(Newsday.com posted the following Associated Press article by Wayne Parry on September 3.)
SECAUCUS, N.J. — Getting there from here is about to get easier for thousands of NJ Transit passengers.
The long-awaited Secaucus Transfer Station will begin weekend service on Saturday, enabling passengers on 10 of the transit system’s 11 rail lines to switch easily between trains bound for New York and those running on branch routes serving much of New Jersey. Daily service is scheduled to begin in December, after PATH rail service is restored to lower Manhattan.
The transfer station is the centerpiece of a project costing more than $600 million designed to link NJ Transit’s rail lines with each other, as well as to bus service.
“It’s the beauty of for the first time being able to tie in and unify this rail system we inherited 20 years ago,” said Rob Edwards, NJ Transit’s senior program manager. “Everyone can see the benefit of an interchange between the Garden State Parkway and the New Jersey Turnpike. This is rail transit’s interchange.”
The only rail line that doesn’t tie into the station is Atlantic City service, Edwards said.
NJ Transit projects the station will serve 2,700 riders on each weekend day during its first six months of service. For the first six months of weekday service, projections are 7,500 daily riders.
Workers were still putting the finishing touches on the station Wednesday, laying decorative brick along walkways, caulking spaces between marble floor tiles and gleefully testing out the public address system at ear-splitting levels that the railroad expects to be tempered by the bustle of commuters and trains once service starts.
The main concourse is dominated by an illuminated sculpture of three phragmites, the swamp reeds that surround the Meadowlands station. Artwork hanging on walls includes paintings of NJ Transit trains crossing trestles, including the one over the Manasquan River between Point Pleasant Beach and Brielle.
There will be 140 video screens listing train arrivals, departures and track numbers, color-coded by line. There are 28 ticket vending machines, more than 2,000 public address speakers and 200 closed-circuit cameras monitoring the public areas of the station. Officers in a police substation off the concourse will monitor the cameras.
Passengers holding tickets from the line they originally used will slide them into fare gates leading to other lines. A machine will read the magnetic stripe, the ticket will pop back out, and two sliding gates will open to allow passage.
The Federal Transportation Administration contributed the bulk of the construction funding — $448.4 million, Edwards said. The New Jersey Turnpike Authority, Metro North, whose passengers use Port Jervis line service, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and the state of New Jersey contributed the remainder.