Will NJ Turnpike Opening New Lanes Affect NEC Ridership?

The NJ Turnpike car lanes are being extended from exits 9 to 6. The new lanes will open this and next weekend. Is this likely to divert riders off of the Northeast Corridor Line?

MODERATOR'S NOTE: Edited thread title.

Probably not. Besides, the other part of that project isn't finished yet.

No, I don't think so. If anything the turnpike will add more drivers. The NEC will be fine.

zerovanity59 wrote:The NJ Turnpike car lanes are being extended from exits 9 to 6. The new lanes will open this and next weekend. Is this likely to divert riders off of the Northeast Corridor Line?

No. In all but the absolute best traffic conditions, the NEC line is the faster alternative anyway for morning/evening commutes. The direct route to Trenton anyway is Route 1, which is a complete and total unmitigated disaster in rush periods. Trust me, NEC ridership is not going anywhere.

I was in the area (Southern Middlesex / Northern Mercer / Southeastern Somerset Counties) over the weekend for the first time in years, and although I shouldn't be, I'm amazed at the sprawl that's occurred there.

In my opinion, the extra lanes on the Turnpike will jam up faster than you can say "long commute" and the NEC will most likely continue to add riders.

I doubt it will have any effect on the NEC , if anything it will encourage people to use the turnpike and not philly 95.

Definetly not. If anything, this will boost ridership on the Northeast Corridor. Lets face it, for the most part, the Turnpike is almost always a congested buffer, and all this project will do is increase ridership to avoid sitting in traffic on the Turnpike. And besides, this will just further increase rail ridership and give NJT funds to acquire more rolling stock, and locomotives for commuter service between the Trenton Transit Center, and New York's Pennsylvania Station. In a way, it may reach the levels the old Pennsylvania Railroad had, when they ran commuter trains along the NEC. If anyhing, it might exceed expectations on the line and bring traffic levels to a high we have not seen in years.

Jessica Black wrote:Definetly not. If anything, this will boost ridership on the Northeast Corridor. Lets face it, for the most part, the Turnpike is almost always a congested buffer, and all this project will do is increase ridership to avoid sitting in traffic on the Turnpike. And besides, this will just further increase rail ridership and give NJT funds to acquire more rolling stock, and locomotives for commuter service between the Trenton Transit Center, and New York's Pennsylvania Station. In a way, it may reach the levels the old Pennsylvania Railroad had, when they ran commuter trains along the NEC. If anyhing, it might exceed expectations on the line and bring traffic levels to a high we have not seen in years.

I disagree. While the widened Turnpike will affect transit vs. automobile mode choice to a certain extent in central New Jersey, it won’t have too much of an impact on the NEC. The primary overlap between mass transit and the Turnpike travel demand is commuters, but non-commuter and commercial vehicles comprise a very large portion of Turnpike travel demand. Also, NJ Transit rail service will remain oriented primarily toward the Manhattan (and northern New Jersey) commuter, while the Turnpike serves these commuters but also commuters with more dispersed destinations.

The only potential affect I can imagine, would be that interstate bus service may be more quick and reliable, which might have some marginal affect on Amtrak ridership. I say marginal because a bus operating into NYC -- let's say coming into NYC on a Sunday night in July -- will hit two insufferable bottlenecks. The first is roughly Exits 6 or 7 to 8A on the Turnpike, the second is the Lincoln Tunnel approach. Both of these can cost an hour or more. This knocks out one but not the other. I've often wondered why some of those bus lines don't make an interim stop at Secaucus Junction to allow passengers to avoid the approach road delay and hop in on the train for the last couple of miles.

JCGUY wrote:The only potential affect I can imagine, would be that interstate bus service may be more quick and reliable, which might have some marginal affect on Amtrak ridership. I say marginal because a bus operating into NYC -- let's say coming into NYC on a Sunday night in July -- will hit two insufferable bottlenecks. The first is roughly Exits 6 or 7 to 8A on the Turnpike, the second is the Lincoln Tunnel approach. Both of these can cost an hour or more. This knocks out one but not the other. I've often wondered why some of those bus lines don't make an interim stop at Secaucus Junction to allow passengers to avoid the approach road delay and hop in on the train for the last couple of miles.

