Bureaucrats Want to Wreck My Town

I live in Northern New Jersey and unlike other areas, there is no commuter train service going into the city, so most commuters go by bus. Although it sounds like a suboptimal system, it actually works pretty well. We have a bus coming every 5-10 minutes during peak rush times, picks me up from a corner about two minutes walk from my house and drops me off at Port Authority on 42nd street. The bus section of the commute is a total of 40 minutes. Not bad at all.

Well the bureaucrats at New Jersey Transit don't think it's good enough and feel that we NEED to have a rail service in my town, even one that would be inferior to the already existing bus service. They even sent a couple of representatives to my town last night, while I was babysitting the kids my wife went. There are quite a few problems with their plan. First, the rail service won't actually take you to New York, it would take you to Hoboken and then you have to take a PATH train to New York. As anyone who has ever had to change trains or had to make a connecting flight knows, non-direct service can lead to extensive delays. Second, instead of taking 40 minutes, as it down on the bus, the rail would actually take 40 minutes just to get to Hoboken. Third, they seem to completely not care about what happens to the community as a result of the rail. Our rail line pretty much bisects both the town and major roadways. So given that we would have a new train coming every 6 minutes, that means congestion will actually be increased for our town as people will not be able to cross to the other side of town as a train approaches. Our Chief of Police even sent them a letter about this, a letter they completely ignored for the last 2 months or so. Also, they will be demolishing people's homes for the sake of putting in parking lots for the train station. That's just what a leafy green suburb needs, large parking lots! Another issue for the town is that there are currently two freight trains that use the rail, so they would have to be rescheduled for the middle of the night, increasing the chances people will be woken up by train traffic. Fourth, the amount of money they are thinking about spending on this project for very little gain is unbelievable. They said they estimate that 800 people would use this extension of the North Branch. They also estimate the cost of this extension to be $160 million. Do the math, that is about $200,000 per rider. And finally, there were a good number of questions that the bureaucrats had no idea about answering so I am thinking they haven't thought a lot through. This whole project is a complete boondoggle and I am hoping it never gets off the ground.

On the plus side, there does appear to be some monkeys in the wrench that are keeping this project from progressing. Check out this update from the website for the project:

In December 2008, Colorado Rail Car, the manufacturer of the DMU vehicle proposed for this project, declared bankruptcy. NJ TRANSIT contacted other rail vehicle manufacturers regarding the development of an FRA-compliant DMU vehicle and only one expressed an interest. That manufacturer advised NJ TRANSIT they are several years away from production with an unproven design, thereby delaying the implementation of the DMU Alternatives.

In an effort to fully explore the possibility of DMU use, NJ TRANSIT also evaluated the viability of retrofitting older DMU cars for use on the Northern Branch. This option was determined to be viable only for a small number of vehicles and not for the vehicle fleet size required for the proposed Northern Branch service.

The lack of a modern or economically retro-fitted FRA-compliant DMU significantly impacts its consideration as a viable alternative for timely implementation on the Northern Branch.

Let's hope such delays continue.