More Wrongheaded Idiocy

I'm pretty sure it's clear I hate greenies at this point. If not, the Hunterdon County Democrat provides several pretty clear reasons.

Basically, NJ Transit wants to build a bus and rail station in Clinton Township, and the mayor and town council are against it. Why? Sprawl. Environmental crap. Supposedly heavy traffic.

Yeaaaaah. See, here's the breakdown. We'll start with that, as we do and should with everything.

The Raritan Valley Line is the red-headed stepchild of the NJ Transit rail lines. It used to be a supplement to the Northeast Corridor (nee Penn Central) line, running from 30th Street Station over to West Trenton, and running from West Trenton to North Branch, onto Newark. Today, after fifty years of craptacular economics for the rail industry as a whole, the RVL bypasses the West Trenton branch and instead heads out west to Annandale and High Bridge. The line terminates at Newark Penn Station because the line is the only one in North Jersey to remain unelectrified and so must use diesel-powered trains to move around, which would not be such a grand limitation but for the fact that restrictions on the Hudson Tunnels limit its use to electrified rolling stock (another word for trains) only. In English, the trains are gas-powered and not electrified, and because they're not electrified they can't use the tunnels. Eventually, within a year or so, this won't be an issue because NJ Transit, in their quest to break down walls between stations and allow riders to complete more one-seat (no transfer) rides, will be introducing hybrid trains into their fleet that will allow the RVL trains to operate on diesel or biodiesel until Newark, and continue onwards after that on electrified rails.

Some of the current rolling stock are quieter and more enviro-friendly than others, which means the plumes of smoke and thunderous roar of the trains are far less intense than on other trains. You can tell the difference if you're driving alongside them at any point - the newer trains look, well, awesome and are sleek and futuristic and are made of win. The older trains look like pretty much every picture you've ever seen of freight trains, only with dour, craptastic NJ Transit black/grey colors. Nothing says LET'S RIDE THE SUPERTRAIN TO AWESOMETOWN like black/grey. No wonder people don't like commuting.

Getting back to my point, the fact is that the old and busted crapliners outnumber the new hotness supertrains by a sizable margin. New Hotness are set aside for the morning and evening rushes, but after that it's just the Old & Busted for the rest of the day. The people along the route are likely pissed off at having to deal with these things at all hours of the day and night. I can understand that.

There are solutions to such problems - moving away from the train, pressuring NJ Transit to get more of the modern (quieter) trains, asking them to limit service past a certain hour, have the town erect sound barriers near the train... but none of those options matter very much.

The problem is the fact that people want to control others. They really don't care about the train and its noise, because such things go hand-in-hand with living near a train station at all. No matter how quiet it gets, it'll never be totally silent. These people are fine having the ability to leave their little quiet town on the other side of the state - they just don't want others coming into their little quiet town because they think (mistakenly, of course) that will increase the rate of crime and bring disease, famine, pestilince, Ragnarok, Cthulu and the Cloverfield monster. Oh, and aliens too. Not those "illegals" we keep hearing about, although they'll probably show up in droves too - no, the ones from the movies with the city ships and the Resistance Is Futile bumper stickers and the brain eating and the hey hey hey it hurts!

Yes, that's a tad over the top. That's the point. These people are going nuts over nothing.

Transportation 2: Electric Boogaloo

This image infuriates me every time I look at it. It was created using Google Earth and Windows Vista's Snipping Tool (very handy).

The red line is NJ Transit's rail operations in New Jersey. To the north is the Northeast Corridor line, operating from Trenton to New York City. To the south is the Atlantic City line, operating from Philadelphia's 30th Street Station to Atlantic City. The squiggly line connecting them is the RiverLINE, a diesel-powered light rail service operating from Trenton to Camden along the Delaware River and operating along existing and operational freight rail lines. The portion of red line off to the right is the North Jersey Coast Line, provided here for reference as to NJ Transit's service footprint in NJ, ending in Bay Head and heading north to connect with the Northeast Corridor tracks just before Elizabeth and providing service into New York City.

