A Transit Village for New Jersey's Meadowlands

"It could take decades to find out whether this isolated stretch becomes a thriving urban center; the transit village is expected to take 25 years to build, and no one expects the Allied Junction project to be built all at once. The pace may determine when and whether the state sinks more money into the Meadowlands.

For now, the wisdom of the $1 billion transportation investment is being debated by familiar players: environmentalists and some transit advocates, who say that the state designed projects around developers' needs and that the money would have been much better spent in less glamorous ways; developers and planners, who applaud the effort to build infrastructure and plan development before sprawl takes its course; and state officials, who sigh and promise to make the best of things that were set in motion long before they were in their jobs."