Tuesday, July 21, 2009

A Flaw in the Plan

New Jersey Transit has begun rail service between Secaucus Transfer and the Meadowlands Sports Complex (Giants Stadium and the Izod Center). That's great news for sports fans and concert goers who want to get to the games without having to drive and deal with the traffic. Service will run prior and after games and major concerts.

It sounds great until you realize that there's a pretty serious flaw in the new plan.

There is extremely limited rail service along the Bergen or Main line after midnight. For concert goers and people attending football or hockey games in the evening, they'd be cutting it extremely close. There is service every half hour leaving from Hoboken, but half those trains do not go up the Bergen Line, which means that you have service to many destinations only once per hour. Unless NJ Transit offers additional service later at night, the Secaucus rail link will not divert drivers off the roads and onto mass transit.

It's a problem that we see repeatedly around the nation. Mass transit is touted as the solution to traffic and congestion, and yet it runs at times that aren't convenient to many potential users, and which doesn't go where people need it to go.

In order to make the service more enticing to drivers to leave their cars at home, NJ Transit has to increase service on the Bergen and Main Lines to compensate. Not everyone going to the Meadowlands takes Northeast Corridor services or wants to drive to Secaucus to pick up the rail link there. If they're going to do that, they might as well park at the Meadowlands.

No comments: