(Newsday.com posted the following article on May 5.)
TRENTON, N.J. — The nearly finished southern New Jersey light-rail system will charge the lowest fares among the region’s rail lines as NJ Transit tries to lure riders.
A passenger taking the Southern New Jersey Light Rail Transit System from Trenton to Camden will pay $1.10 for a one-way ticket.
Riding an NJ Transit bus between the two cities costs $3.20.
One-way adult fares on NJ Transit’s Hudson-Bergen light-rail system and PATH trains between Newark and New York City are $1.50. Tickets for PATCO, which runs between Lindenwold and Philadelphia, start at $1.15. SEPTA rail tickets between Philadelphia and Trenton start at $3.
Ridership projections have dropped during the three years the South Jersey light-rail system has been under construction, with state officials now expecting about 6,000 riders per day. They have considered several ways to entice more people to ride.
“This is the one we thought was a good way to get people into the system,” Joyce Gallagher, an NJ Transit assistant general manager, told The Times of Trenton.
NJ Transit also will offer discounted transfers. Gallagher said people can pay $41 for a monthly pass and $18 for a monthly transfer to a bus for a one-zone trip.
That means a rider could take the light rail from Trenton to Camden, then catch a bus to Philadelphia for $59 a month. The same trip by bus would cost $160, Gallagher said.
The rates are considered introductory, but NJ Transit has not set a date for raising them.
“We’ll evaluate it as we go in terms of how ridership builds,” Gallagher said.
Ground was broken on the 34-mile light-rail system in May 2000. State officials originally expected to finish it by last year, but they now estimate it will be done this fall.
The cost, once projected at $603 million, has grown to $813 million. Once financing costs and additional expenses sought by the contractor are added, the cost is expected to exceed $1 billion.
Last year, state transportation officials said the light rail will cost $73 million annually and never would have been approved by Gov. James E. McGreevey’s administration. The light rail’s supporters contend it is an economic development engine.
The Courier-Post of Cherry Hill has reported that the $1.1 million in fares the light rail system is expected to generate in its first year might not even cover the cost of collecting them.
That would make it the nation’s poorest-performing rail route, a distinction now shared by routes in Dallas and Galveston, Texas, according to figures provided by the Federal Transit Administration.