NJ-ARP Blog

I have just received Issue #3, November 2007 issue of “West Trenton Rail Line News”.

It has these facts:

There are two upcoming open house / hearings:

Nov 29, Hillsborough Town Muni Complex, 379 South Branch Rd, Hillsborough, 4pm-8pm
Dec 6, Ewing Community/Senior Center, 999 Lower Ferry Road, Ewing, 4pm-8pm
Jan 15 Closing Date for Comments: Office of Government & Community Relations, NJT, 1 Penn Plaza East, Newark, NJ, 07105

Not much has changed in the last four years, but costs have escalated.

Track Improvements: double track Hillsborough - Manville, Bell Mead – Hopewell, and restore connector track between Manville and the Raritan Line.

Service Plan: 5 conventional rush hour trains to Newark (80 minutes), 1 of which is a Raritan diversion, a reverse peak and a mid-day roundtrip, for 7 trains each way.

Financials in 2007 dollars: Capital Cost $219M (stations, parking, 5 6-car train sets with locos, new trackage, yard), Annual operating cost $15M, farebox revenue $2.9M (farebox recovery 19%).

Ridership (expressed here as people, which is half daily trips they state):

Estimated daily ridership each way: 1,330 (88% to “Urban Core”)
They are categorized as follows:
500 people from cars
120 people from buses
490 people from NEC trains
220 people from RVL trains

My opinions are these:

NJT-RO still stands for “Metro West Commuter Railroad”, NOT NEW JERSEY TRANSIT We have already seen this behavior on the proposed Northern Branch, Lackawanna Cut-Off, and M-O-M lines. A hand-out I have from the last hearing four years ago states that 97% of traffic on Route 206 is NOT headed to the Urban Core, so who cares that 88% of this line’s expected ridership will do so? The proposed service plan is neither a traffic reliever nor an alternative for an amount of people to have an impact that is worth spending $269M on, which includes a flyover for the NS not stated above.

They state there would be a transfer at West Trenton for Philadelphia. Well, the first reverse peak SEPTA R3 train doesn’t reach West Trenton until 6:31am, the next 7:21, which is getting rather late to make it to work east of Newark by 8:30 or 9am. So do not expect the old RDG Crusader traffic from Jenkintown (that was that service’s bread and butter) to make much use of it.

They are also expecting some usage on the solitary reverse peak train by serving Merrill Lynch in Hopewell. But stockbroker and investment bank Merrill is regarded by some as sort of a sweatshop, not a place for white-collar clock-punchers to plan their work life around 1 train a day. I would not expect anyone on it except some mailroom, custodial, and cafeteria workers who live along the West Trenton and Raritan lines.

Meanwhile, Hillsborough planners are going ahead, regardless of this, with a transit village near the proposed rail station along the proposed new Route 206 Bypass. They want a downtown along the current Route 206, and they want a bus hub, even though NJT will not coordinate bus with train.

This should be run to follow traffic patterns as follows:
Run 2 push-pull trains between Wayne Junction and Newark to capture the Bucks County business, pool the equipment with SEPTA, and scratch the expense of building a West Trenton yard and small shop.
Run 2 more DMU trainsets as shuttles back and forth all day between West Trenton and Bridgewater or Bound Brook, meet RVL trains AND have dedicated feeder buses along the way with through fares to meet the trains and take people to where they want to go: the office parks in Somerset, Piscataway, Bridgewater, etc. THAT is an alternative to driving on Routes 206 and 533.
That also cuts down substantially on initial capital and operating costs.

Posted by Joe Versaggi under West Trenton Line.