NJ Transit Finally Acknowledges Reality

It's about time. NJ Transit may finally add parking to the Secaucus boondoggle aka Secaucus Transfer. Well, NJ Transit has actually gone ahead with purchasing land that could be used for that purpose for $25 million. The final disposition of the land remains in the air and the developer who originally pushed for development at the Transfer remains noncommittal to building out their office space.

Parking is sorely needed and would help relieve congestion on the Turnpike and the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels as long as there is capacity on the rails and parking for commuters to consider the switchover. There are some groups that think that building parking at the Transfer is a bad idea, but the benefits of building parking outweigh the supposed negatives. The fact is that the Transfer is underutilized and the Turnpike exit is even more so.

Of course, commuters still have to deal with cars hitting trains, just as one did again this morning. Trains on the Main and Bergen County Line train were operating with 15-30 minute delays in both directions due to a train striking an unoccupied car in Ho-Ho-Kus.

Thankfully no one was hurt, but this is the third time in the past quarter that cars have gotten into accidents with NJ Transit trains on the Main/Bergen line. The fact remains that when a car collides with a train, the train will always win. Commuters and the passengers of the cars will always lose.

UPDATE:
Well, there were actually a couple of minor injuries in the Ho Ho Kus incident. The train clipped a car that stalled on the tracks while it may have been attempting a U-turn or stopped to discharge passengers at the Ho Ho Kus train station.

woman hustled her infant from a stalled vehicle seconds before it was clipped by a slow-moving passenger train Tuesday morning, police said.

New Jersey Transit trains on the Main and Bergen County lines are running on schedule following the 7 a.m. incident.

The unidentified mother and her baby were being treated for minor injuries at The Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, NJ Transit spokeswoman Courtney Carroll said. The driver of the vehicle – the infant’s grandmother – was uninjured.

About 125 passengers on the Hoboken-bound 1150 out of Suffern, N.Y., were transferred to other trains after the locomotive struck the vehicle, which had stalled on the Glenwood Road tracks, Carroll said at 11 a.m. Tuesday.

“It’s under investigation, but police are looking into the possibility the car may’ve tried to stop to discharge passengers,” Carroll said.