The green line is the existing rail service between Camden and Trenton operating in Pennsylvania. This is controlled by Amtrak and leased to SEPTA (South-Eastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority, for those not in "Teh Know") and NJ Transit for commuter rail operations. North of 30th Street Station, Amtrak operates the Northeast Regional (local), Acela (express), and on weekends, ACES (Atlantic City Express Service, stopping only at NYC, Newark and Atlantic City), while SEPTA operates the R7 and R3 services connecting daily commuters with Trenton and West Trenton, respectively (don't be fooled - the two cities are miles apart). To the south of 30th Street Station, the green line is simply the Atlantic City line. Amtrak used to operate daily service to Atlantic City but discontinued this when it was apparent that no one was actually using it on a daily basis (the ACES service is funded exclusively by the casinos in AC, operated with NJ Transit and Amtrak equipment, and tickets are exclusively distributed by Amtrak).

The yellow lines are simply geographic borders that I couldn't turn off in Google Earth, and the light blueish lines are county borders in NJ.

Now let's see... what could all those black lines all over the place be? Take a second and look at all of them.

Those are the rail lines crawling throughout South Jersey. Some are used as freight rail, some are abandoned, some have the last trains that used them still sitting there derelict, housing vagrants, all manner of wildlife, causing damage to surrounding environs and posing health and safety risks for area children, who are extremely likely to curiously play on or around these monoliths to times past, when rail service was privately operated and sprawled everywhere but now sit neglected.

Google searches for abandoned trains in New Jersey or perusing any Weird NJ magazine or related website often turns up pictures of these things. It's disgusting - anyone who claims to value transit in NJ at all should be appalled that the state has thus far ignored these lines and let the possibility for expansion simply die.

Here is another shot from Google Earth, this time showing simply the transit options SEPTA, with all its problems, has provided, compared to the transit options NJ Transit has provided to South Jersey residents. Pretty stark picture, eh? All of those rail lines, everything NJ Transit has done, has thus far centered on New York or Newark, and has ignored South Jersey and left it to rot. It's not that the freight companies aren't willing to work with them - far from it, they're very happy to work with commuter rail systems, as evidenced by the RiverLINE, which must shut down service at 10 PM and start up at 5 AM because it shares rails with CSX, a freight railroad. The expansion of the Newark Light Rail from Branch Brook Park Station to Grove Street Station in Bloomfield is owned by Norfolk Southern (as are the tracks which make up the other future expansion on the table, found at http://expandncs.blogspot.com). And again, portions of the expansion plan for the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail are currently freight rail lines in use - and I could go on and on with examples of how freight and passenger rail can share lines without any trouble, and still we have wasted rails all over South Jersey.

So really, the question now becomes: what excuse have you, NJ Transit, to not provide service?

Transportation In New Jersey

I've had it up to here with people claiming that the only thing New Jersey needs to solve ALL of its transportation problems is the ARC (Access to the Region's Core) Project.  It is ONE solution amidst a growing number of major problems with transportation in NJ.  

Today I'm pissed off at this moron in the Asbury Park Press claiming that special HOV / single user lanes will somehow solve major congestion issues on the Parkway in the shore areas.  

Let's give some of these things a background, because while transit news and information happens to be one of my hobbies (distilled to me by my incredibly smart, wise, funny and talented uncle, Tim), it certainly isn't the case for the majority of people.  

Currently, if you want to get to New York from most points in New Jersey, you have two options: car (NJ Turnpike, Garden State Parkway) or train (NJ Transit, PATH).  Driving is just fine for some people, but others can't afford the high tolls for the bridges and tunnels, and many can't afford parking in NYC on a consistent basis.  For those people outside the Newark/Jersey City area, the PATH is a partial option - as long as you can find your way to Newark or Jersey City first.  South of the Raritan Tolls, the Parkway has express lanes and local lanes going north and south until exit 105, for Tinton Falls and Long Branch.  The local lanes are three lanes wide and the express lanes are two lanes wide, with almost no stops in between.  After 105, the Parkway is two to three lanes wide on the north and south ends.  It's relatively the same north of the Raritan tolls, with the exception of areas around toll plazas, where lanes suddenly balloon from two to three, up to ten to twelve and then back down.  Yeah it's a frickin nightmare for casual drivers, and the third circle of hell for commuters.  

OK so people coming from South Jersey and Northern-er Jersey can drive straight into the city, park and go to work, or get to Newark, pay for cheap parking and take the PATH, or just take the NJ Transit train closest to them to either New York and be done with it, or Newark or Hoboken and transfer from one of those stops to the PATH into New York.  Fine, great, problem solved.  

Except it isn't.  NJ finally decided it was a good idea to try and fix the problem with traffic jams on the GSP, so they floated a lot of proposals on how to fix it.  HOV lanes, single-driver fees, higher tolls, expanded mass transit, and expansion of the GSP lanes were all fielded.  Only the last two options were actually seriously considered, thanks to NY's horrendous experience on the LIE (if you've ever driven on that road, at any point in the day, you know exactly what I mean.  The second you start with the HOV lanes, you get traffic jams and a freaking solid lane wide open begging for use) and the fact that NJ drivers were probably going to riot if the tolls went up any more.  In addition, NJ Transit's system, while well-put-together and decent for a thirty-year-old system (NJ Transit was formed in the early eighties from the remnants of the major railroads that had passed through NJ, including the Penn Central which makes up today's Northeast Corridor line that passes through New York and New Jersey and gives name to Newark and New York City's major railroad stations), has been showing its age for a while and has had difficulty scaling to meet the increased demand for commuters, the majority of whom are going back and forth to New York, and to a lesser extent Philadelphia, every day.  

NJ Transit just recently upgraded its fleet with double-decker cars from Canada's Bombardier, Inc., and is working with Amtrak and the Port Authority to upgrade many area railroad bridges from one or two tracks to five to eight tracks (They have to work with Amtrak because technically Amtrak owns the actual tracks into New York, as well as the inbound and outbound tunnels connecting New York with New Jersey).  At the moment, NJ Transit and Amtrak share the length of track between New York Penn Station and Trenton's Transit Center (Amtrak shares the tracks from there with SEPTA), and if a train wants to go to New York, it absolutely must use those tracks.  All trains going to New York, every single one of them, must use those tracks.  While PATH uses a separate system entirely and passes under the Hudson River further south, this doesn't help those people who want to just take the train straight into the city without transferring at all.  It also means that if something happens in one of the tunnels, ALL of the trains are stuck using the other one until things are back to normal.  This happens rather frequently - a train, either an Amtrak or NJ Transit train, will get stuck in the tunnel and either need to be towed out or need to be serviced, but in the interim everything is backed up and no one is able to get to where they need to go.  

Enter the ARC project. The central idea is to drill two new tunnels to supplement the two existing tunnels into New York, and to have these tunnels go under the existing Penn Station, expanding capacity and making longer, more frequent trains a reality (in addition to connecting service with the PATH and with fourteen subway lines (A, C, E, 1, 2, 3, B, F, D, V, N, R, Q, W) instead of the current situation which forces commuters up to street level before they can catch those last eight subway lines over a block away).  In addition, the Portal Bridge over the Hackensack, connecting Kearny and Secaucus, will be expanded from two tracks to eight tracks (three south of the current bridge, and three north of it), and the rail lines around Secaucus Junction will be reconfigured so that trains can more easily turn around at Secaucus and head back to New York (very helpful during rush hour) or head off to other tracks that would not normally be possible, such as trains from New York heading to Hoboken or trains from Port Jervis and Spring Valley going to New York (not currently possible, requires changing trains at Secaucus).  

It's a great idea but it's not the only thing that NJ can do to fix its traffic problems.  Expanding the GSP where it's obviously bottlenecking is the best idea - upgrading the transit system is a great start but like it or not, NJ is a state of drivers and drivers actually like their cars.  Taxing the crap out of them doesn't stop them from driving any more than it stops smokers from smoking.  It's a bullshit theory lauded by some idiot who apparently gets paid to sit around and make stupid ideas, because the article I've linked above is full of stupid ideas like "induced demand" - the haughty-man's way of saying, "If you build it, they will come".  Well of course they'll come, genius.  Summer weekend traffic isn't going away any time soon - it's a fact of life in New Jersey.  Rush-hour traffic on the other hand is something we can work with.  HOT/HOV lanes aren't any more of a solution than building more road - in fact they'll work against you because you'll be stuck with a billion drivers paying the higher fee and STILL getting a traffic jam.  There's no way to stop that except to build more, newer roads and expand the ones we already have.  

And what the hell are you babbling about sprawl for?  As if it's a bad thing!!  Having MORE people living in their own homes is a good thing, jackass - not everyone wants to live in an apartment forever and ride their bike to work and be all green and shit.  You sir, FAIL.  Just because you don't like suburbanites and kiddies and soccer moms and schools and lots of people doesn't mean they're inherently bad!  And don't even start with me on overpopulation, because that's exactly the next step for you dolts.  "WAAAAAA people are everywhere we're gonna run out of resources WAAAAAA!!!!!" I challenge anyone with even the slightest hint of a brain in their head who thinks this is the case to A) stop bitching and pull your head out of Algore's ass, and B) go into true Southern New Jersey or true Northern New Jersey, just as an example, and see how long you can drive on non-highways without seeing other people.  The further out you go, the longer it takes to find people - just a matter of fact.  Even in NEW JERSEY, the most densely populated state in the union, you have VAST, WIDE OPEN SPACES.  And with those spaces you have the possibility of new homes for people, and new businesses and new spurs to the economy.  Every family in New Jersey could have ten kids  and we'd still have plenty of space!  As for resources, cut back on that bullshit about global warming or climate change or damn it's getting hot in here or whatever you want to call it and stop limiting private industry.  People will conserve their resources on their own, they don't need Big Daddy Government to do it for them.  

And as for expanded mass transit?  Absolutely!  Let the rest of the state enjoy what Northern and small portions of Central and Southern New Jersey enjoy now, a damned fine rail system!  Expand it! I want trains from Cape May to New Hope, from Cherry Hill to Wall!  I don't care if it's light or heavy rail, I want more trains!  There's abandoned rails all over the state, and if we don't act now, the greenies are going to turn them into friggin "rail trails" for biking and hiking, because you know, we don't have enough of that already!!  Stop pulling up these rails!! STOP, DAMNIT!!  Put trains on them, expand service to all corners of the state!  If you REALLY want people to use mass transit, then make it an OPTION FOR THEM!!! South Jersey residents, all they have are the PATCO Speedline, the RiverLINE and the Atlantic City Line, which are both useless unless you're going to either Philly or AC, and let's face it - people want MORE OPTIONS.  They want to be able to hop on ONE train and take that train to Cape May or to Wildwood or to Delran or Glouscter or Glassboro or Howell or Toms River or any other place in New Jersey. 

Get it together, guys!  Come on now!  

How Transit Needs To Work In The New York / New Jersey Area

After yesterday's post, I did some reading.  I like reading, especially about transportation services all across the fruited plain.  My favorites, of course, are the local services in NY and NJ - PATH and NJ Transit.  These services are very similar in a number of ways - both have stations in Newark and both have endpoints in New York City (NJT's is New York Penn Station, PATH is about a block away, at 33rd and 6th), both serve Hoboken (PATH requires switching trains in Jersey City's Journal Square, NJT requires either direct from Newark or switching in Secaucus), both happen to be quite cheap (NJT for monthly commuters allows rail tickets to be used as bus passes as well, PATH is good for cheap day or week trips) and both are far beyond the point where the term "overwhelmed" would apply.  

"Grossly unable to handle current or future capacity" would be a more apt description.  Both services are taking steps to combat this, but at this point it's too little, too late.  Yes, the new cars both systems are introducing are very nice, very pretty, and may help offset the capacity issue for the next few months or so, but it's a kid-sized band-aid on a six-inch knife wound.  

Raising fares doesn't help anyone - both services did that recently too, presumably to take advantage of the increase in daily passenger traffic (they know you need to take their train, so they'll stiff you as much as possible).  NJT is the worst offender here - they've had two fare increases in the past four years, while PATH has only recently upped its rates after a nearly eight-year freeze.  

Capacity isn't just a problem on the trains themselves - it's a problem in New York, where almost seven hundred thousand people pour through New York Penn Station from the four major services - NJT, Amtrak, LIRR, and the NYC Subway - and almost three hundred thousand are pouring in on PATH by itself - forget bus travel, because that's a whole other can of worms.  

Think about it this way - when you ride any of the major lines in the area, can you find a seat or are you standing shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers?  Unfortunately, the answer is too often the latter.  Now, don't get me wrong - there's standing room set aside for a reason, but what I mean is that any train coming through Newark, Secaucus, Hoboken or New York at this point is crowded to the point where people are standing in the aisles and the standing room only areas.  On PATH it's even worse - good luck getting onto the train at Harrison Station, a stone's throw from Newark Penn Station, or getting on the Journal Square-33rd Street line after it leaves Journal Square.  

The major carriers in the area have their strengths and their weaknesses, but they are all operating independent of one another.  I'm not proposing lumping everything together - the MTA's flagrant misuse of funds over the past quarter century is proof enough that they shouldn't have any place in NJ's transit systems.  I'm proposing combining the resources of the Port Authority and NJ Transit under one roof.  Right now, NJ Transit is a quasi-governmental body operating under the auspices of the Department of Transportation of the State of New Jersey, while the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is a bi-state agency operating, in many ways, on the federal level, but answering to the governors of the states of New York and New Jersey (who are chairs of the PA's Board of Directors).  With regard to mass transit, the Port Authority has a very minimal footprint (comparitively speaking - PATH stations operate above or below five NYC Subway stations, and the AirTrain system, operated by the PA, operates strictly between Jamaica Station and JFK Airport) in New York, while it has a far more extensive system in New Jersey (the majority of PATH's stations are standalone and in New Jersey, specifically in Newark, Harrison, Jersey City and Hoboken, and AirTrain operates between NJT's Newark Airport stop and the terminals of Newark Airport).  New Jersey Transit's operations are almost exclusively based in New Jersey with the exception of its terminus at New York Penn Station for all but three of its lines (exceptions are Raritan Valley Line, Pascack Valley Line and Atlantic City Line) and its other terminus at Philadelphia's 30th Street Station for the Atlantic City Line.  

For New Jersey, having the PA absorb NJT, or at least their rail operations, makes a lot of sense, and here's why: 

One entity responsible for mass transit throughout the state and with the authority and clearance to take on projects that wouldn't normally make sense for either system on its own (a perfect example is the long-spoken-of PATH extension from Newark to Plainfield - or even just the airport).  The systems could pool their resources with far less red tape and with the combined income from these systems could make parts of either PATH or NJT's systems free at certain times or remove fares entirely.  Ways could be found to combine certain aspects of the systems (adapting Newark Light Rail vehicles for use on PATH's system, or vice-versa) or to establish a uniform train carriage that would work across all covered systems (cars that would work just as well on NJT, NJT LR, PATH systems).  Frankly, I think this would be a good idea - what do you think?