4 ms·

I ride into NYC 3x/wk via Penn Station. I realize ETANY is not affiliated with NJTransit, but I dont see how a system with the level of incompetence that NJTran

I ride into NYC 3x/wk via Penn Station. I realize ETANY is not affiliated with NJTransit, but I dont see how a system with the level of incompetence that NJTransit has could possibly handle more complexity. NJ Transit can barely seem to handle service w/o Through-Running, so any discussion of expanding service seems premature. Here are some highlights: - Inability to tell consumers ahead of time that trains will be stopped (even though they know well in advance.) Now, entire private WhatsApp groups have been set up where commuters warn each other of stopped trains and clogged stations. This leads to people coming to Penn Station only to find out trains are not running/cancelled/delayed. This is with a hub/spoke -- imagine if they expand beyond Penn Station into CT/LI. - Inability/Unwillingness to communicate sources of blockages. There are ways to bypass NYPenn/Secaucus and go directly to Newark (PATH train). But NJTransit wont tell you where the blockage is, so its impossible to work around delays - Inability/Unwillingness to communicate which trains will depart first, when multiple trains are backed up and queued up. People guess and hope they choose the "next" train. - Regularly cancelled trains, esp after 7pm. They randomly cancel scheduled trains. No point in a schedule if you wont follow the schedule. I'd want to contain the chaos of NJTransit to NYPenn Station and not beyond. At most, a 2nd stop at GC (like with LIRR did). The system isnt currently mature enough to be granted more responsibility. Mind you -- this would be valuable. Folks who move to NJ necessarily cut themselves off CT jobs (esp hedge funds, etc.) So of course, having thru traffic from NJ all the way to CT would open up huge pools of job applicants and job opportunities.

