(The following article by Tom Feeney was posted on the Newark Star-Ledger website on December 12.)
NEWARK, N.J. — The multilevel trains that will be a growing presence on NJ Transit’s rails the next two years made an inaugural run yesterday, carrying dozens of riders on the one-hour, 19-minute trip between Trenton and midtown Manhattan.
“Oooooh,” said rider Jen Mulé as she stepped aboard the train at the Hamilton Station and looked around the mezzanine level. “These are so groovy!”
Mulé, who was traveling into the city to shop with her sister and a friend, may have been more effusive in her praise than the other riders, but many shared her enthusiasm.
The cars are clean and bright. The ride is quiet. The aisles are wider than riders are accustomed to in the single-level Comet class cars now most widely used by NJ Transit. The seats are wider and have more leg room.
“These are nice,” said Hamilton resident Roger Henry, as he settled into an upper-level seat. “The seat’s very comfortable. Plenty of room for my legs. No complaints so far.”
The riders were a mix of those like Henry who had made special plans to be there for the first trip and those like Mulé who just happened to find the gleaming new multilevel contraption waiting beside the platform when they arrived to catch a train to New York.
The riders were joined by a bevy of VIPs, including U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, Transportation Commissioner Kris Kolluri and NJ Transit Executive Director George Warrington. U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez was on hand for a ribbon-cutting ceremony before the train left Trenton but did not make the trip to New York.
NJ Transit bought 234 multilevel cars for more than a half billion dollars from Bombardier Transportation, a Canadian company. The cars will enable the transit agency to carry more riders into Manhattan. A set of 10 multilevel cars carries about 200 more passengers than set of 10 single-level cars.
The first nine multilevel cars have been delivered.
The others will begin arriving in February at a rate of seven cars a month. Once 50 cars have been delivered, the production rate will increase, and NJ Transit will receive 10 new cars a month.
The agency expects to have all 234 cars in service by the end of 2008, spokesman Dan Stessel said.
For now, the multilevel cars will make three trips a day on the Northeast Corridor Line — 5:10 and 8:51 a.m. trips from Trenton to New York and a 6:32 a.m. trip from New York to Trenton.
NJ Transit plans to expand the use of multilevels to the North Jersey Coast Line and to the Midtown Direct service on the Morris & Essex and Montclair-Boonton lines.
David Peter Alan, the chairman of a rail advocacy group called the Lacakwanna Coalition, said the true measue will not be taken until the cars have been in service for a while.
“They ride well, and I’m surprised at how much room there is on the top levels,” he said. “But I’m still not convinced these are the right cars for all of NJ Transit’s lines.”
Alan said he thinks riders might not like the fact that half the seats on every car will face backwards. The multilevels do not have “walkover seats” that can be flipped over when the train changes direction. NJ Transit officials said their design team settled on stationary backs because they offered more leg room without sacrificing capacity.