(The following story by Joe Malinconico appeared on the Star-Ledger website on July 9.)
NEWARK, N.J. — They did it without fanfare. No speech from the governor. No news conference on the evening news.
When transit officials opened the Secaucus Junction station last year, they quietly imposed a policy unlike anything in effect at any other train station in New Jersey:
They banned gum sales at the convenience store.
After all, somebody somewhere had to take a stand against the scourge of chewing gum. At other stations, the goo mucks up everything from boarding platforms to escalators to train seats.
“It’s unseemly, and it’s unsightly,” NJ Transit Executive Director George Warrington said. “I don’t think we should be facilitating that kind of thing in a station we spent half a billion dollars to build.”
The shop in the atrium at Secaucus still sells plenty of messy stuff to eat — Krispy Kreme doughnuts dripping with jelly or cream, four varieties of Chex Mix snacks and even Beefaroni by Chef Boyardee.
But none of those treats produces the maintenance nightmares that come from gum.
The old-fashioned tactic of scraping gum away with putty knives takes too long, officials said. They prefer to use a steam-powered cleaner that sprays at pressures of up to 3,000 pounds per square inch and have been testing the benefits of a $90,000 “super- powered platform washer/gum buster” that shoots out steam at 10,000 pounds per square inch.
“The gum is a nuisance for our maintenance crews,” NJ Transit spokeswoman Penny Bassett Hackett said. “They could be spending more time cleaning our equipment if they didn’t have to clean up the gum.”
The policy at Secaucus Junction is just the first step toward a systemwide ban on gum sales, officials said.
For example, when the leases for the vendors at Newark Penn Station expire at the end of the year, the restriction will be incorporated in those contracts and added to those at other bus and train stations as they come up for renewal.
This is not going to be an all-out crackdown. There are no plans for gum-sniffing dogs or for police officers equipped with tongue-depressors to check commuters for contraband.
The agency is banning gum sales, not gum itself. Commuters have pockets, purses, mouths. There are plenty of legitimate ways for folks to bring gum onto the trains and into the stations.
That much was obvious during a recent afternoon at Secaucus Junction. One commuter sitting on a bench in the atrium turned to another and offered him a stick of gum. Others chewed gum on their way to catch trains. None of them realized there was a ban on gum sales at the station’s store.
“That’s silly,” said Raymond Melnick, a Port Jervis Line commuter who was on the receiving end of the atrium gum exchange.
“People are going to bring their own gum anyway,” said John Hetlyn, who had just supplied Melnick with a piece to chew on.
“These are respectable commuters here, they’re not children,” Melnick said. “I would hope they would dispose of their gum in the garbage.”
A quick inspection of Secaucus Junction seemed to indicate that not everyone manages to get the gum inside the trash cans. The floors of the main atrium were shiny and gum-free, but on the boarding platforms there were a few wads of dark, hardened stuff.
Warrington said he modeled NJ Transit’s ban on gum sales after a policy in effect at Disney World in Florida. Orlando International Airport also prohibits gum sales.
Some places have relented on the gum issue. For example, in 1996, Tampa International Airport lifted a ban on gum sales in its carpeted terminals that had been in effect since it opened in 1971.
“The cleaning solvents available today are much stronger than what was available in the past,” said Christine Osborn, spokeswoman for the Tampa airport. “It’s something patrons wanted and they wanted for a long time. They frequently asked for it.”
At Secaucus Junction, employees at the convenience store say they get about 20 or 30 requests a day for gum from customers. In the course of two hours on one recent day, the only customers looking for gum were tourists from Michigan.
“No gum? What’s up with that?” Ben Mills asked.
“We’ll go buy our gum elsewhere,” Karen Mills said.