Projectiboga 2y ago
These arguements are also good to suggest they should not get the planned expansion of terminus tracks.
Ericson2314 2y ago
> I realize ETANY is not affiliated with NJTransit We are equally unaffiliated with all the railroads and transit agencies :) We do have membership in NJ are very much as in the transit going-ons through the tri-state area. A big unifying idea is that the economic geography doesn't care about political boundaries, and so the transportation planning shouldn't either. ------ > NJ Transit can barely seem to handle service w/o Through-Running, so any discussion of expanding service seems premature. Here are some highlights: You do raise a good point that through-running does require some amount of competence --- simply have a more interconnected rail network (revenue service on both sides) inherently means there is more potential for failures to propagate throughout the network. But, we'd like to believe this is surmountable. ------ 1. First of all, NJT and the MTA have done it before! See "train to the game". See: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Haven_Line#Meadowlands_game_day_servic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Haven_Line#Meadowlands_gam... - https://www.njtransit.com/press-releases/take-train-game-metlife-stadium https://www.njtransit.com/press-releases/take-train-game-met... Of course, running some special event service is not the same as doing through running day-in and day-out, but it is something to build on. ------ 2. What's the alternative? - If there is no new expansion and no through-running, than the billions spent on Gateway way be rather wasted. That would be a huge embarrassment to the agencies, and politicians that stuck their neck out for the funding, alike. - If Penn Expansion is not pursued for bullshit reasons, but the kayfabe is dropped and its done for the honest reason that no one believes agency competency can be improved, that is also embarrassing. Would the station actually be funded at that point? We therefore think even just changing the conversation to acknowledge that ops competency, and not station geometry, is the binding constraint, would be a major improvement. ------ 3. We have time In line with the above counter-factuals, the rubber only hits the road (excuse me, steel hits the tracks :)) once Gateway is done. For better or worse, that is a long way off. This gives the agencies time to get ready. - The money that would be been spent on station improvements can be spent on NJT "tech debt" instead --- all the behind the scenes infra that enables higher reliability. - Congestion pricing should be raised, and hopefully the next crop of NJ politicians will be more open-minded and accept some money for NJT. - Penn Station Access sending Metro North trains to Penn station makes for a good opportunity to "train" the agencies through-running, prior to Gateway being finished. And don't forget "train to the game". ------ > Mind you -- this would be valuable. Folks who move to NJ necessarily cut themselves off CT jobs (esp hedge funds, etc.) So of course, having thru traffic from NJ all the way to CT would open up huge pools of job applicants and job opportunities. Yes, it is a huge opportunity! Our main report (https://www.etany.org/modernizing-new-york-commuter-rail https://www.etany.org/modernizing-new-york-commuter-rail) talked quite a lot about that. I wish our politicians were less provincial about state boundaries, and better able to visualize just how impactful expanding commute sheds is. ------ A final disclaimer: I am far less knowledgable on train things than the other ETA members, so take this all with a bit more grain of salt.
kkysen 2y ago
NJT is indeed quite awful with OTP (83%[^1]), train cancellations[^2], reliability[^3], and transparency. However, through-running is also an opportunity for this to improve because, while bad in many ways as well, the MTA is well a class above NJT. The MTA publishes live GTFS-RT feeds of all of its trains, NYCT, LIRR, and MNRR. There is also https://radar.mta.info/ https://radar.mta.info/, which shows a map of the entire MTA's commuter railroads' network with every single train, including both MTA passenger trains, Amtrak trains, out of service trains, and work trains. It shows their location, their current speed, their train number, their car length, how late they are, their past and future predicted schedule adherence, and how many people are in each car on the train. The MTA's TrainTime app, which shows much of this information, too, is also leagues better than the NJT app. So while through-running and integration is an opportunity for NJT to degrade the MTA, it is also a massive opportunity for NJT to improve, especially with regards to data and transparency, which is less of a physical issue. For example, Amtrak's transparency is a lot worse than the MTA's, too, and yet they show up on radar.mta.info all the same, albeit with a bit less info (like passenger counts per car, as their cars don't have automatic passenger counters). [^1]: The MTA's OTP for LIRR and MNRR are a lot higher (98.5% for MNRR, 95.65% for LIRR). However, these are based on heavily padded timetables, padded by as much as 50% on the New Haven Line (a GCT-Stamford express, Stamford-New Haven local takes about 2:00 today, but could do it in about 1:20 with normal 7% padding and no artificial (non-geometric) speed limits: https://pedestrianobservations.com/2024/02/19/new-york-new-haven-trains-in-an-hour/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/2024/02/19/new-york-new-h...). So they essentially add in expected extreme delays so that they never appear late. However, NJT does this, too, and still has much worse OTP. [^2]: https://www.curbed.com/article/nj-transit-commuter-train-service-breakdowns-summer-murphy.html https://www.curbed.com/article/nj-transit-commuter-train-ser... (https://archive.is/smk68 https://archive.is/smk68) [^3]: Besides the NEC catenary, which Amtrak owns and is in an awful century-old state, NJT trains themselves have terrible mean distance between failures (MDBF), averaging about 49k miles (https://www.njtransit.com/improve/on-time-performance/rail#:~:text=Mean%20Distance%20Between,Jan%2021 https://www.njtransit.com/improve/on-time-performance/rail#:...) compared to about 800k miles for Metro-North's M8s, 16x worse.

Projectiboga 2y ago

These arguements are also good to suggest they should not get the planned expansion of terminus tracks.

