Current News
New Schedules for NJ Transit Rail Lines Effective March 24th:
New Jersey Transit (NJT) will implement new train schedules on its railroad lines on next Sunday, March 24, 2013. The new schedules will be made available at all stations before March 24th. Currently, they have been posted on NJT’s website, njtransit.com, and will be incorporated into its trip planner feature.
While described in the news media as marking the end of post Superstorm Sandy interim schedules, New Jersey Transit Rail Operations (NJTRO) is not yet able to restore all of the trains that were being operated on weekdays five months ago because of ongoing shortage of rolling stock. Under the new schedules, NJTRO will operate 679 trains on weekdays, 21 short of the 700 that were being run under the schedules dated October 14, 2012. Nevertheless, 97% of weekday trains will be restored to pre-storm levels. Full weekday service into and out of New York’s Penn Station was restored in January 2013. Weekend service was restored to near pre-storm levels as of December 3, 2012.
In large measure, the improvement in service is being possible by re-energizing the catenary of the Morris & Essex Line leading into the former Hoboken Terminal. Surging floodwaters inundated the Mason Substation, located in southwestern Hoboken adjacent to the Long Slip Canal, on Monday, October 29, 2012. In the interim, NJTRO has constructed a temporary replacement for Mason and is preparing to construct a permanent substation that will be located on higher ground to protect against future flooding.
“This marks significant progress in post-Sandy recovery,” said James Weinstein, NJT’s Executive Director. “Starting March 24th, we will be adding 21 additional trains to the current schedules, which will restore nearly all rush hour service to Hoboken and result in the long-awaited return of standard one-seat service to Hoboken for Gladstone customers. The addition of this rail service will add further system capacity, and reflects the tremendous progress made in the aftermath of the worst natural disaster ever to strike the Garden State.”
Under the new schedules, NJTRO will operate an additional 21 trains on the Morris & Essex, Montclair-Boonton, and Main/Bergen County lines, marking the restoration of regular rail service into and out of Hoboken Terminal. In addition, 19 trains that have been operating partial length trips will be restored to their previous length.
Highlights of the service that will be restored under the March 24, 2019 timetables include:
With ALP45-DP locomotives no longer being required to run weekday service between Gladstone and Hoboken, it is expected that their pre-Sandy use on outer Montclair-Boonton Line trains operated beyond the ends of electrification at Montclair State University and Dover to and from Lake Hopatcong, Netcong, Mount Olive and Hackettstown. Already, some Montclair-Boonton Line trains have been observed while operating in diesel mode west of Newark Broad Street.
New Jersey Transit and Port Authority Receive Hurricane Sandy Relief Funds: New Jersey’s US Senators Frank R. Lautenberg and Robert Menendez announced on March 14th that the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) has awarded $144, 416,559 to New Jersey Transit (NJT) and $18,213,824 million for the Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH) system in funds provided under the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act of 2013. The grant to NJT will pay for some of the cost of repairing the rolling stock damaged during Superstorm Sandy, as well as that of providing temporary bus and ferry services during the periods when service on its rail lines was suspended. Similarly, the grant to PATH will cover some of the cost of repairing rapid transit cars and infrastructure, notably traction power and signal systems, caused by salt water that flooded all four of its tunnels under the Hudson River.
Previously, on March 3, 2013, New York State’s US Senators Charles E. Schumer and Kristen Gillibrand announced that USDOT had awarded approximately $195.7 million to The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PATH’s parent agency), of which approximately $141.5 million will be allocated to the PATH system and $54.2 million towards repairing damage to the World Trade Center Transportation Hub under construction in Lower Manhattan, also involving funds provided under the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act of 2013.
Free Parking on Weekends for Newark Light Rail: New Jersey Transit expanded its one-year experiment with free parking on weekends and major holidays to the parking lot at the Grove Street, Bloomfield terminal of its Newark Light Rail Line (aka the Newark City Subway) on this past Saturday, March 16th. As reported in the February 18, 2013 issue of The Hot Wire, New Jersey Transit its pilot program at five stations on the Hudson Bergen Light Rail system on February 16th. In making this announcement as part of his report to New Jersey Transit’s Board of Directors on March 13th, Executive Director James Weinstein thanked NJ-ARP’s Vice President Jack May, as he did at the previous month’s meeting, for having made this suggestion to the state-wide public transportation agency.
Lincoln Tunnel Helix Project Impacts Hudson-Bergen Light Rail: A bus bridge was operated on this past weekend, March 16th and 17th between the Port Imperial, Lincoln Harbor and Ninth Street stations of New Jersey Transit’s Hudson-Bergen Light Rail system because of repairs being made by The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) to the roadway helix leading to the western entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel. Two additional suspensions of light rail service between these stations will occur on the weekends of March 23rd - 24th and April 6th - 7th as PANYNJ continues its work, which will take place adjacent to and over the HBLR tracks and catenary. HBLR Yellow Line (Tonnelle Avenue, North Bergen to West Side Avenue, Jersey City) trains will be operated between Tonnelle Avenue and Port Imperial and south of Ninth Street, Hoboken while the bus bridge is in effect.
