Sunday, November 28, 2010

To Secaucus ... and beyond!

Some random notes about the proposed #7 extension to Secaucus. The first three have been mentioned by other people, but I wanted to compile them here:

- It will need at least one additional set of escalators to get people out of Grand Central. Many times I've been in there and it's felt like a trap.

- It should have a stop at Tenth Avenue, ideally with an escalator at the east end taking passengers up to the Ninth Avenue entrance to the Port Authority Bus Terminal. That would ease crowding at Times Square, and in that awful tunnel between Times Square and the Port Authority.

- It's mostly local in Queens, and there's no sense in making it an express in Jersey - unless you have express tracks as in Queens. There should definitely be a stop at the Hoboken/Jersey City line to serve residents nearby and so that people can transfer to the Hudson/Bergen Light Rail, and another on the other side of Jersey City at Kennedy Boulevard.

- The line should not just stop at Secaucus; there are several "streetcar suburbs" that could be revitalized by continuing the train further. What comes to mind first is rebuilding and electrifying the old New York and Greenwood Lake line that was part of New Jersey Transit's old Boonton line. When the Boonton line was connected with the Montclair Branch, passenger service was halted on the part of the line between Montclair and Hoboken, that stopped in Kearney and Glen Ridge. According to a Wikipedia contributor, in addition to the three stops abandoned by NJ Transit in 2002 (Benson Street and Rowe Street in Glen Ridge, and Arlington in Kearney), there were originally three other stops in Glen Ridge (Walnut Street, Orchard Street and Belwood Park), three stops in Newark (Forest Hill, Soho Park and North Newark) and a West Arlington stop in Kearney.

10 comments:

Stephen Smith said...

I agree with it all, but I have one request, apropos of nothing - could you adjust your RSS feed so that it displays the full contents of the post rather than just the first few sentences? I personally read every one of your posts, but I'll bet there are a lot of people who think, "Eh, I won't read the rest" when they see things like that...I know that for a lot of blogs I follow, clicking through to read the post is enough to make me not read the post.

Cap'n Transit said...

Good point, Stephen; I've made the change.

Alon Levy said...

You know, I was thinking about the Boonton thing, too. If there's fare integration with NJT then it can be especially easy to just extend the subway to meet the Montclair-Boonton Line. Among other things, it would allow redirecting all Montclair-Boonton trains to Hoboken, freeing up space in the North River Tunnels.

Helen Bushnell said...

There are some good ideas here. Have them been formally submitted to the relevant planning authorities.

George K said...

One question: Do those suburbs warrant subway-style frequencies? And if they don't, is there a problem with terminating most of the trains at Secaucus, while only a few go further west?

Helen Bushnell said...

George K, all trains do not have to run the entire route, but the density of the area can support significant ridership. Newark in particular can and should have more train stations and trains that run at subway like frequencies.For example, light rail trains to Littleton, Colorado run less than ten minutes apart during rush hour. Littleton is smaller than Newark and more spread out, and there are still plenty of people who are interested in taking the train.

Unknown said...

A map would be a great aid to understanding here.

Cap'n Transit said...

You're right, Matt. If anyone knows an easy way to make maps about things like this, please let me know.

George K said...

A Google Map should be relatively easy to make.

George K said...

Capn, why don't you try a Google Map, like you did for the frequent network maps?