Asides

PATH will run a full weekday schedule tomorrow for the first time since Hurricane Sandy, Governors Chris Christie and Andrew Cuomo announced today. Beginning at 6 a.m. Wednesday morning, trains will once again run from Hoboken to the World Trade Center, offering up that elusive one-seat ride that had been knocked out due to sever damage from flooding.

“Restoring full PATH service to the region is possible because of the hard work of the men and women at PATH who labored 24/7 to bring this critical transit link back to life after the most devastating storm our region has ever suffered,” Gov. Christie said in a statement. “PATH riders’ patience, understanding and flexibility under such difficult circumstances are great examples of how the people of this region respond in the face of tragedy, and today is another major step toward returning our daily lives and routines to normal.”

With this announcement, PATH’s weekday service is fully restored with trains running from Newark and Hoboken to the World Trade Center and from Journal Square and Hoboken to 33rd St. on pre-Sandy timetables. Overnight weekday service will run from Newark to 33rd St. via Hoboken and from Newark to the WTC station. For now, though, and throughout February, Exchange Place and World Trade Center will be closed during the weekend as crews continue to make necessary repairs. The Port Authority expects to restore all PATH service to pre-Sandy levels sometime in March.

Weekday overnight PATH service between Newark and the World Trade Center stop will resume operations this evening, Port Authority announced today. With this resumption of overnight service, PATH’s weekday overnight service offerings have returned to pre-Sandy levels, three months after the storm swept through the region. Exchange Place and the WTC station will be closed throughout February from 10 p.m. Fridays through 5 a.m. Mondays as crews work to restore weekday service between Hoboken and the WTC and full weekend service.

Meanwhile, last week, Ted Mann profiled the challenges facing PATH in an excellent article in The World Street Journal. PATH has leaned heavily on manual operations and jury-rigged signal systems as well as assistance from New Jersey Transit and the MTA to restore its infrastructure. As Mann notes, a large portion of the PATH system was within the Sandy flood zone. “If I had parts of system that were not affected, yeah, it’d be easier to bring those back, but virtually all of my system was damaged,” Acting PATH Director Stephen Kingsberry said.

While reading Mann’s article and watching PATH and the MTA approach their respective rebuilding efforts, I’ve often wondered if it makes sense to have two distinct agencies responsible to entirely different oversight bodies. While PATH spans two states, it is an integral part of the New York Metropolitan area, and hundreds of thousands of New Jerseyians and New Yorkers rely on PATH to travel across the Hudson. As the region recovers from the storm, perhaps a second look at how PATH operates in relation to the rest of the region’s transit network should become a louder part of the discussion.

Nearly two and a half months after Superstorm Sandy swamped the PATH system, the Port Authority will be restoring some 24-hour service to its beleaguered interstate subway system, Governors Chris Christie and Andrew Cuomo announced today. Starting tonight, PATH service between the hours of 10 p.m. and 5 a.m., seven days a week, will commence between Newark and 33rd St. via Hoboken with stops including Harrison, Journal Square, Grove Street, and Newport in New Jersey and Christopher Street, 9th Street, 14th Street, and 23rd Street in Manhattan. This route will also run non-stop over the weekends starting at 10 p.m. on Friday and running through 5 a.m. on Monday.

According to the press release, restoring PATH service “has been a top priority for the Port Authority.” Wise minds could debate what exactly that means for the same amount of time it took the PA to restore service. Still, I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth that closely. For lots of commuters and New Jersey residents, even this limited 24-hour service is a welcome relief to the transit desert that had enveloped the area.

Meanwhile, the World Trade Center stop will not be a part of this service restoration. The infrastructure between the WTC and Exchange Place was seriously damaged during the flooding, and as this week’s escalator malfunction showed, there’s still a long way to go before everything is normal again. Still, this is a big step. Now who wants to go to Barcade in Jersey City?