Work also includes making restrooms at the station building accessible. The station work will be completed by 2011. The overall project is to cost $41 million, and the current work is part of a $23.6 million contract.
Also good is that money has been set aside to replace the decrepit Fair Lawn Avenue bridge over the Passaic River connecting Paterson with Fair Lawn. It is functionally obsolete, has a weight limit, and no room for error due to the narrow conditions. The replacement of the span had been held up since Fair Lawn rebuilt a span down river at Morlot Avenue and Fair Lawn hoped that Paterson would pick up the tab on the Fair Lawn Avenue span. Several other notable projects are also picked up in the multiyear capital spending plan. However, the state is spending a fraction of what's needed to replace obsolete spans:
The proposed four-year transportation plan includes $21 million toward bridge replacement next year, nearly $66 million in 2011, $73 million in 2012 and nearly $80 million in 2013.The state has 675 structurally deficient bridges, including 315 owned by the state and 312 operated by counties or municipalities. That's bad.
Now, the ugly. NJ Transit expects to run trains to the Meadowlands/Giants Stadium a total of 30 times this year. The reason for the limited service is mainly due to the delays in the opening of the Xanadu project, which now looks like it's not going to open anytime soon (although reports seem to indicate a late 2010 opening). The spur line operated by NJ Transit cost $200 million, and it will be years before it pays for itself through the user fees.
The spur line wont operate during Nets games, but will operate for major concerts at Giants Stadium, as well as for the football games. I used the spur line to attend the AC/DC concert at the end of July, and found it somewhat useful, particularly if you live near a station that has terminating service beyond midnight. If you live at or near a station that has limited service, the spur line service isn't going to get you out of your car and onto mass transit.
So, for now, the spur line is a boondoggle, not unlike the Secaucus Transfer. That NJ Transit project remains a white elephant that hasn't met traffic expectations but now may see additional users because of the construction of a parking lot adjacent to the station. That station sees a fraction of the figures NJ Transit used to justify the station's exorbitant costs. As of 2004, the station remained seriously underutilized:
Since the project was begun two decades ago, planners have been making lofty claims about the number of people who would pass through the station. In 1992, developers boasted that eventually 70,000 riders a day would use the station. Throughout the 1990's, transit officials said that by 2010, about 32,000 passengers would make their way to the station. Two years ago, that figure was scaled back even more, to 16,500. For the first six months of this year, the number of riders was projected to be 7,500. But in May, after six months of operation, the number stood at a mere 5,600. By way of comparison, Pennsylvania Station in Newark handles 12,000 commuters on an average weekday, and Hoboken 19,000.In fact, NJ Transit continued to decrease its figures, even as the costs rose out of control.
Currently, the station gets around 6,000 commuters a day.
In fact, taking a current usage of 7,500 per day, you'd still find that the estimates were off by a magnitude of nine (7,500 versus 70,000; or a factor of four with the later estimates of 32,000 versus 7,500 per day.
The sunk costs into building Secaucus means that the system lacks the capability to upgrade services where its actually needed, particularly if NJ Transit had constructed a bare bones transfer setting with parking from the outset.
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