New Jersey Transit to Remove PCBs from Bergen County Line Roadbed: At its meeting on March 13th, New Jersey Transit’s Board of Directors approved the award of a $3,884,990 contract to Anselmi & DeCicco of Maplewood, New Jersey for environmental remediation of the Bergen County Line between Mileposts 10.2 and 10.6 in the Boroughs of Wallington and Wood-Ridge. This section of the former Erie Railroad is contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), a known carcinogen, from an adjacent industrial Latex Superfund Site that was remediated by the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) in the late 1990s. This clean-up and capping of the affected area must occur before NJT can proceed with construction of the planned Wesmont Station.
The environmental remediation will take place in two phases to minimize impacts on NJT’s rail operations and its passengers, as well as on the Norfolk Southern Railway’s freight services. The first phase of the work will involve the area immediately north of existing Track 2 and construction of a replacement track on the newly-remediated and capped area. The second phase will include removal of the contaminated soil under the former track. This two-step approach will enable NJT to maintain double-track operations on the Bergen County Line throughout the work. After the environmental remediation is completed, NJT will be in a position to proceed with construction of an island platform between Tracks 1 and 2 for the future Wesmont Station.
No. 1 Broadway-Seventh Avenue Local to Return to South Ferry Loop:
MTA New York City Transit (MTA NYCT) will resume carrying passengers on its No. 1 Broadway-Seventh Avenue subway line beyond the Rector Street Station by reopening the original South Ferry Station, located at the tip of Lower Manhattan, during the first week of April. This may occur on Saturday or Sunday, April 6th or 7th, although an exact date remains to be announced. The reason for this unexpected reopening of a closed subway station, unimaginable six months ago, is to provide a temporary replacement for the currently unusable modern South Ferry Station. The work underway to reopen the original station includes constructing a new passageway between it and the mezzanine of the new station, which will enable passengers to transfer within the fare control zone between the No. 1 Line at South Ferry and the R Line at its Whitehall Street Station.
The surge of salt water that came up New York Bay in conjunction with high tide during Hurricane Sandy flooded the new South Ferry Station, a stub-end terminal with two tracks separated by a ten cars-long island platform, causing severe damage to every element of its infrastructure. Repairs to this almost new station, already troubled with leaking walls despite costing $530 million to build, are expected to require additional expenditures of as much as $600 million, funding which is not in hand, resulting in its being closed indefinitely.
Only the first five cars of the 10-car trains operated on the No. 1 Line can serve its sharply curved platform, which requires the use of platform edge extenders - commonly referred to as gap fillers - to allow passengers to alight from and board those cars; passengers riding in the rear five cars of southbound trains must move forward at the Rector Street Station in order to exit at the original South Ferry Station.
The Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) opened its South Ferry Station on July 10, 1905 as part of an extension in Lower Manhattan of New York City’s first subway line. It has both an outer loop and an inner loop, each with track having a tight radius and a curved matching platform. Initially, the outer loop was used for revenue service while the inner loop functioned as a storage track. When the IRT’s “H” system was implemented under the City of New York’s “Dual Contracts” on July 1, 1918, Broadway-Seventh Avenue trains began using the outer loop and platform while the inner loop and platform was opened for Lexington Avenue trains that used the original subway line south of Grand Central.
This service pattern remained in effect at South Ferry until the 1950s, when the New York City Board of Transportation and its successor, the New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA) began replacing the IRT’s pre-World War II rolling stock with new R-type subway cars. By the 1960s, the inner loop and platform were served only by short trains of the Bowling Green-South Ferry Shuttle (which had operated during peak hours since 1909) until it was discontinued without replacement as an economy measure by the NYCTA on February 13, 1977. This abandonment of subway service required passengers using the Lexington Avenue Subway to walk from Bowling Green to South Ferry, sometimes in inclement weather, to reach the Staten Island Ferry Terminal. No. 1 Line trains of what had become MTA NYCT’s Division A continued to use the outer loop and platform until March 16, 2009 when the new South Ferry Station was opened with much fanfare.
Fortunately, MTA NYCT did not dismantle the track, traction power supply, signals and communications and other infrastructure elements of the South Ferry Loops after they were no longer used in revenue service. The gap fillers, which must be interlocked with the signal system to ensure that they are not deployed against moving trains, simply were disabled and pinned in their retracted position. Whether through foresight, inertia or good luck, virtually everything needed was in situ allowing MTA NYCT to deal with the reality that its modern South Ferry Station will remain out of service for an extended period and “bite the bullet” by putting the more-than-a-century-old one back into service.
FEIS and ROD for Baltimore’s Second Light Rail Line Approved:
The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) approved the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) and issued a Record of Decision (ROD) covering the Maryland Mass Transit Administration’s proposed Red Line light rail transit project on March 11th, making it eligible for future approvals and federal funding. It will be the first major expansion of the Baltimore Region’s rail transit network since the early 1990s and expected to attract more than 50,000 passengers per weekday by 2035.
