Rail Shuttle to Provide Alternate Mode of Travel
October 24th 2007 11:06 am
Please read this article carefully:
http://www.utu.org/worksite/detail_news.cfm?ArticleID=38723
Before you might say “so what, who cares about the LI South Fork”, draw the analogy and learn from the example. These three, recently inaugurated, weekday round-trips between Speonk and Montauk connect with nothing at Speonk, yet already are carrying more than a busload worth of people, and exist because their miserable traffic conditions are being made worse by road construction on a parallel county highway.
Now apply this to what can be done west of Raritan (or west of Dover). Hunterdon County now has budget for bus shuttles to connect with reverse peak RVL trains but cannot run them. It is presently impossible to run more reverse peak trains because all other RVL train sets are tied up running to Newark. Only the “Merck” reverse-peak train runs, but it is too late westbound and too early eastbound to suit most commuters.
A 2-car shuttle based in Raritan could provide more flexibility and frequencies. But since NJT, far too many rail advocates, and a certain area political rail coalition are obsessed with “one seat ride” for the 39% minority of RVL passengers that take NJT to Manhattan, they have
implicitly chosen “no seat ride” over “two seat ride”, ignored the fact that in exurbia, most highway trips and the congestion they produce are local in nature.
alewifebp responded on 24 Oct 2007 at 9:58 pm #
At the Northern Branch DEIS meeting, someone had mentioned thinking outside the box, and certainly is not something that NJT does very often. But this type of service can make sense in the short term, but has a lot of opportunity for the future.
cfmrail responded on 09 Nov 2007 at 8:39 pm #
New Jersey Transit has consistently failed to realize that providing good New Jersey to New Jersey service serves New Jersey taxpayers better than providing better New York commuting. Failure to serve the reverse commute market is terminal stupidity given that little or no additional equipment is needed. Bus and rail fares must be unified with a single zone system. Germany has done it for a number of years and the Rhein Ruhr Verkersverbund with Dusseldorf, Duisburg, Essen, Dortmund and Wuppertal as major cities must be as complex as doing it on NJT.