Effective Transit Service for New Jersey

The diagrams above show average weekend trip times from Hoboken to Coney Island today (left) and with Six-Minute Service on both PATH and the subway (right). With today’s frequency, total trip times can be 30min longer than average; with Six-Minute Service, total trip times would be at most 12min longer than average.

Transit in New Jersey should fully embrace the power of frequency. Weekday off-peak frequency is particularly important, as it keeps transfers painless during the times of day when auto traffic is lightest. All four PATH services, the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail, and Newark Light Rail should run at least one train every six minutes per direction, every day, all day until late in the evening.

This aligns well with the Six-Minute Service campaign for New York’s subways and buses, led by the Riders Alliance with the full support of ETA. In fact, ETA has argued that six-minute service on the subway would pay for itself. And thanks to funding recently secured by the New York State Legislature, the MTA is moving towards more frequent service on many of its lines.

PATH would especially benefit from running all services on a consistent (and high-frequency) schedule because its four services all share tracks with each other. The system contains two Y-shaped track arrangements (wyes) where trains merge. One wye has legs pointing toward Hoboken, the 33rd Street PATH tunnels, and Newport, and the other has legs pointing toward Grove Street, Exchange Place, and Newport. At these wyes, any delayed train holds up other trains sharing tracks with it. A common frequency allows schedulers and dispatchers to timetable trains so they do not conflict at wyes, and reduces the likelihood of missed transfers. We also mention this issue in our above report on the subway, but PATH has relatively more wyes and more track sharing between different services for the length of the system.

Regional rail should likewise increase off-peak frequency. Most of the operating and maintenance costs of mainline rail are fixed or depend only on peak frequency, and thus the extra costs would be minimal. Since average trip times on regional rail are longer, lower frequency than Six-Minute Service is acceptable, but each electrified branch on NJ Transit should run a train at least every half hour, all day, every day. The Northeast Corridor should have even higher frequency due to its strong demand. On the shared Northeast Corridor and Morris and Essex trunks as far as Rahway and Summit, respectively, this service level would combine to produce higher frequency. For more detail on that, see our report on modernizing New York commuter rail.

Unfortunately, transit in New Jersey has been moving in the opposite direction. Over the past 20 years, NJ Transit has cut substantial off-peak service, such as trains serving Hoboken, Trenton super expresses, and Raritan Valley Line shoulder-of-peak trains. During the same timeframe, PATH has cut its weekday off-peak frequency on the Journal Square–33rd line from every 10 to every 12 minutes, and has made similar cuts to Newark–World Trade Center service. Even worse, the Newark-WTC line runs as infrequently as every 35 minutes on weekend mornings, an unacceptably long wait for such a vital transit service.

Chart credit Uday Schultz

These service levels imperil the viability of many of the improvements that could be made by spending the proposed $10 billion that the state wants to spend to widen the New Jersey Turnpike through Jersey City on transit instead. One potential program, for instance, is an extension of PATH to Newark Airport, currently estimated at $1.7 billion. To make such an extension viable, however, PATH must run its service at regular, higher frequencies—preferably every six to eight minutes. If trains instead run every 35 minutes as they do today, most passengers simply will not ride the service out of fear that one missed train will make them miss their flight.

Beyond higher frequency, there are a host of other best practices that NJ Transit should implement in order to improve transit service in the state. One of the major ways this can be accomplished is by improving connections between services. At key connection points between less frequent services, such as at regional rail stations, bus and rail arrivals should be coordinated to facilitate as many transfers as possible, including inter-agency ones. To be clear, transfers need to complement frequency, not be expected to substitute for it, and the region should boost every regional rail line in the suburbs to service every 30 minutes in the near future and more frequent in the medium term.

The same should be true of other planned connections. For example, the Meadowlands Shuttle—the rail service connecting the sports complex and mall to the major transfer points of Secaucus Junction and Hoboken—only runs for a few select events. Taylor Swift fans got trains, but monster truck fans only had overcrowded buses. Between the regular events at the sports complex and the demands of the American Dream mall, the Meadowlands Shuttle should have regular service. The same is true of the Princeton Dinky, the train which connects the center of the city to its main train station; a Dinky train should meet every train traveling along the Northeast Corridor. While NJ Transit expands its rail electrification, the end of electric service should meet a waiting diesel train along most branches. For example, until the entire North Jersey Coast Line line is electrified, electric trains to New York should always meet a diesel train at Long Branch.

Outside North Jersey, many bus and train schedules currently have a confusing array of stopping patterns and irregular intervals between trains. For example, the Northeast Corridor rail line and the Route 9 buses each have over 10 different stopping patterns. Normalizing schedules would make it easier for riders to plan their journeys and improve service at intermediate stations where buses and trains are already passing by.

A good rule of thumb is to maintain a minimum frequency of at least half of the peak frequency during the whole day. Skimping on off-peak frequency saves extremely little operating cost and often costs as much in foregone ticket revenue. Running trains only during the morning and evening peaks costs more per service hour since railroads must schedule crews in an inconvenient manner and budget time moving trains to and from storage. Conversely, crews on systems with frequent all-day service tend to run trains carrying passengers for most of their shifts.