Railroad Forums 

  • NCS to Broad Street Station ("Newark Light Rail")

  • Discussion related to New Jersey Transit rail and light rail operations.
Discussion related to New Jersey Transit rail and light rail operations.

Moderators: lensovet, Kaback9, nick11a

 #1124553  by fishball
 
SightUnseen wrote:Earlier this year I went out to the Newark Museum, the driver didn't even bother to stop at Atlantic St and Bears Eagles Stadium and went to Washington Park then Broad St.
outbound towards broad st. station?
amtrakowitz wrote:(Never mind NJT cutting frequency in half when the LRVs replaced the PCC
how often did it used to be?
 #1124726  by lensovet
 
SightUnseen wrote:Earlier this year I went out to the Newark Museum, the driver didn't even bother to stop at Atlantic St and Bears Eagles Stadium and went to Washington Park then Broad St.
Just about every light rail system with an arena or stadium as a stop has at least some stipulation about game days vs non game days, Newark shouldn't be any different.
I can't figure out why Atlantic st. Is underused
i provided the reason why above. it's a 6-minute walk to broad st. from atlantic. the only time it would be faster would be if the train pulled up to the platform the moment you got to the station, and even then, factoring in the waiting at the light to cross broad st, the LRV will be a minute faster at most. why on earth would you ever take it?
 #1124981  by kilroy
 
I can't figure out why Atlantic st. Is underused
Nothing really there except the Post Office (I assume it's still open). I don't think anyone is in the old Mutual Benefit Building or 500 Broad St and the bank and telephone buildings are probably not as full as they were when I worked for MBL back in the 80's and 90's.
 #1124994  by fishball
 
i wonder why the line wasn't just built as a two-directional line on broad st. instead of a one way pair. a routing on broad st. would stop at washington park in both directions, and would probably serve more office workers in that area. broad st. is, well, broad, so i don't think it was an issue of taking away too many traffic lanes, and the problem of crossing broad st wasn't avoided with the atlantic st. routing. there's nothing even on atlantic st except the backs of the broad st. office buildings
 #1134502  by oknazevad
 
since these are boarding statistics only, i would not be surprised if the actual usage of these stops by people disembarking is somewhat higher because of the 1-way nature of the stops. the number of people getting off daily, just a guesstimate, might be in the double digits (maybe?).
This. I too wonder why they went with the split tracks, but the need for Atlantic is pretty much self-explanatory, as the outbound correspondent to the Washington Park station.
 #1139296  by SightUnseen
 
The Broad St Extension was phase 1 of the NERL, but NJT decided not to follow through with the rest of the project — it just feels like a waste. Even with Washington Park and Broad St. the #'s just don't stack up. My guess (Someone please correct me if I'm wrong) is that the original intention was create a connection between Midtown Station and Broad St with major stops at Newark Airport and Newark Penn right? Just measuring one segment of what was suppose to be a bigger project
 #1148613  by amtrakowitz
 
SightUnseen wrote:The Broad St Extension was phase 1 of the NERL, but NJT decided not to follow through with the rest of the project — it just feels like a waste. Even with Washington Park and Broad St. the #'s just don't stack up. My guess (Someone please correct me if I'm wrong) is that the original intention was create a connection between Midtown Station and Broad St with major stops at Newark Airport and Newark Penn right? Just measuring one segment of what was suppose to be a bigger project
Numbers of what? NJT has typically low-balled estimated ridership numbers if that's what you mean.

NJT got rid of the bus route 302 "Airlink" when the PA opened the NEC EWR monorail station. The light rail was supposed to replace that bus route, IIRC (which FTR started as a private jitney route). Bus route 62 is now a short route running between the downtowns of Newark and Elizabeth; the southern half of that route got split off as route 48 (Elizabeth-Woodbridge-Perth Amboy). Depending on how much segregation from road traffic the light rail could have afforded, it would have been superior and attracted greater numbers of passengers, but seeing as how this is New Jersey, the governmental capital cost inflation probably got out of control.