Ericson2314 2y ago

> I realize ETANY is not affiliated with NJTransit We are equally unaffiliated with all the railroads and transit agencies :) We do have membership in NJ are very much as in the transit going-ons through the tri-state area. A big unifying idea is that the economic geography doesn't care about political boundaries, and so the transportation planning shouldn't either. ------ > NJ Transit can barely seem to handle service w/o Through-Running, so any discussion of expanding service seems premature. Here are some highlights: You do raise a good point that through-running does require some amount of competence --- simply have a more interconnected rail network (revenue service on both sides) inherently means there is more potential for failures to propagate throughout the network. But, we'd like to believe this is surmountable. ------ 1. First of all, NJT and the MTA have done it before! See "train to the game". See: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Haven_Line#Meadowlands_game_day_servic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Haven_Line#Meadowlands_gam... - https://www.njtransit.com/press-releases/take-train-game-metlife-stadium https://www.njtransit.com/press-releases/take-train-game-met... Of course, running some special event service is not the same as doing through running day-in and day-out, but it is something to build on. ------ 2. What's the alternative? - If there is no new expansion and no through-running, than the billions spent on Gateway way be rather wasted. That would be a huge embarrassment to the agencies, and politicians that stuck their neck out for the funding, alike. - If Penn Expansion is not pursued for bullshit reasons, but the kayfabe is dropped and its done for the honest reason that no one believes agency competency can be improved, that is also embarrassing. Would the station actually be funded at that point? We therefore think even just changing the conversation to acknowledge that ops competency, and not station geometry, is the binding constraint, would be a major improvement. ------ 3. We have time In line with the above counter-factuals, the rubber only hits the road (excuse me, steel hits the tracks :)) once Gateway is done. For better or worse, that is a long way off. This gives the agencies time to get ready. - The money that would be been spent on station improvements can be spent on NJT "tech debt" instead --- all the behind the scenes infra that enables higher reliability. - Congestion pricing should be raised, and hopefully the next crop of NJ politicians will be more open-minded and accept some money for NJT. - Penn Station Access sending Metro North trains to Penn station makes for a good opportunity to "train" the agencies through-running, prior to Gateway being finished. And don't forget "train to the game". ------ > Mind you -- this would be valuable. Folks who move to NJ necessarily cut themselves off CT jobs (esp hedge funds, etc.) So of course, having thru traffic from NJ all the way to CT would open up huge pools of job applicants and job opportunities. Yes, it is a huge opportunity! Our main report (https://www.etany.org/modernizing-new-york-commuter-rail https://www.etany.org/modernizing-new-york-commuter-rail) talked quite a lot about that. I wish our politicians were less provincial about state boundaries, and better able to visualize just how impactful expanding commute sheds is. ------ A final disclaimer: I am far less knowledgable on train things than the other ETA members, so take this all with a bit more grain of salt.

kkysen 2y ago

NJT is indeed quite awful with OTP (83%[^1]), train cancellations[^2], reliability[^3], and transparency. However, through-running is also an opportunity for this to improve because, while bad in many ways as well, the MTA is well a class above NJT. The MTA publishes live GTFS-RT feeds of all of its trains, NYCT, LIRR, and MNRR. There is also https://radar.mta.info/ https://radar.mta.info/, which shows a map of the entire MTA's commuter railroads' network with every single train, including both MTA passenger trains, Amtrak trains, out of service trains, and work trains. It shows their location, their current speed, their train number, their car length, how late they are, their past and future predicted schedule adherence, and how many people are in each car on the train. The MTA's TrainTime app, which shows much of this information, too, is also leagues better than the NJT app. So while through-running and integration is an opportunity for NJT to degrade the MTA, it is also a massive opportunity for NJT to improve, especially with regards to data and transparency, which is less of a physical issue. For example, Amtrak's transparency is a lot worse than the MTA's, too, and yet they show up on radar.mta.info all the same, albeit with a bit less info (like passenger counts per car, as their cars don't have automatic passenger counters). [^1]: The MTA's OTP for LIRR and MNRR are a lot higher (98.5% for MNRR, 95.65% for LIRR). However, these are based on heavily padded timetables, padded by as much as 50% on the New Haven Line (a GCT-Stamford express, Stamford-New Haven local takes about 2:00 today, but could do it in about 1:20 with normal 7% padding and no artificial (non-geometric) speed limits: https://pedestrianobservations.com/2024/02/19/new-york-new-haven-trains-in-an-hour/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/2024/02/19/new-york-new-h...). So they essentially add in expected extreme delays so that they never appear late. However, NJT does this, too, and still has much worse OTP. [^2]: https://www.curbed.com/article/nj-transit-commuter-train-service-breakdowns-summer-murphy.html https://www.curbed.com/article/nj-transit-commuter-train-ser... (https://archive.is/smk68 https://archive.is/smk68) [^3]: Besides the NEC catenary, which Amtrak owns and is in an awful century-old state, NJT trains themselves have terrible mean distance between failures (MDBF), averaging about 49k miles (https://www.njtransit.com/improve/on-time-performance/rail#:~:text=Mean%20Distance%20Between,Jan%2021 https://www.njtransit.com/improve/on-time-performance/rail#:...) compared to about 800k miles for Metro-North's M8s, 16x worse.