Gladstone Branch construction
June 3rd 2007 10:12 am
Today is the beginning of a three month long construction project on the Gladstone Branch that will require substitute busing on weekends and during off-peak hours. There will be no weekend train service for June, July, and August, while off-peak train service will be suspended starting in July.
This is the biggest “bustitution” project on the Gladstone Branch in over 20 years. It will allow NJ Transit to replace some of the wooden catenary poles on the line, a $12 million project.
Thankfully, NJT will not simply be running a single bus to cover the branch. There will be three bus routes, each serving different sets of stations:
- Gladstone, Peapack, Far Hills
- Bernardsville, Basking Ridge, Lyons, Millington, Stirling, Gillette, Berkeley Heights
- Murray Hill, New Providence
Passengers traveling locally between stations on different bus routes will have to take one bus to Summit, then another bus to their destination. But the good news is that since the buses can use Route 78, the trip should be faster than the trains for passengers on the outer end of the branch (especially considering that westbound trains normally just sit and wait at Far Hills for almost 20 minutes).
The tricky part is that some of the buses will not actually serve the train stations. Passengers will have to be alert and check where the bus actually stops.
Hopefully, things will run smoothly. (Bus substitution in the past has been a mixed bag, with NJT at least one time using non-air-conditioned yellow school buses!) Things will be back to normal in three months.
If you have observed or been a passenger on the substitute buses, post a comment and let us know how things were working.
Update: Irony of ironies, look who’s providing the substitute bus service:
