If you want to understand America’s infrastructure problem, just look at New Jersey

[Busy Bee]

Tappan Zee should have been a berm - dual bore tunnel - berm construction w/ a 2-track Metro-North component. Just sayin...

[M II A II R II K]

And this is just awful:

[Gantz]

Originally Posted by M II A II R II K

And this is just awful:

Whats awful, is that when they rebuild these above-ground stations from scratch, they still insist on not extending the roof all the way for the full length of the platform!

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Gantz

Whats awful, is that when they rebuild these above-ground stations from scratch, they still insist on not extending the roof all the way for the full length of the platform!

Yeah, I don't understand that either.

There are like 2 days a year where snow is an issue, though. It's more just to have general protection from the elements, esp. sun, rain and wind.

[Nexis4Jersey]

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

Tappan Zee should have been a berm - dual bore tunnel - berm construction w/ a 2-track Metro-North component. Just sayin...

The Tunnel was out of the question for the Highway , but the Railway should have been built. The Whole Corridor is quickly turning into a giant parking lot even on weekends... The Whole East-West 287 Rail corridor was only supposed to cost 5 billion but was to carry over 140,000 from Hillburn to Stamford..

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Hamilton

Meanwhile the MTA has been losing ridership especially on weekends due to spotty service,

This isn't true.

Every major transit agency in U.S. had a comparative flatlining in ridership in 2016 because of the timing of the calendar. There were simply more weekend/holiday days last year, so the annual counts look worse.

And the PATH, while a good system, has much less frequent service than the subway, and experienced the same flatlining.

[Nexis4Jersey]

Originally Posted by Hamilton

Say what you will about the Port Authority, but PATH is the most reliable transit system in the NYC region. It has been putting the NYC Subway to shame in recent months. I never knew you could run ultra-frequent rapid transit on a reliable schedule in America until I started taking PATH. Meanwhile the MTA has been losing ridership especially on weekends due to spotty service, and it's been a shitshow during rush hours with several meltdowns in the past few weeks. PATH will have a modern signal system installed systemwide by next year; the MTA might install it on one or two lines in the next 20 or 30 years. Not to mention the above-ground MTA subway lines get shut down by Cuomo everytime a snowflake falls and he needs to play dress-up for some photo-ops from his emergency command center, while PATH keeps humming along.

Of course PATH is a bigger money pit than the NYC Subway and has less frequent service than the MTA at night, but still.

But even the PATH will need a bypass down the road...there's only so much you can cram onto it. The Newark LRT needs to be expanded in all directions , even east along the abandoned Freight line to the West Side Jersey City Station. Within 10 yrs the PATH will be overcapacity in both directions , and the Route 1 bus which runs every 5-10 mins is already struggling... I don't see many candidates for governor talking about the looming Traffic and Transit crisis in Urban Jersey only the Gateway which is an important project...but the rest of the state needs to focused on aswell..

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

Tappan Zee should have been a berm - dual bore tunnel - berm construction w/ a 2-track Metro-North component. Just sayin...

The TZ with a rail tunnel would have been insanely expensive; like making the Big Dig or Second Ave. Subway look like a picnic. The tunnel would have basically surfaced in White Plains.

The new TZ is engineered to accommodate Metro North, so if the region ever gets its head out of its ass, we can have direct trains from Rockland/Orange counties to Manhattan.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by M II A II R II K

And this is just awful:

thats nothing compared to all the dumb new style bus station shelters that water and snow and wind can blow right into.

[Nexis4Jersey]

Originally Posted by Crawford

The TZ with a rail tunnel would have been insanely expensive; like making the Big Dig or Second Ave. Subway look like a picnic. The tunnel would have basically surfaced in White Plains.

The new TZ is engineered to accommodate Metro North, so if the region ever gets its head out of its ass, we can have direct trains from Rockland/Orange counties to Manhattan.

The White Plains portion was to be in a tunnel , the rest of the corridor was supposed to use the Interstate ROW and abandoned Piermont branch between Suffern and Spring Valley...

[electricron]

Originally Posted by Crawford

This isn't true.

Every major transit agency in U.S. had a comparative flatlining in ridership in 2016 because of the timing of the calendar. There were simply more weekend/holiday days last year, so the annual counts look worse.

And the PATH, while a good system, has much less frequent service than the subway, and experienced the same flatlining.

A little math is in order,
365 / 7 =52.1428571, or if you like 52 x 7 = 364.

So most years, there's just one extra day over 52 weeks in a year, on leap years it's two extra days. At the worse possible arrangement for most years, the new year starts on Saturday or Sunday you'll get one additional weekend day, and on leap years a new year starting on a Friday or Saturday you'll get two additional weekend days. Forget about Holidays, as you get the same number every year, even those celebrated by an individual date that fall on a weekend you will still get a working day off.
So on a typical year, at most one more weekend day in a year - or one less work day off, and if you include the two possible more weekend days for a leap year, two days out of 260 (52 x 5 = 260) is still less than 1%.
Here's the math;
1 / 260 = 0.00384615 x 100 = 0.384615%
2 / 260 = 0.00769231 x 100 = 0.769231%

So any ridership loses or gains over this can't be attributed to more or less weekend dates in a year. It's impossible as the calander exists today.

[chris08876]

Christie is a POS.

NJ is theory is great state. Great schools (exception of the inner city ones; those are just horrid), relatively low crime (exception of a few select areas), high GDP, clean highways, maintained roads (so much road construction) and superior location sandwiched in between Philly, and NYC.

But our governor, Crispy Cream...?

Terrible, just terrible.

Transit is pretty good, but under Christie's transit cuts, in one of the busiest transportation networks in the country, it's a sacrilege.

He spent a good year not governing. Instead, shadowing the other POS in the White House. We didn't have a governor for a year. That's just treasonous towards the people's vote.

[BrownTown]

Originally Posted by chris08876

NJ is theory is great state. Great schools (exception of the inner city ones; those are just horrid), relatively low crime (exception of a few select areas), high GDP, clean highways, maintained roads (so much road construction) and superior location sandwiched in between Philly, and NYC.

You've sort of hit on the biggest problem with New Jersey here; absurd inequality. It's insane not just how much inequality there is between the rich and poor here but also just how close together they sometimes are. I can drive 5 minutes from my apartment one way and be in crime infested slums or drive 5 minutes the other way and be among million dollar houses. It's not just where I live, there are a lot of places like this where the rich and poor are separate by mere miles and yet completed separated in lifestyles.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by electricron

A little math is in order,
365 / 7 =52.1428571, or if you like 52 x 7 = 364.

So most years, there's just one extra day over 52 weeks in a year, on leap years it's two extra days. At the worse possible arrangement for most years, the new year starts on Saturday or Sunday you'll get one additional weekend day, and on leap years a new year starting on a Friday or Saturday you'll get two additional weekend days. Forget about Holidays, as you get the same number every year, even those celebrated by an individual date that fall on a weekend you will still get a working day off.
So on a typical year, at most one more weekend day in a year - or one less work day off, and if you include the two possible more weekend days for a leap year, two days out of 260 (52 x 5 = 260) is still less than 1%.
Here's the math;
1 / 260 = 0.00384615 x 100 = 0.384615%
2 / 260 = 0.00769231 x 100 = 0.769231%

So any ridership loses or gains over this can't be attributed to more or less weekend dates in a year. It's impossible as the calander exists today.

This is wrong. There's a consensus that the small national drop in ridership occurred because of holidays and weekends. It happens every couple of years, when there are extra holidays and weekends, like last year.

First, holidays are highly variable. Obviously a weekday holiday has very different ridership figures. Christmas on a Wed. produces very different ridership profiles than Christmas on a Sun.

Second, not all holidays are legal holidays. You need to include all informally recognized holidays, like Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve, Black Friday and the like.

Third, weekends aren't created equal. Saturdays are very different from Sundays. There was an additional Sunday last year, and it makes a difference.

Fourth the timing of major holidays influences the weekly ridership. If Christmas is mid-week, then that week is going to have more affected dates, because people work/travel according to the timing.

What is your supposition for why transit agencies around the U.S. (and Canada, for that matter) have variable annual ridership patterns based on the distribution of weekends and holidays? Just incredible coincidence?

[chris08876]

Originally Posted by BrownTown

You've sort of hit on the biggest problem with New Jersey here; absurd inequality. It's insane not just how much inequality there is between the rich and poor here but also just how close together they sometimes are. I can drive 5 minutes from my apartment one way and be in crime infested slums or drive 5 minutes the other way and be among million dollar houses. It's not just where I live, there are a lot of places like this where the rich and poor are separate by mere miles and yet completed separated in lifestyles.

I agree. Essex County is one of the extremes. The divide is profound. Surrounding Princeton area vs Trenton.

A couple of miles makes all the difference. Paterson as well.

[dchan]

I went to an interesting lecture hosted by ReThinkNYC at Cooper Union last week. One of the primary goals of their master plan is to eliminate Penn Station's use as a terminal for LIRR and NJ Transit, and instead use it as a through station for all trains. Right now, the only agency using Penn Station as a through station is Amtrak.

The strategy behind this goal is as follows:
1. Eliminating the use of Penn Station as a terminal also eliminates the needless and costly delays of turning around the trains and loading/unloading passengers.
2. Because Penn Station would no longer be a terminal station, we can eliminate the excessive number of tracks within the station needed to host both LIRR and NJ Transit trains. Instead, the excess tracks can be replaced with wider platforms, which can in turn be converted to dedicated boarding and de-boarding sides to further eliminated train delays.
3. The terminal function will in turn be shifted to a new Port Morris (Bronx) and Secaucus Junction stations, because most other cities feature train terminals farther away from the central core of the city to eliminate congestion where it's least wanted.

