February- The Longest Month for NJT?
February 23rd 2008 08:45 pm
It would be an understatement to say that February’s NJT service has not been kind to its customers. When headed to work in the morning, there is nothing worse than being late for a planned meeting or job interview. When headed home in the evening, there is nothing worse than spending more time than anticipated on your train and being late for dinner, missing a meeting or just not being able to spend time with the kids.
I ride the M&E daily and take the MidTown Direct 7:28 A.M. express out of Chatham. Maybe it’s me; but, it seems like this train cannot make its run on time most of the time. When it runs well, it’s really good. When it doesn’t run well, it’s really not-so-good. There are a host of reasons for the delays: 1. The “check end doors” issue that seems to absolutely plague this railroad. When those doors malfunction, it holds things up. 2. When the train makes its stop at Newark Broad Street, as we’re passing Brick Church, the announcement gets made that only the first 4 cars will platform at Newark and folks should proceed to move to the 1st 4 cars. Why can’t there be a sign at stations–or why can’t the crew when they descend onto the platform announce BEFORE the person gets on that if they’re bound for Newark, they should go to the first 4 cars. I can’t tell you how many times someone on the last car (the car I always sit in) is trying to rush to the front of the train delaying the train. 3. When anything goes wrong, the train loses its slot on the Kearny Connection and can sit for minutes until it gets clearance to go onto Amtrak. 4. Many times, our train will get just past Secaucus Station and then crawl–sometimes stop–to allow another NJT train to whiz by. I have no idea why that is and it is NEVER explained by the crew.
This past Wednesday had the 7:28 AM express die in Morristown. That caused cancellation of that train. Unfortunately, for those already standing on the platform away from the small building that is the station, you could not hear any of the announcements. Speakers should be placed along the platform. Although I signed up for njt alerts, there wasn’t an njt alert until after 45 minutes had gone by. Fellow riders were calling home to ask their spouses to listen to the radio to see if any delays were being announced. The spouses reported the traffic reports were saying “NJT is running on or close to schedule”. Duh? I finally got on a Hoboken bound train that pulled into Chatham at 8:25 AM and got to New York the old fashioned way–via PATH. I made it to my desk at 10:05 A.M.
When it rains, it pours. On the way home that evening, chaos ruled Penn Station. There were tons of people standing staring at departure boards that had “stand by” for several trains. I was intending to catch the 5:47 PM train; however, seeing the crowd and hearing the announcement of a 15 to 20 minute delay due to signal problems, I decided to get to 6th Ave., get the PATH and made the 6:47 train to Hackettstown. I eventually got home.
Why are these things happening with more and more regularity? I have my theories and opinions:
1. Mixed consists (i.e. pairing different equipment) may cause incompatibilities that might explain the “end doors” plague. The consists should be alike (i.e. run all Comet V’s without mixing them with Comets III’s and IV’s).
2. Mixed consists also create another customer gripe–some cars are too cold while others are saunas. Some has PA systems the don’t function or you can barely hear while others will split your eardrums.
3. Mixed consists send a message to the riding public of a railroad in disarray that is being run on the fly by the seat of one’s pants.
4. Maintenance on the trains is suspect in my mind. If the outside of train cars are filthy, then I make the assumption the car hasn’t been in the shop much.
5. The spate of retirements of experienced train crews has left us with “crews in training” which will take a generation to get them up to speed. Retired crew members should be enticed out of retirement on a consulting basis to train new crews.
6. There is a culture of complacency with many crews. I can’t tell you how often the 7:28 A.M. express arrives in Chatham with the side destination signs on different cars reading “Long Branch”, “Trenton”, “Dover”, “Bay Head”. Can you imagine a new discretionary rider having to figure out just WHERE is their train going?
7. Perhaps worst of all is the lack of communication. Executive Directors come and go; but, this one problem remains a stubborn one. The njt alerts are a great idea; however, they haven’t worked as well as they should have over the past two weeks. Also, not everyone has a crackberry to get the message. Incredibly, because the train crews do not have blackberries, passengers sometimes know about the problem BEFORE the crews!
I don’t want to belabor the point; but, I pay $227 for a monthly ticket. If asked if I’m getting my money’s worth, my honest answer is no. I contacted Rich Sarles, NJT’s Executive Director, and I suggested a focus group to discuss all these issues. To his credit, he is doing just that and I’ve been asked to join.
I believe everyone knows that with mechanical things, breakdowns will occur. However, the breakdowns are happening with increasing regularity which is of concern. The one thing; however, that drives riders nuts is lack of information.
NJT is capable of better. I know they are operating at capacity and I know money is practically non-existent as our state goes broke; but, many of the issues are operational and that is something over which NJT has control.
Joe Versaggi responded on 24 Feb 2008 at 11:13 am #
The TA ran mixed consists on the “B” division in the 1969-1971 era, and did so on the IRT until the R62’s and Redbirds took over in the mid-1980’s. Mixed consists had been a sign of disarray, poor maintenance, resulting in cobbled together of consists to make runs in a perpetual crisis environments. Orderly consists and car assignment by car barn sets up very detailed control groups to measure MDBF (mean distance between failure) of every single car, and heavy-duty statistical analysis is done to determine trends by car type. CTA in Chicago also does that, and may swap identical set of cars between the Brown and Orange lines to isolate the affects of assignment to different car barns.
Metro-North has never mixed the M-1’s with their M-3’s, though LIRR almost always did. Everyone knows which railroad is better run.
OTOH, PATH also always ran mixed consists without any negative affects.
METRA in Chicago puts out the best OTP in the industry in Chicago without obscene levels of schedule fat like NJT has. But their brand new Alstom cars are virtually identical to Budd cars built in 1950 and everything in between.
As for NJT, Alstom requested when the Comet V’s were first being delivered to stop mixing them, and assign the 50 in-service at the time to just the Raritan Line so as to serve as a control group. They did not oblige. Today, while the ACRL has all Comet IV, and the RVL has mostly Comet II trailers with Comet V cab cars (there is no such thing as a Comet II cab car), everything everywhere else is a cobbled up mess. Lack of center doors on more crowded Manhattan trains, together with mid-train cab cars, means loss of vestibules. Passengers cannot predict where the doors will be located on the platforms as they do on the LIRR. It means slow ingress/egress.
NJT has been blessed with lots of capital for new rolling stock and communication equipment over the last 10 years. Poor management and maintenance have squandered these investments. What we have here in 2007 is “back to the future” (IND/BMT in 1969), except NJT doesn’t have any valid excuses. I want to see:
1. MDBF by car type,
2. shop margins,
3. orderly consists,
4. “Shirley time” removed from the schedules,
5. 94% OTP.
Until then, we are simply throwing good capital money after bad.
Bob Scheurle responded on 24 Feb 2008 at 9:46 pm #
Some people swear by The Clever Commute, saying it’s much better than NJT’s alert service.
As far as the doors are concerned, things were much better when they ran with open doors!
Jishnu Mukerji responded on 25 Feb 2008 at 9:46 am #
They were even better when they ran flat cars before enclosed passenger carriages were invented……nothing to fail
Juuuuuust kidding 
Bob Scheurle responded on 25 Feb 2008 at 11:05 am #
I guess NJT is doing well compared to the Boeing LRV.
alewifebp responded on 25 Feb 2008 at 10:44 pm #
Outside of the competence issues of ALMOST, mixed consists do seem to create many problems. There was a time when NJT always ran a clean consist, particularly on MD service, and it nearly always ran pretty well. There also was a time when the Arrows weren’t falling apart.
While monetary issues always play a role in things like this, Metro North is not “rich” by any standard, and through better management they seem to be able to avoid many of these issues. NJT should try that tack and see if it works.
DaVe responded on 27 Feb 2008 at 6:50 pm #
I’m an electrician for nj transit rail and I agree there’s alot of mismanagment going on but I thought on commenting on your issue with mixed consists… There is nothing wrong with mixing comet 4s, 5s, and 2s. They all work relatively well together the door problems are coming mostly from the comet 5s.. From my experience they are the worst equipment we have by far in terms of reliability and being able to service key systems such as doors or hvac systems outside of a shop enviroment. But back to my point you can put all the consists you want with all comet 5s and your still going to have door issues. Throw a comet 3 in the consist and you will have no automated announcments/station displays through the whole train.
You made a good point in bringing up retiring people leaving before we have enough people trained to a point to replace them. In our mechanical department in the next 5-6 years were losing alot of our top mechanics and with the way our jobs are unionized its very rare for those guys to have an opprotunity to work together with new people to teach although I’ve been lucky to have worked with some of our best and learn from them but theres still a lot of people who aren’t so lucky and are mostly forced to learn the old fashioned way by doing the best you can and learning as you go along
As for the trains being filthy on the outside understand the most of our equipment is between 7-31 years old with the comet 5s being the youngest and 1s being 22 years old since their last rebuild we wash trains daily as they cycle through various yards most notably the Mmc and Hoboken which wash 70% of the trains that layover there as for shop time theres a Fra rule that all cab cars must be shopped every 92 days for a cab signal inspection, every 180 days every car is shopped for a full pi inspection… So basically every car gets shopped atleast twice a year not to mention any other reason it may get shopped for…
All in all I think our biggest problem is we are expanding too quickly without enough man power to accomidate all the extra service.
Joe Versaggi responded on 29 Feb 2008 at 10:41 am #
Since we all know the Comet-V is the worst car, and their door engines also seem to move more slowly than the other cars, it still makes sense to isolate them, or at least the trailers, and their problems onto fewer trains. As for the brushed aluminum-sided cars, there is no way to clean them thoroughly without a chemical bath. Amtrak has the same problem. What they need is what Metro North has done to them: give them a clear coat, or paint them; the latter Amtrak is considering. The Comet III, now the oldest disk-braked cars without an overhaul, should likewise be isolated in rush hour consists or cycled onto lesser used shuttles like Bay Head and outer Boonton. But again, there seems to be no method to the madness.
DaVe responded on 29 Feb 2008 at 3:03 pm #
i agree they should put all our comet 3s into shuttle service especially since we dont have that many in service, most are just sitting on a cripple track in the mmc with numerous parts stripped to keep the ones we do have in service running. but the comet 5s are never going to be run in pure consists, we have too many of them to isolate to just a few consists… thats the mistake we made when we went the alstrom route… should have stuck with bombardier as their cars are very reliable and maintenance friendly.. glad we learned from our mistake and bought our multi levels from bombardier… i just cant believe with the big mess the comet 5s wound up being we still went back and bought 33 pl42s from them… again im glad we are reordering alp 46s from bombardier… ok im done ranting at our questionable equipment purchases now….
Eine Kleine Multi-level responded on 01 Mar 2008 at 2:46 pm #
Dave: Aren’t the Comet IBs actually 39 years old?
DaVe responded on 14 Mar 2008 at 10:46 pm #
yes but they were rebuilt in 1987-1988 but they were originally built in 1968.
They are the oldest if you just look at shell age