Possible NJ Transit "SOFT STRIKE"

EuroStar wrote:

DestinationUnknown wrote:It's funny seeing the railfan's perspective. One would assume they'd be sympathetic to plight of front line employees. One would be wrong, clearly.

You are mistaken. I am sympathetic with employees who have not gotten raises in a while and with most of the general complaints that the political appointees at the top of the agency have no idea how to run buses and trains because they not only have not worked inside the system, but they do not even ride it. That however is completely orthogonal with employees not performing their duties. Not collecting a few tickets because of crowding or some other justifiable reason is one thing. Systematically not collecting intra-NJ fares is a completely different thing. While I think most employees are hard working and very well deserving, there are some who are not. I also disdain the bosses who tolerate this sort of slacking on the job for no good justifieable reason.

As a user of the system I look at the missed fares like this: this is lost revenue. It is not much, but it is not pocket change either. It is probably on the order of $200,000 to $500,000 a year. It is not in the millions, so it will not solve NJTransit financial problems, but it is money that could see a good use. The cost of the direct train service into NYP on the Raritan Line was about that amount. The cost of extending weekend service to MSU is also about that amount. The cost of the trains they eliminated on the PV and Boonton lines was also around that. As a user I miss these services. In fact to some extent this slacking on the job is self defeating for the employees and the unions -- if those fares were collected we could have kept the eliminated trains and together with them the equivalent 1 or 2 employees on the rolls (even if nobody got sacked as a direct consequence of the cuts, I am sure crew schedules and overtime were lost by not having those said trains operate).

I agree with this post 100%.

The other thing that bothers me is that fares not collected = bad data.

NJT is heavily NYC focused, and intra-NJ trips can be a huge PITA in many cases.

The justification is that too few people make those trip to justify the service. IE: You cannot get from Elizabeth to NB for like 3 hours in the PM peak.

Problem is, if the fares never get collected, no one actually knows how many people are making those trips!

Except for the data saved by the computers the tickets are purchased on be it at window, machine, or mobile device...or those people they employee that count the passengers in between each stop...

DestinationUnknown wrote:Except for the data saved by the computers the tickets are purchased on be it at window, machine, or mobile device...or those people they employee that count the passengers in between each stop...

Youre missing the point.

If I buy one ticket and use it for 8 rides before it is collected, all the records indicate that only one trip was made, period. Only one fare was sold, only one fare was collected = only one ride was made.

Except I made 8 rides.

So destroy the ticket if it means that much to you...but why do that?

Back on topic. Is there a precedent of walk-off or lock-out in the past 60-70 years of commuter passenger operations? Not just in NJ, but in the whole US. If yes, what happened then? Did the Feds leave the railroad in question shut down for weeks/months? If we had Rauner for governor that would be the most likely scenario, but at this point it is not completely impossible for Cristie to follow the lead and not approve any transportation/NJT funding unless the democrats in the state house agree to his pension or other demands which can deadlock the same way it has in Illinois.

There was a strike at NJT that lasted 34 days back in '83

http://www.nytimes.com/1983/04/04/nyreg ... -over.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

There was a strike on SEPTA at the same time, and for the same reason--transfer of commuter operations from Conrail. I think it lasted close to three months, and no SEPTA trains operated during that time.

I remember those times. The disputes were that all three commuter railroads run by Conrail reverted to state-run railroads. And the unions expected to continue the same conditions of employment that Conrail had, but the states offered lesser deals so you had strikes on SEPTA, NJT and Metro-North. And so it went....

If anyone here is old enough to remember columnist John Kneiling in Trains Magazine, back then he wrote a very sharp tongued, sarcastic anti-union column about this issue. His viewpoint was basically that the unions should accept whatever conditions of employment the new state-run railroads offered them, and implied that if they chose to strike, they should end up like the air-traffic controllers in 1981. Luckily that didn't happen.

