Blazing trails - New Jersey Transit Corp - Statistical Data Included

Railway Age, August, 2002 by William C. Vantuono

New services, new equipment, new facilities, new technologies--New Jersey Transit has them all. To keep expanding to meet rising demand, the agency will need a larger, steadier source of growth capital.

If New Jersey Transit were a Class I railroad, its $1.19 billion Fiscal Year 2003 capital budget would rank as one of the top three in the industry--right up there with Union Pacific and Burlington Northern and Santa Fe. An ambitious, trailblazing program of expansion projects, newstarts, equipment acquisitions, and new technology initiatives means that the capital dollars will have to keep flowing in over the next few years. They'll also have to grow if NJ Transit is to realize its long-standing goal of eliminating the practice of using capital dollars to offset operating expenses--a practice many transit agencies find nearly impossible to avoid.

The agency that Executive Director George Warrington returned home to New Jersey in May to head is dealing with a problem many would say is a sign of success: overcrowding. The 9/11-caused changes to the New York Metropolitan Area's rail transit system, the most profound of which was destruction of PATH's World Trade Center complex, took up 10 years of projected ridership growth virtually overnight. Demand for NJ Transit's commuter rail services is so great that the agency would be able to immediately place every single piece of rolling stock it has on order or in design. That equipment-200 new single-level cars, 231 new bilevels, 160 rebuilt cars, 24 new electric locomotives, and 33 new diesel locomotives-will add 33,000 new seats to NJ Transit's commuter rail system, but it will be 2006 when the last new seat is ready for a passenger.

This fall, NJ Transit will begin phasing in several new services, many of which were only ideas for generations:

* On Sept. 30, the first train on the new Boonton-Montclair MidTOWN DIRECT service will depart Great Notch Yard enroute to Penn Station New York over the $60 million Montclair Connection, fulfilling an idea that originated more than 70 years ago. NJ Transit's newest electric locomotives and railcars, the Bombardier ALP-46 and Alstom Comet V, will inaugurate the new service. The Montclair Connection consists of a new 1,500-foot connection between the Boonton Line and Montclair Branch, a new train storage facility in Little Falls, N.J., one new station, and extension of electrification on the Boonton Line through Montclair, N.J.

* The Secaucus Transfer Station, also known as Allied Junction, is a $450 million multi-level transfer station in the Meadowlands of Hudson County that will allow transfer between trains on the Main, Bergen County, Port Jervis, and Pascack Valley lines on the Hoboken Division to transfer to Northeast Corridor and North Jersey Coast trains line on the Newark Division, which serves Penn Station New York. NJ Transit is estimating that 32,000 transfers will be made daily; the station is expected to open next year, date unspecified at this point. The NEC trackwork, catenary, and signaling component is approximately 95% complete; the station itself is approximately 70% complete. The Main/Bergen connection is approximately 25% complete.

Secaucus Transfer Station will include a new state-of-the-art train information system designed to provide real-time information for transferring passengers arriving on trains from both the Newark and Hoboken divisions. The integrated system at Secaucus will be synchronized with data fed from NJ Transit's new Rail Operations Center in Kearny, N.J., prime contractor for which is ARING, and Amtrak's Penn Station Central Control in New York. Several communications systems will be installed, including dynamic signage boards, police and operations radio systems, public address systems, fare gates, network data, and track indicators.

* The $105 million East End Concourse, a new "station within a station" being built at Penn Station New York, is expected to open full-time later this year. Now in use during morning peak hours as construction is finished, it's designed to handle an anticipated 50% traffic growth as Secaucus Transfer and other projects are completed.

* The $604.5 million Southern New Jersey Light Rail Transit System will be the first diesel LRT in the U.S. It's a 34-mile system consisting of 20 station stops serving communities between Trenton Station on the NEC and the Waterfront Entertainment Center in Camden, with connecting bus and rail service to NJ Transit, Amtrak, PATCO, and SEPTA. Bechtelled South Jersey Light Rail Group LLC holds the turnkey DBOM (design, build, operate, maintain) contract, with Bombardier supplying the vehicles. These will be self-propelled double-articulated cars with a diesel-powered center section. The SNJLRTS carshop is nearly complete and work is progressing on a storage yard. Stations and canopies are essentially complete at the Waterfront Entertainment Center, Cooper Street/Rutgers, and Aquarium station stops. Track rehabilitation and clearing activities as well as duct bank installation and station foundations are progressing throughout the entire 34mile alignment. The system will share trackage with Conrail Shared Asset s freight trains under an FRA-mandated temporal separation agreement.