Living in Teaneck, where we have the 157,165R, 167Q, 11A and the Spanish Jitney bus within walking distance, there is one constant thing - all the buses are wildly unpredictable in terms of travel time, especially int he evening, when there are significant inbound/outbound delays in the Lincoln Tunnel area.
Often, you show up at the PABT gate, and there are 500 people in front of you waiting for your bus, and 45 minutes pass until you can get on a standing room only bus that then takes 30 minutes to reach the Turnpike....
On off-peak hours and weekends, the bus situation is much worse, because 495 can take 25 minutes to travel the entire weekend.
If I want to take the family into the city, we usually end up driving to Secaucus and taking a train from there rather than taking the 1676 bus, because the reliability is so bad.
This doesn't consider the buses that simply never show up, especially with 20/30-minute headways midday.
The main issue with the PVL is that most trains from NYP have outbound delays and you can very easily miss a connection with the next northbound train being 45-120 minutes later.
If the PVL planners did their job correctly and simply build the second track from Wood-ridge to Spring Valley, and had 15 minute headways (even with 3 car trainsets - I can see them purchasing 25 Nippon Sharyo DMU cars and running that all day with a very small crew sizes).
This would mean that you "just show up at track H in SEC" and not have anxiety that you just missed your connection and you need to sit around for an hour for the next train.
Compare this situation to the 165T or 165R - you just show up at PABT and if you were delayed on the subway, there is a bus every 5-10 minuters that takes you home. No juggling a third transfer, a third travel leg that could go terribly delayed or a low frequency transfer.
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