As for the seven-year-old Rutgers study, was not the GO Bus program an outgrowth of it? There is now the GO 25 (runs parallel to the regular NJT route 25 along Springfield Avenue) and GO 28 (Bloomfiled-EWR, and IMHO a confusing tangle between that route and the regular 28 Newark-MSU route). GO 28 is another inferior mode versus direct light rail.
 #1184569  by SightUnseen
 
After going to college in Boston and using systems like the Tri-Met MAX out in Portland, I believe in direct light rail where possible locally. The HBLR is great, it's helped Jersey City and the eastern part Hudson county grow tremendously over the last decade and with the Northern branch now sorted out it will be great for communities like Englewood and Ridgefield.
Go Bus or no Go Bus, will never bring value back to cities like Newark and Elizabeth and their surrounding towns with out better mass transit in the form of light rail.
 #1251934  by 25Hz
 
Broad street is too busy, with too many intersections where someone could drive into the train. You think it's bad now, if it followed broad between broad street station and, say, raymond blvd, it would be way worse. Another reason, is that you'd have the street be kinda boxed in between the tracks, not a good idea. The reason most streetcars work, is because they go with traffic in the lanes (as well as in their own lanes). If they REALLY wanted to run on broad street, they'd have put the tracks right in the street and been done with it. People here are (no offense) too stupid to not walk in front of, or cut off a street running LRV. To me, having used it dozens of times, it makes sense, and i enjoyed riding quite a bit. I do wish it ran more like a streetcar, but it is what it is. If they want to run an interurban style like PS used to, then they need shorter vehicles similar to PCC that are designed specifically for such operation. I fully support the idea of re-establishing the old trolley routes, and yes, they could run into NWK right along side the existing LRV's.

One last thought...... They are going to be getting those extended LRV's, imagine those street running in rush hour traffic!!!!
 #1292963  by philipmartin
 
I came across a nice picture of Broad St. Station on the first day of light rail service, on wiki. Photo by Frank Pfuhler, July 17, 2006.
I couldn't understand spending the money to build that light rail branch. I worked in Morristown for sixteen years starting in 1993 and was very familiar with transportation between Broad Street Station and Penn Station. The existent bus service was as good as the light rail service.
Riding the light rail cars on Newark streets I wish they could control the traffic lights; green lights all the way.
 #1294248  by loufah
 
philipmartin wrote:The existent bus service was as good as the light rail service.
There were some exceptions. On Saturday mornings, all the Newark Penn-bound buses that stopped at Broad Street Station-University Ave came within 10 minutes of each other, hourly, which meant a typical wait of 45 minutes after getting off an inbound M&E train.
 #1294411  by fishball
 
loufah wrote:
philipmartin wrote:The existent bus service was as good as the light rail service.
There were some exceptions. On Saturday mornings, all the Newark Penn-bound buses that stopped at Broad Street Station-University Ave came within 10 minutes of each other, hourly, which meant a typical wait of 45 minutes after getting off an inbound M&E train.
But the deficiencies of bus service on Broad Street could have been fixed with much less money than the BSE cost.
 #1359693  by ryanov
 
No, they really couldn't. When there is bad traffic in downtown Newark, you're finished. There is no way for the buses to move. The light rail runs pretty much entirely separate from traffic, except for intersections. The fact that the light rail does not pre-empt the traffic lights and runs too infrequently to be helpful (30 min headways at a lot of times if I'm not mistaken) somewhat negate its usefulness, but there are problems that could not have been solved by bus service.
 #1359879  by time
 
The Newark Light Rail service has good patronage in the morning and evenings, much like the rest of the NJT system. Most of the patrons are using it as a shuttle to/from Broad Street and Newark Penn/Gateway Center. However, there are a lot of Rutgers Business School students, professors and faculty that also utilize the service, and other business employees in the Washington Park area as well. As Newark grows (and if you have not been there recently, it's growing!) the service will become utilized even more. Hopefully they can increase service, especially in the off peak periods. It's useless for going to NJPAC at night, unless you're really dedicated or forced to travel by transit.
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