking up with NJ Transit’s existing Hudson-Bergen Light Rail system or an extension of the New York City subway’s L line from Manhattan to Hoboken that would use the Bergen Arches and other railroad rights of way to reach Secaucus Junction.

Other ideas for redevelopment along the arches of new residential, office and retail buildings, parks and a light rail extension were proposed in five vision plans done by the Rutgers University Bloustein school of public policy and planning in 2017.

A rendering shows how a proposed hiking and bike train could share the Bergen Arches with a proposed light rail extension. A preservation group has proposed building a modest trail now that wouldn't interfere with future transportation plans.

Walking and biking trails

Neighbors opposed most of the intense transportation uses, especially the highway.

The coalition has a low-cost plan that would reuse one of the former rail beds as a separated hiking-biking path and leave the rest of the Arches available for a future transportation use. “Our concept is rails-to-trails, which we think is the best short-term project," said Adam Polulak, a coalition board member. “We’d like to take one of the four old rail lines and use that, put crushed gravel and a recycled rubber surface on top and fence on either side.”

That would keep the trail from interfering with one of the other proposed uses, he said. It’s patterned after a similar trail he worked on between Coles Street in Jersey City to Second Street station in Hoboken, which parallels Hudson-Bergen Light Rail.

More ambitious plans would connect that trail to others being considered to form a transportation link between the Meadows and the waterfront.

One idea would connect a Bergen Arches trail to the Sixth Street embankment as a walking and biking trail known as the Crossroads. Another would continue the rail along an unused railroad line along 10th Street to Newport and the waterfront.

“Anything other than a basic bike-walk trail is at least 8-figures expensive and will take time, for environmental impact studies, extensive design and approvals at multiple levels, “ Benzon said. “It will require constant maintenance and upkeep. Bike-walk now keeps all other options open for the future and has minimal maintenance costs.”

Ultimately, residents should decide what they want done with the arches, similar to what happened in 2002 after the NJDOT study, he said.

“The coalition’s preference is for minimal incursion into the Arches. But it’s not up to us. It’s up to the citizens of Jersey City, Hudson County, and New Jersey,” Benzon said. “However, they can’t make an informed decision until they actually know what the Arches are like. To know that, they’ve got to get down there. Bike-walk does that.”

This article is part of “Unknown New Jersey,” an ongoing series that highlights interesting and little-known stories about our past, present, and future -- all the unusual things that make our great state what is it. Got a story to pitch? Email it to local@njadvancemedia.com.

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Larry Higgs may be reached at lhiggs@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @commutinglarry. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips.

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