There are a many other parts to the plan that I'm not getting into for brevity's sake (such as the conversion of Sunnyside train yards into a park that also hosts the new MSG arena), but you can read about it here:

http://www.rethinkstudio.org/rethinknyc/

[Nexis4Jersey]

Originally Posted by dchan

I went to an interesting lecture hosted by ReThinkNYC at Cooper Union last week. One of the primary goals of their master plan is to eliminate Penn Station's use as a terminal for LIRR and NJ Transit, and instead use it as a through station for all trains. Right now, the only agency using Penn Station as a through station is Amtrak.

The strategy behind this goal is as follows:
1. Eliminating the use of Penn Station as a terminal also eliminates the needless and costly delays of turning around the trains and loading/unloading passengers.
2. Because Penn Station would no longer be a terminal station, we can eliminate the excessive number of tracks within the station needed to host both LIRR and NJ Transit trains. Instead, the excess tracks can be replaced with wider platforms, which can in turn be converted to dedicated boarding and de-boarding sides to further eliminated train delays.
3. The terminal function will in turn be shifted to a new Port Morris (Bronx) and Secaucus Junction stations, because most other cities feature train terminals farther away from the central core of the city to eliminate congestion where it's least wanted.

There are a many other parts to the plan that I'm not getting into for brevity's sake (such as the conversion of Sunnyside train yards into a park that also hosts the new MSG arena), but you can read about it here:

http://www.rethinkstudio.org/rethinknyc/

Unfortunately that plan is not really thought out too well... Alon Levy and others have written pieces that ask the tough questions and point out the severe flaws with the proposal...which Rethink seems to want to ignore... https://pedestrianobservations.wordp...oo-few-trunks/ Theres nothing wrong with through running , but you need more then one trunk to handle this regions network. Also how are you going to move the Sunnyside yard to the Bronx where an existing busy freight yard is located? The LGA plan will add to the overcrowded Airspace , closing LGA would double the regional airspace capacity... The City released a better Sunnyside yard proposal last year which keeps the trains where they are but decks over them... https://www.nycedc.com/project/sunnyside-yards A Philly SSP mod addresses the pros and cons of the proposal... https://urbanramblesblog.wordpress.c...t-rethink-nyc/ Everytime you ask them tough questions they don't want to give a solid answer , rather play word games... They proposed sending the E train over to Brooklyn through the overcrowded Cranbury tubes , G train to Manhattan , creating an expensive transfer station at the abandoned 59th street metro north station connecting to Subway station , using the Orange line subway as a North - South tunnel alternative in Boston and the bloat in there NJ and Bronx proposal doesn't really address any of the region transit issues... Honestly all they have is nice graphics and a lot of money... As more and more people pick through there plans they fall apart more and more... There are highly detailed tear downs on reddit explaining the issues with their plan , sometimes they respond but it generates more questions then answers.

[Busy Bee]

Originally Posted by BrownTown

You've sort of hit on the biggest problem with New Jersey here; absurd inequality. It's insane not just how much inequality there is between the rich and poor here but also just how close together they sometimes are. I can drive 5 minutes from my apartment one way and be in crime infested slums or drive 5 minutes the other way and be among million dollar houses. It's not just where I live, there are a lot of places like this where the rich and poor are separate by mere miles and yet completed separated in lifestyles.

That would be the whole country, not just New Jersey. This is an American problem.

[electricron]

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

That would be the whole country, not just New Jersey. This is an American problem.

Economics inequality is taking this thread more into political discussions than railroading discussions. To add to this political discussion I wish to correct, there is no economic equality anywhere in the world. That's just not a NY, NJ, or USA problem.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by Crawford

This is wrong. There's a consensus that the small national drop in ridership occurred because of holidays and weekends. It happens every couple of years, when there are extra holidays and weekends, like last year.

First, holidays are highly variable. Obviously a weekday holiday has very different ridership figures. Christmas on a Wed. produces very different ridership profiles than Christmas on a Sun.

Second, not all holidays are legal holidays. You need to include all informally recognized holidays, like Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve, Black Friday and the like.

Third, weekends aren't created equal. Saturdays are very different from Sundays. There was an additional Sunday last year, and it makes a difference.

Fourth the timing of major holidays influences the weekly ridership. If Christmas is mid-week, then that week is going to have more affected dates, because people work/travel according to the timing.

What is your supposition for why transit agencies around the U.S. (and Canada, for that matter) have variable annual ridership patterns based on the distribution of weekends and holidays? Just incredible coincidence?

don't forget nyc metro has more holidays and more variable holidays, like jewish holidays. the days those fall on matter. also, the city added two school holidays last year, eid and chinese new year. these affect local transit ridership greatly as well.