Happy Earth Day
April 22nd 2007 12:00 am
Today is Earth Day. Leave the car at home, enjoy the nice weather, take a train ride or something.
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John 76 responded on 22 Apr 2007 at 10:13 pm #
Unfortunately, Bob, New Jersey Transit will not allow some of us to leave our car alone for a train ride on earth day. If you call NJ Transit and ask for a bus to take you to the train they will tell you “You can’t get there from here.”
There used to be a week day bus to Princeton Junction operated by the Mercer County Wheels Program but it just disappeared with no notice and no reason given.
I look forward to the day NJT allows all people equal access to our transit system.
Joe Versaggi responded on 23 Apr 2007 at 10:05 am #
Do you mean the 976 ?:
http://www.njtransit.com/pdf/bus/T1976.pdf
According to their website, it still exists.
John 76 responded on 23 Apr 2007 at 10:23 pm #
Yes, I do mean the 976. It does exist but most of the route has been abandoned. When it was part of the Wheels program it began in South East Hopewell Township in the Brandon Farms subdivision where I live. When Wheels abandoned the route the local NJT bus operations manager was able to maintain it up to Province Line Road about a mile west of Route 1 but had to abandon service on the route east of that point.
Joe Versaggi responded on 24 Apr 2007 at 7:30 am #
The Wheels program was poorly designed, originally funded with CMAQ money, now a stepchild in the bus division, focusing only on getting reverse peak rail commuters to suburban job sites. Since employers no longer have any incentive to get people out of their cars, it has fallen apart.
In my neck of the woods, a 988 Wheels bus ran down US202 from Raritan station to the Branchburg town line. Ortho/J&J turned their back on it, and it is gone. I tried to tell Somerset County planning people it should come back through condo communities as a residential rail feeder. They were clueless and said funding does not allow it for that purpose.
The 884 Wheels (Somerville-Clinton) is a replacement of the 114 and functions as a Raritan College School bus, does a lousy job of connecting with trains during the day, and also duplicates a Hunterdon County LINK bus.
One cannot expect common sense or inter-county coordination in this state.
Joe Versaggi responded on 24 Apr 2007 at 9:23 am #
976 seems to be just another 600-series Mercer bus route now with an RTS on the front cover and no Wheels logo. Its fare is certainly cheap enough, basically half a zone: 60c adult, 30c child/senior. The farebox recovery must be around 10%.
John 76 responded on 24 Apr 2007 at 8:14 pm #
You are right, Joe, except that I think the whole Mercer County bus system is a step child. I rode the Bergen County Line and Hudson County buses for 20 years. Here in Mercer we have great rail service on the Northeast Corridor Line but no bus service at all some large employers. We also have bus lines which do not connect to any rail station at all and large parts of the county without bus service. NJT pushes the idea of a transit village for Hamilton Station but their own buses don’t run to the station. I could go on.