The new New Jersey Transit rail diagram brings a retro look to the Garden State. (Click to enlarge)

Geography or schematic? That is the question. In a new map showing the state’s commuter rail network, New Jersey Transit has gone with the latter. The new diagram, unveiled yesterday, is supposed to be “customer-friendly” with “more open design and new color scheme for easy customer reference,” the agency said.

“The new design is intended to be simple, familiar and inviting, not only for our regular customers, but also for those residents and visitors who have never before traveled on the State’s rail network,” NJ Transit Executive Director James Weinstein said. “We hope that customers will find the new map to be a valuable tool in their travels on our system.”

The map, designed in house, marks a move from the previous version which featured the train system in a purely geographic setting. Through color-coding and a streamlined design, the map now better highglights transfer points and routing. It also features the “completion of Hudson-Bergen Light Rail 8th Street Station, accessibility improvements at Somerville, Ridgewood and Plauderville stations, and the addition of the future Pennsauken Transit Center.”

Still, despite the upgrades, there’s no small bit of state-based protectionism involved. While the PATH system gets its day in the sun and the Port Jervis line branches into New York, New Jersey Transit pays scant attention to SEPTA’s connection from Trenton to Philadelphia and beyond. Transit networks are regional, but this map doesn’t extend far beyond the borders of the Garden State.

While I like the simplicity of the design and the idea behind it, it certainly has its flaws. Over at the Transit Maps tumblr, Cameron Booth is not a fan. Calling the map “sad, tired and amateur,” Booth finds it an unwieldy amalgam of styles: “It seems to have taken elements from many different transit maps and mashes them into one big mess. We have the thick route lines and giant circle transfer stations of Washington, DC Metro, icons for the lines similar to – but nowhere nearly as well executed – the Lisbon Metro, and different station symbols for each and every mode of transit.”

Form vs. function. Design vs. geography. The rail map battle always rages on.

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While satisfaction with the rail offerings declined, customers ranked buses higher this year than last, and the light rail has been particularly well received with 85 percent saying they would recommend it. For their part, NJ Transit officials said they would use these results to improve. “The customer satisfaction survey results are driving NJ Transit’s understanding of what really matters to customers, enabling us to better respond to their needs and demands,” Executive Director James Weinstein said. “While these results show that overall we’re moving in the right direction, we need to continue to work to make meaningful changes and improvements that increase customer satisfaction.”

It’s notable that the commuter rail network suffered the most with regards to service disruptions. Without an alternate route into Manhattan, NJ Transit will always be at the whim of trains entering through the lone rail access point. Until a second tunnel is constructed — and who knows when that will be — customers will have to wait out those delays.

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Meanwhile, across the river, New Jersey Transit said it would restore “most” service by Tuesday morning. As the Wall Street Journal summarized, the authority still expects “delays and cancellations,” but Northeast Corridor trains will run to and from New Brunswick. Trains will leave from New York once an hour and run into the city every 20 minutes. Montclair-Boonton line will go only as far as Little Falls while the Port Jervis line could remain shut for a while.

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Mike Frassinelli of The Star-Ledger reports:

In the not-too-distant future, a commuter going from Newark to Hamilton might board a Minute Maid express train and take it to Sprite Platform at Coca-Cola Transit Center. Such an itinerary could result from NJ Transit’s intention to sell advertising rights to its stations, terminal facilities and locomotives.

This planned sale of naming and product-advertising rights has set off a frenzy among companies trying to pay NJ Transit tens of millions of dollars to broker the potentially lucrative sales. It also has led to a formal protest from one bidder, who contends the transit agency would leave almost $12 million on the table by renewing with the advertising company that now holds the contract.

Craig Heard, president and CEO of Gateway Outdoor Advertising in Hackettstown, said NJ Transit did not allow his company into the final round of bidding even though Gateway’s $65 million offer of guaranteed revenue was nearly 20 percent more than the $53.3 million guaranteed by the current contractor, the Titan Outdoor advertising agency.

Over the past few years, I’ve followed transit naming rights deals closely, and I’ve come to the conclusion that they are mostly smoke and mirrors. Transit authorities speak glowingly of them as potential revenue sources while advertisers sound excited for a few months. When the bidding process begins though, dollars at all but the most trafficked of stations fall far short of expectations.

In New Jersey, I can see a few things happening: First, the deal to sell ad space on the outside of trains will be far more popular and lucrative than the station naming rights deals. Perhaps NJ Transit can realize some dollars for Newark Penn Station or Trenton, but beyond that, it won’t sell many station names. Second, New Jersey Transit is sacrificing some dollars by putting its eggs in the Titan basket. This company, after all, was recently dumped by the MTA for failure to make payments.

