Changes to the bar car layout have commuters up in arms. Click the image to enlarge.
Don’t mess with Metro-North rider’ bar car. That’s the message they’re trying to send to the commuter railroad as it gears up for a new rolling stock purchase. It might be a message that fails on deaf ears though as the agency is planning to introduce a newly designed bar car as well as double-decker trains on some of its more popular routes.
The seven new bar cars will be put in place along the New Haven Line and are part of a $226-million, 300-car order of new rolling stock. The design, though, has raised some eyebrows among the bar car regulars as Andrew Grossman reports in the Wall Street Journal:
They’re worried, though, about the proposed design. It includes three rows of seats, four banquette-style tables and three round tables in the middle of the car. That will leave far less standing space than on the current set of cars. “We want to stand around and talk, and not be sitting in tiny little groups of four,” said Terri Cronin, the vice chair of the Connecticut Rail Commuter Council, which has been surveying passengers about the new designs…
Bar cars—or cafe cars in the language of the railroad—are one of the few parts of the railroad that actually make money. They generated over $500,000 in profits last year. “It’s like a big group party,” Ms. Cronin said. “You end up talking to all these people you never would have talked to if you were sitting in all these little social pods everywhere.” Ms. Cronin and other passengers say they don’t want to get stuck in small groups at tables. They’d rather mingle. Ms. Cronin said that’s how she’s met business contacts and made good friends in the bar car.
Officials from Metro-North and the Connecticut Department of Transportation, which pays for the cars, say they’ve shown the designs to focus groups, where some riders had complaints similar to Ms. Cronin’s. But the railroad is trying to squeeze as many seats as it can out of the bar cars, since the new passenger cars each have nine fewer seats than the ones they’re replacing. “It’s an ongoing balancing act,” said Judd Everhart, a spokesman for the Connecticut transportation agency. “We’re trying to maximize seating wherever we can, while at the same time providing the convenience of the cafe cars.”
The new bar cars won’t hit the rails until 2012 at the earliest, so Ms. Cronin and her drinking buddies have a few more years of socializing before the small groups take over their hallowed drinking grounds. The beer will always be cold.
Meanwhile, in an effort to combat overcrowding on the Harlem and Hudson Lines, Metro-North is looking into double-decker train cars, Michael Grynbaum of The Times reported today. The two-level cars, he says, cost the same as the standard ones and can fit 33 percent more passengers. These cars, which would enter service in 2015, would be designed to fit the clearance at Grand Central.
Metro-North says these two lines are “nearing capacity” out of Grand Central Terminal, and a bi-level car would allow for expansion without increasing train frequency. The city’s other commuter rail lines — the Long Island Rail Road and New Jersey Transit — have been running double-decker cars since 1998 and 2005 respectively, and commuters love them for the space and the upper-level views. “Customers love them for a number of reasons,” New Jersey Transit spokesman Dan Stessel said to Grynbaum. “They are quieter, and you have more leg room. It’s been overwhelmingly positive.”
When the MTA instituted its service cuts in late June, one change was long overdue. Instead of having the litte used V train terminate at 2nd Ave. in Manhattan, New York City Transit rearranged subway service so that the 6th Ave./Queens Boulevard Local route made use of the old Chrystie St. Cut, crossed the Williamsburg Bridge and terminated at Middle Village, the northern end of the BMT Myrtle Ave. line. Designed to alleviate overcrowding on the L and provide a one-seat ride to Midtown from areas of Brooklyn and Queens with high population growth, the rerouting has been a success.
The TWU, as we learned earlier this week, isn’t happy about the city’s plans to use dollar vans to replace shuttered bus routes. While the city and the Taxi & Limousine Commission are moving full speed ahead with a plan to privatize these bus routes, TWU President John Samuelsen has called these replacement offerings