WASHINGTON – One week after U.S. Senator Charles Schumer brokered a deal with the Port Authority and MTA where each agency would put up $2.7 million toward an alternatives analysis to build a passenger rail spur from Salisbury Mills to Stewart Airport, he announced on Friday a $2 million U.S. Transportation Department grant to help fund a phase two study.

After the alternatives analysis is complete, an environmental impact study must be conducted with a price tag of $7 million. This new funding will be applied to that study.

U.S. DOT Secretary Mary Peters said Stewart “has the kind of runways and facilities that could take pressure off the region’s busier airports as long as travelers can easily get there.”

Port Authority spokesman Pasquale DiFulco said his agency agrees. “We believe Stewart could provide the services that travelers in the Hudson Valley need so that it saves them a trip to the New York City regional airports and so in that regard, any investment made in Stewart is a good one.”

Peters, though, announced other rules to improve service at New York’s Big Three airports, including the auctioning of airline slots at Newark and JFK airports and implementing a flight cap at JFK and LaGuardia airports.

DiFulco said the Port Authority believes it is an antiquated air traffic control system that is causing delay problems.