Anyway, with money short, New Jersey Transit seems to be joining a long list of transit authorities who think they can strike gold when all they’ve found is nothing.

©2012 Second Ave. Sagas. All Rights Reserved.

More one-seat rides means a more crowded tunnel.

In addition to increased cross-Hudson capacity, one of the primary benefits New Jersey commuters would have derived from the ARC Tunnel concerned travel speeds. As New Jersey Transit, its equipment and its lone Hudson river crossing are configured, riders along the Raritan Valley and North Jersey Coast Lines do not enjoy one-seat rides into New York City. Through a combination of equipment upgrades and capacity increases, commute times would have dropped and property values would have increased.

With ARC off the table and its replacement years or even decades away, New Jersey Transit officials are trying to deliver on that one-seat promise without a new tunnel. Earlier this week, NJ Transit Executive Director James Weinstein pledged that he would work to make the one-seat ride a reality along the Raritan Valley and North Jersey Coast Lines. Larry Higgs from the Asbury Park Press offers up a little bit more:

In both cases, NJ Transit officials will go forward with equipment purchases that were part of the Access to the Region’s Core (ARC) tunnel project, canceled by Gov. Chris Christie in October over concerns about cost overruns the state would have had to absorb. “One of the issues is acquisition of more bilevels,” Weinstein said. “There are 100 on order and we’ll go forward with that.”

The first of 36 dual-mode electric and diesel-powered locomotives, which will be essential to providing one-seat ride service on rail lines now served by diesel locomotives, is scheduled to be delivered to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s testing facility in Colorado, Weinstein said.

“I don’t think anything precludes a one-seat ride,” he said. “We’re going forward with the dual-mode locomotives. There are issues we have to work out at some point to provide a one-seat ride.”

Beyond Higgs’ story, news reports don’t add much to this revelation, and I’m curious as to where it will go from here. The main problem is that the Hudson River tunnels cannot handle increased traffic, and if New Jersey Transit is promising new one-seat rides along certain routes, it will likely have to take away some river crossings from other routes. That’s not going to be too popular among commuters.

Meanwhile, an alternative to Amtrak’s Gateway alternative is making the rounds. As Higgs also reported earlier this week, New Jersey rail advocates have proposed yet another plan to build a tunnel. He reports:

The plan, outlined by Joseph Clift, a member of the Regional Rail Working Group and a past Long Island Railroad planning director, would put off building some of the more potentially expensive parts of the Gateway project to a second phase. As a first phase, the group proposed building a new two-tube tunnel, a new bridge next to the existing Portal Bridge and a second set of tracks on the Northeast Corridor line from Kearny to the Hudson River to relieve bottlenecks.

Gateway’s plans to build a “Penn Station South,” consisting of seven tracks and four platforms under Manhattan’s 31st Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues, would be deferred to a second phase under the group’s plan. That phase would include Gateway’s proposal to construct two new sets of tracks between the Passaic River and west of Secaucus Junction, a second set of platforms at that station and some new bridges.

“It is a much more accomplishable project,” Clift said. “You would have a project that is more affordable (to start) because all the Manhattan property cost (for Penn Station South) goes away.”

Funding would come from a variety of sources. New Jersey would reapply for the $3 billion in federal funds it sacrificed when Gov. Chris Christie canceled ARC while the Port Authority would contribute its billions as well. New Jersey and Amtrak would contribute money as well.

With all this talk though of replacement plans and one-seat rides, I have to wonder if too many cooks are stirring the cross-Hudson soup. New York is working on formulating a plan for the 7 line extension with New Jersey while Amtrak is requesting $50 million to start planning on NEPA work on their Gateway Tunnel. This third proposal throws yet another variable in the mix and could garner support from state officials in New Jersey. At some point, the region will need a concerted, unified and funded effort if cross-Hudson rail expansion is to be realized any time soon.

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Noting that New Jersey Transit considers trains late if they arrive at least six minutes after the scheduled time, Frassinelli offered up the gory details: “Trains were late six or more minutes 8.8 percent of the time last month, the worst showing since January 2005, when the number was 11.1 percent. Last year, only 4.1 percent of trains were tardy for the same month.” To make matters worse, nearly 25 percent of all peak-hour Northeast Corridor trains were delayed.

New Jersey Transit officials were quick to point fingers at the weather. “January’s on-time performance is what you’d expect in a month of extreme weather,” Dan Stessel, agency spokesman said. “We played the hand we were dealt as best as we could. We believe the system performed better in January than similar extreme-weather months in past years.” That said, I can’t help but think that a new cross-Hudson tunnel built for the benefit of New Jersey Transit would go a long way toward alleviating these constant delays. As the trains grow more crowded, after all, it’s only going to get worse.

