4 replies to this topic

[KevinKorell]

We had a nice time today on our NY Minifest. Seven people participated. We were not bound to a schedule since every segment of our trip involved frequent headways. But we were about 30-40 minutes behind what was planned, on account of a 10-minute delay due to PATH single tracking through Newark and Harrison. That caused us to miss the intended HBLRT at Exchange Place, setting us back another 15 minutes as we had to await the next Bayonne-bound car in the cold. The return to the World Trade Center was, of course, bittersweet. It was great to see the area active as a transportation center, but as the trains come out of the tunnel into daylight one is reminded of what happened there. The platforms and the main bank of escalators are exactly where they were before, but they lead up to what used to be the subterranean shopping mall that was part of the WTC complex. From there, a large set of steps takes one up to the street, in the vicinity of where the smaller WTC buildings used to be. We went back downstairs and used the reopened connection to the 8th Avenue subway. The highlight of our trip was the new AirTrain JFK, which we caught on its fifth day of operations. The stations appear to be a bit overbuilt, but one could say the same thing for the AirTrain Newark Liberty, which uses monorail technology instead of light rail. We rode one line from Howard Beach to the last terminal station in the loop (the Howard Beach and Jamaica trains run in a counter-clockwise direction around the airport), then went across the platform and made a complete loop clockwise to the same station, before boarding another train for Jamaica. Once at Jamaica, we ended up having lunch together at a McDonald's, and then returned to Penn Station on a LIRR train. Michael and I were joined by John Corbett, John Wireman, Nick Gibbon, Jishnu Mukerji, and Alan Burden. Thanks to all for coming out in the cold to ride trains for half a day. If any of you wish to mention anything about our day in more detail, or there was anything important that I missed in this brief summary, please feel free to do so. I don't intend to do a formal report on this, since it was just 5 hours from the time we met at Newark Penn Station until we all split up at New York Penn Station.

[NickG]

I guess I'll talk about what I did after I left the group.

After we arrived in Penn Station on LIRR, I said goodbye to Kevin, Michael, John 1, and John 2 (Jishnu left us when we got to Jamaica and Alan detrained in Woodside), and walked to the 33rd St. PATH station. It was time for me to get this last bit of PATH trackage under my belt.

I paid my buck-fifty and made my way to the rightmost track, where a train to Hoboken was waiting. I jogged up the front car and took the railfan seat. After a few minutes, we began rolling downtown.

Two things I could not believe about this section of the PATH system:

1) The number of sharp curves that we encountered between 9th St. and the Hudson river tube.

2) How tiny the Christopher St. station was. I can only imagine how overcrowded that station was after 9/11, especially before PATH made it exit-only during morning peak hours.

When I got to Hoboken, I made my way to a TVM and tried to buy a thru-ticket to Philadelphia on NJT and SEPTA via Secaucus and Trenton. The machine refused to perform such a transaction. So I bought a ticket to Trenton via Secaucus instead. Admittedly, I was not paying much attention to what I was doing, so I didn't realize the TVM was ripping me off when it asked for $10.40 for the ticket.

When the ticket printed, it had Secaucus AND New York Penn Station printed as transfer points to go from Hoboken to Trenton, which is why the machine charged $10.40 instead of $7.65. How NJT's programmers managed to make such an absurd mistake is beyond me.

I boarded the 3:20 Bergen County Line train and detrained at Secaucus Junction. It is an AMAZING station. The interior has attractive marble, lots of light, and cool paintings/photos of NJT rail operations on the lower level. In the main waiting area, there are color-coded, Solari-type boards for each rail line that list each train's deparure time, status, track, first stop, and second stop. The men's room, which I really needed to use, was immaculate. I relaxed on one of the benches in the main waiting area for a while before heading down to the NEC platforms. (The turnstiles are still deactivated, by the way)

There's a great view of the Main/Bergen/Pascack Valley tracks from the NEC platforms. The light in that part of the station is not that good for photos, though. Before long, the computerized female voice was announcing the arrival of NE Corridor train #7857. Less than a minute later, said train pulled into the station. I took this string of Arrow Tin Cans down to Trenton, where I changed to a much-shorter string of SEPTA Silverliner Cans. At 6:45, I stepped off the train in Market East Station in Center City Philadelphia, happily home after a cool (actually, cold) day on the rails.

[jis]

When the ticket printed, it had Secaucus AND New York Penn Station printed as transfer points to go from Hoboken to Trenton, which is why the machine charged $10.40 instead of $7.65. How NJT's programmers managed to make such an absurd mistake is beyond me.

Absurd as it may sound, according to an NJ Transit conductor who participates regularly on railroad.net, the fare calculation for transfers done at SEC (Secaucus) and NYP (New York Penn), is the same by design. It has something to do with the impossibility of checking all tickets in the short run between SEC and NYP. Supposedly, the scenario that they are apparently trying to protect themselves from (specifically in your example) is people buying HOB - SEC - North Elizabeth tickets and simply using them on a crowded train to go to NYP instead. A more common scenario would be say someone buying a Summit - SEC - Newark Penn ticket and simply suing it to go off to New York instead, as was explained by this conductor person.

Anyway, this discussion did come up on the railroad.net board, and this is the explanation that was given there. I am just reporting what was said there without taking any specific position on the matter myself.

Jishnu.

[NickG]

I guess I can understand NJT's reasoning behind this. Still, it would be nice if they would make their fares clear in their publications. I read in the current NEC timetable that there is no surcharge for changing trains in Secaucus, which led me to believe that a HOB-SEC-TRE ticket would be the same price as a HOB-NWK-TRE ticket. Relatively speaking, $10.40's quite a bit different than $7.65. Pax should at least be informed of this in the fare charts.

[jis]

Actually, as it turns out, upto 31st December you could have used a HOB - NWK - TRE ticket to transfer at SEC without running afoul of NJT ticket police. That is why the gates were open. I am not sure exactly when the full fare tickets via SEC go into effect on weekends. I suspect that they may have gone into effect effective this past weekend. Jishnu.