PATH PROMISE

[Lenin]

Remember 2 or 3 years ago when PATH instituted a 50% increase in fares.
Their argument was that to accomodate more people/hour they needed to build LONGER stations to accommodate longer cars.

Have you noticed ANY station being increased by even an INCH? A millimeter?...9th street? Christopher? 14th????? PAVONIA!!!!??????

PATH lied, plain and simple.

What PATH needs when they next run short of funds is to fire every empoyee making over a quarter of a million a year...and there are PLENTY!

When they next give you a story about their "improvements" ask them which stations have been lengthened with the last infusion of several BILLIONS in fares. There idea of MASSIVE IMPROVEMENTS is a couple pots of tulips at the Holland Tunnel entrance.

[Stinky]

Exchange Place was extended to take 8-car trains (along with cross-overs and other track improvements). The WTC was rebuilt to accommodate 8-cars. I haven't seen any changes to other stations though.

[Lenin]

Stinky,


What is the length in cars that Newport accommodates? (I guess I can count them a little later today. :D)

One really can't credit PATH for lengthening the station length though...they had unrequested HELP! :eek:

(I'll have to get off at Exchange Place and scope out the changes...I haven't been there in several years!)

[Floridian]

Here's an idea...instead of lenghtening the stations, how about running the trains more frequent??? They used to run every 4 minutes. Now they run every 5. I know it doesn't sound like much, but that works out to 3 more trains an hour.

[NOmoreLIES]

First off I agree that the service frequency is too low, especially overnight. NJ always gets the short end of the stick when it comes to Port Authority funding. They should probably just call it the Port Authority of New York.

That said, they did (finally) open up the other side of the platform at the Newport/Pavonia station 2 years ago, which doubled the amount of waiting area space. I also remember reading that Menendez listed a funded a project to build another entrance on the West side of Washington Blvd, to create better LRT to Path interconnectivity. Don't know if anything ever came of this though.

[ansky]

Even if they lengthened the platform at the Newport station you would still see the same 50 people trying to cram into the first car.

[JPhurst]

There is no feasible way they could lengthen the midtown line's tracks.

The lengthening referred to Exchange Place and WTC.

PATH was built nearly a century ago. It was never designed to handle the commuter flow it handles today.

Port Authority took it over only because it had to as part of the deal to develop the World Trade Center. It's their stepchild.

Improvements can be made on the margins, but ultimately there will have to be comprehensive regional planning to make transportation to and from NYC to be what it needs to be.

[Stinky]

There is no feasible way they could lengthen the midtown line's tracks....The lengthening referred to Exchange Place and WTC.Why couldn't they? Exchange place was lengthened so why not Christopher or Grove Street?

[Stinky]

PATH was built nearly a century ago. It was never designed to handle the commuter flow it handles today.The PATH was designed to handle a far greater load than exists today. William Gibbs McAdoo saw the Hudson Tubes as a complete replacement for the ferry services across the Hudson.

The system was designed for 90 second train headways. But today, even in rush hour, trains are 150 seconds apart. Assuming that the system can still tolerate 90 second train headways then the PATH could add another 65% capacity by putting on extra trains.

In 1914, the first year of operation of the full system, the Hudson Tubes carried 60 million passengers. In 1927 this had risen to 114 million passeger journeys. In 2005 the system carried just over 60 million passengers, a big decline from the heyday almost 70 years earlier.

[Stinky]

Improvements can be made on the margins, but ultimately there will have to be comprehensive regional planning to make transportation to and from NYC to be what it needs to be.That's what we need but NJ Transit can't even agree with the MTA about a common fare card. I have four kinds of ticket in my wallet (I could manage with three but why pay $1.25/ride when I can pay $1.20), PATH, LightRail, Metrocard and ferry ticket. It's crazy. One ticket that deducts like a Metrocard should work everywhere.

[Stinky]

Here's an idea...instead of lenghtening the stations, how about running the trains more frequent???I concur. More frequent trains. Particularly so in the evenings. Sunday through Friday evenings the frequency drops to two per hours after 11:42pm.

[RiverRes]

Increased capacity is planned for the PATH system. It will be supplied by increasing the frequency of trains. Right now the maximum number of trains the PATH can run at any one time is limited by two things: 1) the number of cars it has to run and 2) the signals along the track that control how closely one train can follow another.

PATH has placed an order for 340 new cars to completely replace its old ones. Right now PATH only has about 250-260 active rail cars. So the new order represents an increase in the fleet of around 30%. The new cars start to arrive in 2008.

To operate more trains using the additional cars. PATH is also upgrading its signaling system, parts of which date back 100 years. That project started back in 2001.

[Floridian]

PATH used to run it's rush hour trains every four minutes about two years ago. Once again, I know 1 minute doesn't sound like much, but over 1 hour thats 15 trains versus 12. There are seven cars to a train and let's assume conservatively that there are 30 people per car during rush hour. That's 210 people per train and if the ran at every four minuets and there would be 3 more trains...That's 630 people for those three trains that wouldn't be crammed into the trains as they run now. That's a lot of people.

I spoke with PATH today and they claim that they will be running the JSQ train to 33rd street via Hoboken on the weekend every 10 minutes during the day.

[Stinky]

I spoke with PATH today and they claim that they will be running the JSQ train to 33rd street via Hoboken on the weekend every 10 minutes during the day.That's wonderful. A significant improvement over the current 33rd Street weekend schedule of 15 minutes. As long as they can get the connections at Grove Street right this may not be too bad at all.

[Floridian]

Now they said that the trains would run every 10 minutes between about 9am to 7pm. Other times it would be a longer wait. They also told me that the new schedules should be in the stations tomorrow (Wednesday)