New Jersey's innovators: New Jersey Transit's billion-dollar capital budget is focused on creating a unified, statewide network of commuter and light rail lines. New technologies are a key part of that strategy

Railway Age, April, 2004 by William C. Vantuono

NJT's proposed 2005 capital budget, which won't be finalized until mid-summer, is just over $1 billion. It includes $500 million in state support, $276 million in federal grants and flex funds, $85 million in federal CMAQ (Congestion Mitigation/Air Quality) funds, $50 million in cash carryover from FY 2004, and support from the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey for funding the bilevel procurement.

But of that $1 billion, $365 million will be used to offset certain costs in NJTs proposed $1.3 billion 2005 operating budget. The $365 million is unchanged from FY 2004, after 10 years of increases (in total, nearly $2 billion in capital funds have been used for operating support since 1994). An increase in state operating assistance of $85 million, plus cost reductions in other areas, have kept the number flat for FY 2005. Warrington hopes this is the beginning of a trend that will see the operating budget gradually weaned off dependence on capital funds.

Upon this ROC, I will build my railroad

At the heart of NJT's unified commuter rail system is a new, state-of-the-art centralized control facility at the Meadows Maintenance Complex. The Rail Operations Center, or "The ROC", as NJT people like to call it, consolidates operations for all NJT owned and operated lines into one location.

In addition to a Train Control Theater for dispatching and a Power Control Theater that controls electrified (catenary) territory, the ROC handles communications and crew-calling, provides trouble desks for track, signal, electrical, and mechanical areas, and also handles remote operation of movable bridges. The latter is being phased in over a two-year period.

For dispatching and power control, the ROC uses technology developed by ARINC called TMAC (Train Management and Control). It's based on ARINC's AIM[R] (Advanced Information Management) technology. TMAC's distributed, software-driven architecture operates in a Windows 2000 environment with an Oracle database. Both theaters' large-screen displays use an integrated set of high-resolution, 50-inch DLP (Digital Light Processor) "cubes" developed by Mitsubishi and provided by Intech. There's no light loss or long-term image burn-in with these screens, as has been experienced with color LCDs. One advantage of TMAC's distributed architecture is that dispatching displays can be set up in other locations, such as in a conference room at NJT's Newark headquarters, where Vice President and General Manager-Rail Operations Bill Duggan can see first-hand how the railroad is running.

TMAC also uses object-oriented software that allows for easier modifications to the system as trackwork, signal, and catenary systems are modified or expanded. Its Animator[R] function links specific elements, or "objects" (graphics representing turnouts, wayside signals, interlockings, etc.), to the system database. The dispatching and power control are integral, use the same database, and can talk to each other. For example, if a power failure occurs in a particular section of catenary, the dispatcher can see if that section is de-energized and can notify crews operating trains in that territory.