While this is a good start it is but a first step. What is really needed is hourly service all the way to MSU with cross-platform transfer between Midtown Directs and the Hoboken - Montclair Service at Newark Broad Street, akin to the cross platform transfer that is available for Gladstone trains at Summit. While commending them for taking this first step, we urge NJT to take the next two obvious steps - (i) Make the service hourly, and (ii) Extend it to MSU; as soon as possible.

And then there is of course the issue of weekend service West of Montclair, which needs to be addressed too….

Those people want rapid transit

Without having built enough staging to dispatch trains with enough frequency to fill every block between the sports complex and SJ - as well as a means for turning rapidly at SJ (do-able, but NJT has not trained crews or dispatchers for it) they are the victims of their own poor planning.

The line will get a bad rap and then nobody will use it in any significant way.

We waited, they built it, we came, we waited again.

Yesterday, 6/9, provides some insight into Operating Difficulties’ workmanship in the 96+ degree swelter:

What a mess yesterday afternoon. Platform supervisors at NYP sending MetroPark-Metuchen-Edison-New Brunswick riders onto a Trenton super express; no announcement of stops until the train left the platform; everyone spilling out onto the 3/4 platform in Newark. Monitors not working or displaying incorrect info; Train crew at NWK unsure of what stops they were making; unintelligible PA announcements on the platforms over the din of an F40 screamer on Track 5. Ugh.

Once we departed, Operating Difficulties was put at blame by the train crew several times, especially for the three other New Brunswick-bound trains that passed us on Track 3. So I called Penn Plaza and asked for Operating Difficulties’ extension.

It turns out that Operating Difficulties actually has an extension, or so I was told. I was put through a series of transfers and was eventually connected to CTEC-8. I quickly learned that there was a track circuit break just east of County Yard messing up signalling, and that’s why trains that should have been behind us on 4 were bypassing us on 3. Our conductor was listening in courtesy of my speakerphone and the quiet of a multilevel coach. He proceeded to offer some choice suggestions to the dispatcher for not informing him of the problems or the workarounds.

When he was done, he keyed the PA and, of course, blamed our predicament on Operating Difficulties. So if nothing else, we now know that NJTRO thinks that Operating Difficulties is someone on the day shift at CTEC-8.

This year, for the first time in my memory, ALL summer weekend service south of Long Branch will be hourly Bay Head shuttles connecting with locals from NYPS and Newark.

- No expresses, either through or connecting, from Newark
- No Waterfront Connection service at all from Hoboken.
- All slow locals, uncompetitive with the GSP, and unsuitable for anyone not living along the NJCL or NEC. Any other Hoboken Division passenger would have to pay New York fares and sweat out long transfer times at Secaucus. There was a time when there was also a Bergen-Shore Express from Suffern.

Contrast this with the show the LIRR, the largest commuter railroad in the nation, puts on for access to Jones Beach, Fire Island communities and The Hamptons. NJT has again proven itself to be nothing more than being Metro-West Commuter Railroad and increasingly irrelevant for intra-Jersey use.

A House version of the Amtrak reauthorization bill has been introduced. H.R. 6003, the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act, was approved yesterday by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Railroads Subcommittee and will see full committee action on Thursday.

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-MD) has indicated that he wants to give H.R. 6003 time on the House floor before the August recess. It will be much easier to get that limited floor time and ensure passage of the bill if there are more co-sponsors.

Currently, there are 41 cosponsors on the bill. Ideally, the bill needs 218 or more co-sponsors (more than half of the chamber). A list of current co-sponsors can be found here on our website.

Contact your House of Representatives member and ask him or her to co-sponsor H.R. 6003! Given continued security screening of physical mail delivered to Congress, we recommend sending a fax or calling your Representative’s office. A sample message is presented at the bottom of this email.

You can find your Representative by visiting http://www.house.gov and putting your zip code in the box at the upper left hand corner of the page.

You may also call NARP’s toll-free Congressional Action Hotline at 1-800-679-1581. When prompted enter NARP’s code: 1189. If you choose to call, be sure do so during normal House business hours, which are generally 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Eastern Daylight Time. Otherwise, you are likely to get a recording saying that the office is closed.

This Action Alert is specifically for House action; do not contact your Senators on this issue (the Senate passed S.294, their version of the Amtrak reauthorization, on October 29 on a 70-22 vote).

Re-Discovering Rail: The Smart, Green Alternative from MAS on Vimeo.

The current ridership balance is 65% to New York, and 35% to Hoboken, Newark, and local. After a 40% rise in New York ridership to 36,150, 30% reduction to Hoboken, and assuming the rest was constant, there was still a 13% increase in overall M&E ridership, not meriting a 33% reduction in train frequency. With the remaining Gladstone and Dover trains bunched at one time per hour, it represents historic low levels of service to Summit and Morristown, which always had half-hourly service on weekdays back to DL&W days. Their claim that they are “balancing needs of ridership throughout the system to put the trains and seats where they are most needed” is a specious argument. A “low overdue assessment” does not excuse the lack of notice to county and state officials and their customers.

Absent from their analysis were less painful cost reductions such as cutting back Dover – Hoboken locals to Morristown, consist cuts, and crew size reductions. If the Princeton Dinky can run with a 2-person crew; so can Hoboken trains if they were so badly utilized.

NJT is an arrogant, smug, incompetent bureaucracy putting out an increasingly expensive product with poor reliability. They are in drastic need of legislated re-regulation, micro-management, and reform.

I ride MidTown Direct into NY Penn every day and the time it takes to get from the platform to the intermediate or top level grows by the day. My daily train generally comes in at either track 9 or 10. For the past several months, “work” has been going on to replace the escalators. In doing so, the area is boarded up and riders need to go towards the 7th Ave. end to go upstairs. Only one set of escalators is available–every once in a while. Why? Because invariably there is an Amtrak train leaving on the opposite track and the escalator is running in the down mode. I’ve written to Amtrak about utilizing the same 2 or 4 tracks they need in the morning so they don’t interfere with the hordes disembarking from NJ Transit. I’ve never received a reply and none is expected, sadly. I’ve started going into the City the old-fashioned way–through Hoboken.

But a bad by-product of this is that the 5:18am train from Raritan and 2:05am train from Newark are also eliminated. A common schedule defect on the Raritan, Bergen, Main, and Pascack diesel lines is that it is impossible to arrive Manhattan before 7:40am. I have been on that train a couple of times over the years, it is far from empty, and I don’t think anyone gets up to ride it unless they have to. In addition for some that have to be at work on a weekend that early, it will be impossible for anyone on those lines to catch once a day trains like the Maple Leaf, Adirondack, Palmetto, or Carolinian.

While weekend service frequency remains constant for all stations, there will be no Gladstone-Hoboken local service between Summit and Newark. The Newark-Hoboken shuttle equipment will lay up in Newark for one hour, and there will still be a 3 hour gap in service in the late evening. The Shuttle could easily run up to Montclair and back during that layover, and the 3 hour gap can also be closed. Both could occur for a negligible increase in operating costs.

The equipment and crew utilization on this Shuttle is scandalous. Evidently, NJT cannot grasp the concepts of Incremental Accounting and they continue to shun any influence from rail advocates with short notice of massive service cuts, and slower service on what remains.