(The following article by Ken Belson was posted on the New York Times website on December 11.)
TRENTON, N.J. — The foamers, as they call themselves, were out in force. Dozens of these hard-core railroad buffs reputed to salivate at the sight of trains — new, old or rare — made the trip here to the state capital to ogle New Jersey Transit’s first multilevel cars before their inaugural run.
Well before the noontime whistle blew, sending train No. 3844 on its 87-minute run to New York’s Pennsylvania Station, they packed Platform 2 here, rubbing shoulders with New Jersey’s two United States senators, train company dignitaries and the big shots from Bombardier, the company building the 234 cars to be delivered by the end of 2008.
“That was a nice little treat,” said Alfred Gaus Jr. of Philadelphia after snapping pictures of a two-locomotive train that steamed past on a nearby track.
Then the main event rolled in: six gleaming silver cars standing 14 and a half feet tall. Though only a foot higher than the current single-level Comet V cars now in use, the new ones have 15 to 20 percent more seating on lower, upper and mezzanine decks. They cost $1.9 million each. The extra space should help New Jersey Transit accommodate the more than 74,000 riders who make the round trip every day.
As soon as the new cars rumbled forward, the comments began. Most riders liked the bigger windows and brighter lights, saying they gave the trains a cheerier feel. Gone were the drab colors that made the Comets look like “an insane asylum,” said Robert Sullivan, one of the 14 riders who advised New Jersey Transit on the design of the new trains.
The electric doors at the ends of the cars kept the noise and cold air out, and the bathrooms are as roomy as some New York apartments. Most of all, riders rejoiced in the absence of what Kris Kolluri, the chairman of New Jersey Transit’s board, called the “dreaded middle seat,” the bane of every commuter reluctant to sit between fellow passengers and their bags, coats and coffee.
Instead, the new trains have parallel two-seat benches punctuated by occasional four-seat configurations. The seats have an inch more leg room than the older cars, though you could not tell looking at Bill Hackett, a business consultant from Princeton trying to cross his legs even with an empty seat beside him.
“We’ll see what it looks like at 6 p.m.,” Mr. Hackett said.
The multilevel trains will run primarily on the Northeast Corridor, the system’s busiest line, and will be added sometime next year to the North Jersey Coast Line and Midtown Direct, which also run into Manhattan.
The Long Island Rail Road has used similar double-decker cars since 1998 on the Oyster Bay, Port Jefferson and Montauk branches. But New Jersey Transit’s crowding problems are more acute; the single tunnel under the Hudson River that it shares with Amtrak already handles the maximum 23 trains an hour. (A planned second tunnel will not open until 2016 at the earliest.) So with ridership growing about 4 percent a year, something had to be done. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey paid $250 million for the first 103 cars, with the federal government financing the rest.
“It’s such a desperate situation in so many places, this new train is a positive step,” said Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, who rode the train to Newark but passed up the chance to stop at the station named for him in Secaucus.
The train made it into New York two minutes early, giving the foamers and the famous something else to crow about.
“It almost makes me want to be a commuter again,” said Michael Bloom, who rode to New York for eight years before deciding to work at home about two years ago.