(The following article by Joe Malinconico was posted on the Newark Star-Ledger website on November 8.)
NEWARK, N.J. — NJ Transit’s efforts to improve the Raritan Valley Line’s connections to New York-bound trains have fallen behind schedule once again.
The railroad had planned to complete track work that would allow Raritan Valley commuters to switch trains on the same platform at Newark Penn Station by March 2007.
But the project had to be revised, and now the work won’t be done until the summer of 2008. In the meantime, Raritan Valley riders will have to continue making the mad dash at Penn Station to catch their connecting trains.
“We’ve waited this long, what’s another 15 months?” said Maggie McNelis. “Raritan Valley Line commuters have learned not to expect much. I think you’ll also find that we’re more cynical than the average Northeast Corridor or North Jersey Coast Line commuter.”
“Why doesn’t NJ Transit consider a reduction in ticket prices for all the inconvenience Raritan Valley Line riders have put up with over the years?” asked another commuter, David Slegowski.
The good news is that the revised project will cost $15 million, compared with $27 million for the previous version.
The Raritan Valley Line, which mainly runs through Union, Somerset and Hunterdon counties, handles about 19,500 passenger trips a day, or the equivalent of about 10,000 commuters. The line ends at Newark, so folks heading into Manhattan have to switch trains.
The connecting trains are often on different platforms, forcing commuters to hustle down one flight of stairs, through the station and back up another stairway to make the connection.
Sometimes, that goes fairly smoothly. Sometimes, commuters complain, they miss the connecting train and have to wait for the next one.
Officials say there is too much traffic through Newark Penn Station, part of the busiest stretch of passenger railroad in the country, to direct all Raritan Valley trains to the same platforms where the connecting trains to New York would stop.
Eventually, transit officials plan to provide a one-seat ride into New York, but that won’t happen until after a new passenger rail tunnel gets built under the Hudson River. That project isn’t scheduled for completion until 2015.
“After the single-seat ride, the number one priority for Raritan Valley riders is the same-platform transfer,” said Peter Palmer, a Somerset County freeholder and chairman of the Raritan Valley Line Coalition. “Obviously, they (commuters) want this done tomorrow, if not yesterday. It’s unfortunate there has to be a delay, but the main thing is that it gets done.”
Railroad officials have been promising to improve connections for Raritan Valley riders since 2001. The main problem has been providing some place where Raritan Valley trains could turn around during the morning rush hour to head back out west without delaying other trains.
Last year, NJ Transit was working on a project with Amtrak, which owns the rails, to build a “pocket track” in Harrison, just beyond Newark Penn Station, where Raritan Valley trains would go to turn around.
But officials determined construction of the pocket track would have jammed rail traffic in the area while the work was going on. So they came up with another plan. Now they intend to use a rail yard in Harrison as the turnaround point for Raritan Valley trains, a project that will entail much less work.
But work has been slow to start at the Harrison rail yard because Amtrak crews have been busy with other projects.
In the meantime, officials said, NJ Transit and Amtrak have managed to juggle the flow of traffic at Newark Penn Station so that four of the 13 morning rush-hour trains on the Raritan Valley Line stop at the same platform as connecting New York-bound trains.
Almost all off-peak and weekend Raritan Valley trains also have same-platform connections, NJ Transit spokeswoman Penny Bassett Hackett said.