You can't fire railroader for a legal strike...which is why I find those who say this should go the same was as the ATC strike in '81 to be laughable

The main issue and the one that provoked the 1983 walkout was the plan to make operating employees specifically engineers and conductors work 12 hours but only be paid for 8 hours. Who in their right mind would agree to do that. John Kneiling was a anti labor zealot who would have labor in the field picking cotton while he sat on the porch.

Right now it looks like a strike is in the cards and it will be a complete shut down. Statistically NJT is one of the safest commuter railroad on the planet thanks to some good lower level managers and careful skilled operating employees. Giving labor a decent contract should be acknowledgement for a job well done.

NYP sees about 87,000 passengers each way every business day. We shall assume that 60,000 go to work during a possible strike with the other 27,000 working from home. Even if one squeezes 60 passengers per bus that still requires 1,000 buses, more likely 1,200 as you cannot guarantee each bus at each pick up location being full. That is a lot of buses to be found and it will not happen. To illustrate it in another way: 1,200 buses at about 50 ft per bus plus spacing between buses is equivalent to 11 miles of buses. Where you will put these in NYC is a big problem even if they are in the city only while dropping off passengers.

The idea that they could offload a meaningful portion of riders on the ferries is bogus -- most people do not work close to the water and most ferry terminals have no ability to handle a large number of bus drop-offs. Last time they did this during Sandy the demand was nowhere at the level of regular demand because after the hurricane if your house was flooded going to work was not a priority for a few days and by then they had most trains up and running. Also now most people can work from home for a day or two, then they actually have to get to work. The ones that could work from home for a long period of time already do work from home and do not commute every day.

I have no idea why Christie and the execs at NJT think that they can pull this off. It ain't going to happen.

Going to an emergency bus plan actually has a good side: It will make NY, NJ and PANY seriously look at how bus transport can be handled more effectively while discussions have begun on what to do with the Bus Terminal.

That is, why the insistence that all (ok, 90%) of the buses go to the bus terminal when people want to reach other areas?

For example, right now from New Brunswick you can take the train to 7th and 34th or the bus to 8th and 42. Honestly, not a big difference.

Train is on strike. Instead of sending 10 new buses an hour to 42nd and 8th, imagine if they had different destinations throughout NYC, including maybe even Brooklyn.

That would actually be an asset to commuters, assuming congestion into the city can be handled properly.

Once train service resumes, they can use the data collected to plan for a future of bus operations with a new, smaller bus terminal.

ExCon90 wrote:There was a strike on SEPTA at the same time, and for the same reason--transfer of commuter operations from Conrail. I think it lasted close to three months, and no SEPTA trains operated during that time.

EC90 and Everyone:

The 1983 SEPTA RRD strike was 108 days with the major issue pay cuts to the level of City Transit workers.
Conductors under Conrail were then paid on average $35,000/year and CTD workers around $25-27,000/year.

A major reason why this strike was so long is that all of the unions had a pact to stay out until all got contracts.
The lone holdout for probably the last 30 days or so was the BRS (Brotherhood of Railway Signalmen) which had
about 30 members that joined SEPTA when they took direct control of Regional Rail.

I recall noticing mentions of these 1983 strikes elsewhere and it all was as mentioned over losing rates of pay that
these workers had with Conrail to continue working in passenger service. Today things are quite different...

A NJT strike today probably would not last long before some mediation was secured (Presidential Board or
other governmental action) and there could be some sort of settlement reached. Hopefully this can be of
something that can satistfy all parties and everyone can live with. Cool heads should prevail here...

MACTRAXX

actually if NJT goes on strike, they can not be ordered back to work. the two PEB's were last legal hurdles.
right now, only way this is gone stop is if one of two parties blinks.

DestinationUnknown wrote:You can't fire railroader for a legal strike...which is why I find those who say this should go the same was as the ATC strike in '81 to be laughable

True--the main difference was that the ATCs knew when they hired on that they were forbidden by law to strike; they (or their elected leader) just assumed that they wouldn't be held to it. Totally different from the railroad situation.