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“The use of smart bus technology will enable NJ TRANSIT Bus Operations to improve the quality and reliability of service while reducing operating costs,” Transportation Commissioner and NJ TRANSIT Board Chairman James Simpson said in a statement. “This technology will act as the central nervous system for New Jersey’s buses, transmitting critical data pertaining to ridership, vehicle condition, bus location and more, which will allow for greater efficiency in terms of scheduling, planning and maintenance.”

In announcing the deal, New Jersey Transit played up the total package of upgrades that Clever Devices will supply. These include “automatic bus stop announcements, vehicle condition monitoring, passenger counting, and real-time location reporting.” As the agency noted, these upgrades will allow it to provide real-time bus location and arrival information for “any web-enabled device.” Customers will now know how much longer they must wait for their delayed buses. The agency’s new order of 1145 buses is already equipped with this technology.

“By equipping the entire NJ TRANSIT bus fleet with smart bus technology, we are laying the foundation for providing real-time bus service information to our customers,” NJ Transit Executive Director James Weinstein said. “Smart bus technology will drive improvements like ‘Next Bus’ signage at key locations and new customer information tools on the web, such as maps that display graphic representations of buses as they move across the system.”

The timing of this announcement — just over a week after the MTA unveiled its in-house real-time bus-tracking solution along the B63 — allows us to make an apt comparison between the two agencies’ approaches to real-time information. From the get-go, it’s easy to see why the MTA went in-house with their plan. To outfit 1040 buses, Clever Devices is charging over $21,000 a bus while the MTA’s pilot — 30 buses at a total of $265,000 — costs around $8000 per bus. As the MTA’s bus fleet numbers in excess of 6000, the costs associated with Clever Devices — estimated by the authority at $140 million at one point — would have been substantial, and retrofitting an aging fleet for the Clever Devices array was cost-prohibitive.

Yet, as the New Jersey Transit deal shows, there is a certain allure about Clever Devices. The computerized bus system isn’t only about real-time tracking. It also provides for internal systems diagnostics and an array of other upgrades. Since New Jersey Transit’s newer buses come equipped with the technology, it made sense for the agency, flush with money that should have gone to ARC, to spend for the best of the best.

Of course, as with any technology, if Clever Devices doesn’t outlive its system’s shelf life or if the company decides to hold its contracting partners fiscally hostage, the agency could be stuck with a steep deal. The MTA, for instance, has learned about the high costs of maintaining a proprietary system throughout the lifespan of the MetroCard, and it has determined that open systems with open-source development components are both cheaper in the long term and better for customers and private developers.

Still, despite these concerns, BusTime will arrive across the river, and the 800,000 people who use New Jersey Transit buses on a daily basis will stand to benefit. Real-time tracking, it’s the way of yesteryear finally arriving in the northeast.

©2012 Second Ave. Sagas. All Rights Reserved.

The Hudson-Bergen Light rail in action. (Photo via flickr user wallyg)

Think of this story as the natural accumulation of this week. On Monday, I tackled the upcoming changes to the Bayonne Bridge, and last night, I discussed the need for more light rail within the city limits of New York. Today, we learn that if New Jersey planners have their way, the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail line will indeed climb over the Bayonne Bridge and into Staten Island.

As The Jersey Journal’s Charles Hack reported on Thursday, New Jersey Transit officials have spoken with their Port Authority counterparts to discuss adding space for the light rail line as New Jersey prepares to renovate the Bayonne Bridge. Hack writes of the preliminary planning process:

Dan Stessel, a spokesman for NJ Transit, confirmed yesterday there have been discussions about extending the Light Rail from the Eighth Street Light Rail Station in Bayonne – which is slated to open within a month – to Staten Island. “Our involvement has been providing technical data to the Port Authority,” Stessel said. “Any significant expansion of the Light Rail beyond the Eighth Street Light Rail Station would require further study to address capacity constraints.”

Those constraints relate to whether the existing infrastructure – which includes two rail tracks, one in each direction – could handle additional trains and riders that an expansion to Staten Island would bring, he said.

Port Authority spokesman Steve Coleman said it is far too early to say whether or not incorporating a rail line into the bridge is a realistic proposition. Political support for a rail extension across the bridge seems stronger in New York than New Jersey. Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., and Staten Island Borough President James P. Molinaro say that providing space for the Light Rail or an express bus lane on the bridge would cut Staten Island residents’ commute to Manhattan and reduce congestion.

Later on yesterday, Michael Grimm, a U.S. Congressman from Staten Island, voiced his support for the plan. Calling the project a “top priority,” he explained why Staten Island needs this rail link. “The people of Staten Island have spent too much time sitting in their cars stuck in traffic,” he said. “The Port Authority already has plans to raise the Bayonne Bridge, so it makes sense to incorporate light rail into the new design. The people of Staten Island have waited far too long for a light rail connection, which is why I plan to do all I can to make sure that it is built.”