When completed, currently anticipated by 2021 with construction beginning in 2015, the 14.1 miles-long east-west LRT line will extend from the John Hopkins Medical Center campus in eastern Baltimore City through Canton, Fell’s Point, Harbor East, Downtown Baltimore, West Baltimore, Edmonson Village and Woodlawn in Baltimore County. Of this distance, 8.7 miles with 14 stations will be on the surface; 4.7 miles with 5 stations will be in subway tunnels located in Downtown and the Cooks Lane area of the city; and 0.7 will be on aerial structure. Two of its stations will have interchanges with the MARC Penn Line (on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor) while there will be transfer connections at the Howard Street/University Center Station to the existing light rail Green Line (but no track connection). Plans call for the acquisition of 28 low floor light rail vehicles, to be 8 feet, 8 inches wide (in contrast with the fifty-three 9 feet, 5 inches wide cars currently in service on the Blue and Yellow Lines).
The Red Line’s capital investment requirement is estimated to be $2.5 billion, of which the State of Maryland is prepared to fund fifty percent. Maryland’s Governor, Martin O’Malley, in announcing the FTA’s action, said “Now we must move to our next challenge, which is providing the state funds necessary to keep this project moving.” Governor O’Malley, a Democrat, is the former Mayor of Baltimore who defeated then Republican incumbent Robert Ehrlich in a November 2006 gubernatorial election and won reelection in November 2010 when he was opposed again by anti-rail Ehrlich. Governor O’Malley’s Administration also supports construction of the 16 miles-long Purple Line planned to connect Bethesda with New Carrollton in the suburbs of Washington, DC.
Toronto Begins On-Street Testing of its First 100% Low Floor LRV:
North American street railway history was made during the wee hours of this past Thursday, March 14th, when the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) took its prototype Low Floor Light Rail Vehicle (LFLRV) no. 4400 out of Hillcrest Yard for a test run along Bathurst Street to Bathurst Station on the Bloor-Danforth Subway. A second, longer test run was operated from Hillcrest Yard, the site of the TTC’s main streetcar and bus repair facility, to and from Exhibition Loop on the following morning, Friday, March 15th. Both tests were judged to be successful. Click on this link (See 8 photos. for photographs taken during the first test. The TTC’s new LFLRVs are 30.2 meters-long (99 feet, 1 inch-long) and have five carbody sections with four articulations that allow them to negotiate the 36 feet radius curves of Toronto’s first generation streetcar system. In essence, the design is a little longer than the two –car trains of Canadian Light Rail Vehicles (CLRVs), PCC cars, and Peter Witt cars with trailers that were operated on the Bloor, Queen and Yonge Street car lines at various times within living memory. The LFLRVs will be operated with a Proof-of-Payment (POP) fare collection system. Have double-width doors in their second and fourth sections and single width doors in their first (front) and fifth (rear) sections. In contrast, the 196 CLRVs (of which 195 remain in service) are 15.23 metres-long (just shy of 50 feet) and have two double-width front and center doors. The TTC also has 52 Articulated Light Rail Vehicles (ALRVs) that are 23.2 metres-long (76 feet-long), have one articulation and three sets of double-width doors. All of the CLRVs and ALRVs are to be retired by 2019 when all of the TTC’s 204 LFLRVs will be in service. While currently using trolley poles equipped with carbon insert shoes for traction power current collection, the new streetcars also have pantographs mounted on their third carbody section in anticipation of a future system-wide adjustment of trolley wire for pantograph use. While several US light rail transit systems, beginning with Portland, Oregon’s Tri-Met, have adopted partial low floor technology, typically described as 70% low floor (although that percentage may not be exact), the Canadians have taken the lead in introducing 100% low floor LRV technology to our continent with orders for:
Looking towards future LRV procurements for first generation US systems, the Metrolinx double-ended design could be a candidate for use in Boston when MBTA orders 24 cars for its Somerville extension of the Green Line system. Philadelphia’s SEPTA system could use a shorter single-end version of the TTC design (no longer than 72 feet because of the limitation of the transfer table at Woodland Shops) equipped with broad gauge (5 feet, 2 and 1/4 inch) trucks for its City Transit Division; its Suburban Transit Division, which requires double-ended cars could be a candidate cars based on a shorter version of the Metrolinx design but equipped with broad gauge trucks. All three of these remnants of first generation streetcar systems have tight track curvature that bars use of the typical LRVs found in North America, which are designed for minimum curves of 82 feet-radius (25 metres). One can expect Bombardier, as well as Alstom, CAF, Siemens and others, to bid on those orders when the specifications and bidding documents surface, likely towards the end of this decade.
Coming Events
NJ-ARP Patrons Lunch to be Held in Bordentown: This year’s luncheon for Patron Members of the New Jersey Association of Railroad Passengers will be held in Burlington County on Saturday, April 13, 2013, commencing about 11:30 AM, at the Farnsworth House, 135 Farnsworth Avenue, Bordentown, New Jersey 08505-1343 (Telephone 609-291-9232). This restaurant is within walking distance of New Jersey Transit’s River Line station.
