Dump the Pump

That's a nice catchy line proffered by New Jersey Transit to encourage people to take mass transit instead of driving as the prices at the pump continue to rise. Brochures were distributed on trains yesterday as part of a campaign to get people to use mass transit.

They note that there's capacity on a whole bunch of their trains.

There are two problems with this campaign. The first is that the ad campaign is targeting the wrong people. People using the trains are already on mass transit - you're not getting anyone additional into the system that way. You need to get other people who are not already using mass transit, and an ad campaign that ignores this is going to fall flat.

The second relates to capacity not of the trains, but of the parking lots that feed the trains. There isn't any capacity. If you look at the brochure, you'll see that there's plenty of capacity on the River Line (no one uses it and it's a black hole of debt), and limited capacity on some Main Line train stops, but there's no capacity at any Northeast Corridor, Bergen Line, Morris and Essex and Raritan Valley and extremely limited parking available at nearly all North Jersey Coast, and Montclair-Boonton, and all Pascack Valley Line stations save one.

Where exactly are all those drivers supposed to go and park in order to take the trains? The NJ Transit brochure helpfully points out that commuters should get someone else to drop them off. This is as inconvenient as it gets, and shows just how misguided NJ Transit is in their efforts to get people to use mass transit.

Without sufficient parking at the stops where people want to use the trains, people are forced to commute by car, whether they want to or not. Building new parking in places where there is no demand isn't going to help matters.

NJ Transit will build a park and ride at Secaucus, which could help with congestion going to the Lincoln and Holland Tunnel, but it still requires commuters to drive to Secaucus. It doesn't get those people off the road at their closest stations.

It's a good thing I live close to the Radburn train station to walk, since there's no parking there either. I would have to radically alter my work schedule to get to the station early enough for a spot, and that's not an option for many people. Building additional parking is often opposed by local communities, which also restrict on street parking near the stations to prevent people from commuting. It's a misguided policy that needs serious reconsideration.