It would be great. Just as having a lot more parking at SEC would be great. However, like the parking, SEC wasn't designed with any reasonable accommodations for buses.

What's there now is completely shoehorned in there as an afterthought. It's down a little back staircase from everything else, the loading area will hold maybe ~5 buses, turnarounds are tight, and there's no capacity to hold buses for any length of time. It could not accommodate a large volume of buses in it's current form, simply put.

At present, it's a curbside pickup, not a station. Making it a station would be a good idea, and will cost a bunch of money and probably a lot of permitting, considering the meadowlands/wetlands surrounding the station.

Widened roads have a funny way of becoming worse than their original layout. I'd say it will have no impact on overall rider numbers.

25Hz wrote:Widened roads have a funny way of becoming worse than their original layout. I'd say it will have no impact on overall rider numbers.

I think a lot of people have a misconception about congestion. Yes, the congestion tends to either reappear in a few years to decades or the congestion moves to the new bottleneck; however, when it does, it still has a higher throughput than before meaning greater economic activity. Although mass transit does not usually have the same properties, (capacity is so high in the first place, roads are too good to encourage taking a transit, or the transit is poorly designed or operated and goes from nowhere to nowhere at a time that no one is going anywhere) I think we might be experiencing it in the NYC area.

zerovanity59 wrote:

25Hz wrote:Widened roads have a funny way of becoming worse than their original layout. I'd say it will have no impact on overall rider numbers.

I think a lot of people have a misconception about congestion. Yes, the congestion tends to either reappear in a few years to decades or the congestion moves to the new bottleneck; however, when it does, it still has a higher throughput than before meaning greater economic activity. Although mass transit does not usually have the same properties, (capacity is so high in the first place, roads are too good to encourage taking a transit, or the transit is poorly designed or operated and goes from nowhere to nowhere at a time that no one is going anywhere) I think we might be experiencing it in the NYC area.

I'm not so sure you can say that. Greater activity, maybe. But not as efficient if its sitting in traffic for a few hours. Studies here and in Japan and the UK have shown a 1:1 correlation between highway capacity and VMT (on average). In other words, adding road capacity influences people to drive more miles, either by taking more trips or by taking longer trips than they otherwise would have. Its called "induced demand".

"In other words, adding road capacity influences people to drive more miles, either by taking more trips or by taking longer trips than they otherwise would have. Its called "induced demand"."

And as a society, the last thing we would want is to facilitate people driving on summer weekends to see family and friends, take in the Shore or hiking trails, or otherwise leave their apartment block towers.

The absolute worst time for travel at the 6-8A bottleneck is summer Fridays and summer Sundays. This travel is for socializing, recreation, all the good things that we work all week to enable us to do. I have no idea why seeing hundreds of thousands of people moving about to take part in social activities --or Heaven forbid "inducing" such travel, is somehow a social bad.

To get back on topic, didn't NJT add some bus staging capacity to Secaucus, essentially in preparation for the Super Bowl? I go through Secaucus every so often, and you can't really see the new bus staging area from the tracks, but out of the corner of my eye I saw leveling and paving work going on directly east of the station. The area set up is not enormous, but I think there's some enhanced capacity relative to what was originally there.

JCGUY wrote:
And as a society, the last thing we would want is to facilitate people driving on summer weekends to see family and friends, take in the Shore or hiking trails, or otherwise leave their apartment block towers.

I have no idea why seeing hundreds of thousands of people moving about to take part in social activities --or Heaven forbid "inducing" such travel, is somehow a social bad.

Who said anything about denying people the right to visit Mom or going down the Shore? However, the evidence of the multiple ways in which our addiction to private cars is harming us is growing, and is difficult to dispute. If you don't realize that, there's nothing I can say that will convince you.