Right now, we don’t know anything about the costs of laying light rail over the bridge, and it doesn’t make much sense to build a connection without activating the North Shore Rail Line or building the HBLR out to the ferry terminal. I also wonder about the framing here. Should New York representatives focus on moving Staten Islanders to Manhattan via New Jersey or should they view this rail link as a way to improve mobility from Staten Island to the job hubs across the Hudson in New Jersey? Without the numbers or any studies to support this contention, I believe the link to New Jersey would be more useful than the promise of a slightly faster ride to Manhattan.

Ultimately, this plan is years from fruition. While New Jersey representatives have called upon the Port Authority to act quickly as it addresses the future of the Bayonne Bridge, it will take multiple studies and much lobbying to see transit realized. But as I said earlier this week, this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to better connect Staten Island, and both New York and New Jersey should work to make it happen.

©2012 Second Ave. Sagas. All Rights Reserved.

* * *

On any given day, New Jersey Transit’s website, redesigned and relaunched in October 2009, should look a little bit something like this:

This morning though visitors to NJTransit.com found a placeholder instead. Right now, when I navigate to the commuter rail, I see the following:

Essentially, New Jersey Transit allowed its domain name registration to lapse, and its registrar put up the standard link farm. According to the WHOIS record for NJTransit.com, the domain name expired on Jan. 7, 2011, coincidentally the same day that I’ve heard the agency’s CIO stepped down. New Jersey Transit spokesman Dan Stessel said that the agency was “investigating the glitch” and that there is no danger of their losing the website. “There is no risk of anyone buying the website,” he said. “We’ve got it for the next 20 years.”

Of course, if the renewal wasn’t submitted in a timely fashion, the site will inevitably go down for a few hours. According to The Star-Ledger, the agency continued to send out text alerts this morning while dealing with this so-called glitch, and customers using AT&T — but not Verizon — were able to access the website. Either way, that’s an embarrassing and amusing mishap in an age when transit agencies are trying to better integrate technology into their daily operations.

©2012 Second Ave. Sagas. All Rights Reserved.

As I explained in September, the idea wasn’t to impose silence but to impose a certain subdued environment upon the first and last cars. I wrote:

In this pilot, it is truly social norms of train ridership that are under assault and for the better. The Quite Commute cars, says New Jersey Transit, are intended to provide a “subdued environment for customers who wish to refrain from using cell phones and are willing to disable the sound feature on pagers, games, computers and other electronic devices.” Riders are urged to talk in “subdued” voices and, thankfully enough, are told to use headphones at a volume that “cannot be heard by other passengers.” To rid trains of the blight of loud and leaky headphones would be a true accomplishment indeed.

Recently, NJ Transit expanded the pilot program to include more trains and more routes. The first and last cars on all Northeast Corridor, North Jersey Coast Line, Raritan Valley Line and Midtown Direct trains traveling in the peak direction during weekday peak periods are a part of the Quiet Commute program now. Riders, though, are duking it out over the meaning of quiet. Vincent M. Mazzolli of The Times repeats a common anecdote:

Last Monday morning, Robert Arbeeny and two friends boarded a train bound for Manhattan and began chatting about the holidays. Robert Arbeeny, left, and Steven Heite last week riding in a New Jersey Transit train car designated as quiet. The rules include refraining from cellphone use and talking with “subdued voices.” “Excuse me,” said the woman sitting across from them, raising her reading glasses, and then her voice. “This is the quiet car.”

Mr. Arbeeny apologized and began whispering, which caused further agitation. The woman put down her book and summoned a conductor. “They are not supposed to be talking,” she said, wagging her index finger at the group. The conductor tried stepping quietly between both parties. “They do have a right to talk,” he said in a soft voice, “they just have to speak in a very quiet manner.”

As other passengers began looking on, the woman shot back: “What kind of sense does that make! Why would you allow them to have a sustained conversation in a quiet car, and why are you taking their side over mine!”

Conductors have been caught in the middle of this battle of interpretation, but while some prickly riders want library-like silence, others understand the intricacies of the program. “Cellphones are one thing, but people are getting the wrong impression about these cars,” Annemarie Whitney, a daily commuter, said. “They are quiet cars, not silent cars. Subdued and silent are two different words, and as long as there are misconceptions out here, there are going to be disputes.”

The problem here is one of expectations vs. reality. It doesn’t make sense to expect people to be deadly silent on a train. That’s just not the way we’re used to commuting, and that’s not why the Quiet Commute was launched. (That is, however, why Bose markets noise-canceling headphones.) Rather, it’s about creating an atmosphere free from noise pollution, free from one-sided cell phone conversations and free from bleeding iPod headphones. That is a balance easy to maintain.

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