Why does Amtrak not serve Secaucus Junction?

Billio, I am not all that interested in the politics, but I can tell you one thing about I-95. It is not a through road because the residents sued it out of existence. When you travel Rte. 1 you can see the abandoned businesses along the road between towns where the interstate was supposed to be built.

I-95 was cancelled by the locals. It has nothing to do with the Turnpike. If that were actually true, then how do you explain toll-free I-295 which parallels the Turnpike all the way from the Delaware River to Camden?

And you’re wrong about the I-95 designation. The I-95 designation and signage resumes precisely where I-195 joins the NJ Turnpike.

The only explanation is stupidity. It would have been far better to expand the NJTP and never build I-295. The NJTP could have been integrated into NJ 42/AC Expressway/Walt Whitman Br, but it never was. I-295 was built during the era when tolls on the interstate system were verboten, so the parallel I-95 and I-295 were inked in on a map, even though the gas tax money collected on those roads would never, ever be able to cover cost of land aquisiton and construction

I-295s real purpose in life was to help real estate developers get rich by turning farm land into sub divisions. It is primarlly a Philadelphia commuter highway.

If you total the lanes available between the Del Mem Br and Geo Washington Br. on I-95, I-295/I-195 and the NJTP, There are 7 - 9 lanes between Delaware and Trenton and 6 or more from New Brunswick north. The bottle neck is betwen exit 7A and 8A were there are only 3 lanes.

One detects a bit of scepticism in this series of queries, so herewith a bit of history. Twenty or so years ago, NJ Transit rail passengers who did not live along the Northeast Corridor commuting to Manhattan (whom I exclude from this narrative) – I think this would include riders from the Boonton, Gladstone, Montclair and M&E Lines, even the old Erie line up to Suffern, NY – I don’t recall these lines’ formal names – took the former EL into the Hoboken Terminal. Here they hopped a ferry – or maybe changed cars to the PATH subway – for the rest of their journey into Manhattan, because, one will recall, Hoboken was the end of the line. All those riders had to pass through Hoboken. At that time, there were no places to change trains on the NJ Transit system for entry/egress into Midtown Manhattan (Penn Station). Knowing this, and wishing to rectify it, New Jersey rail planners long advocated a high-speed connection (I do not recall its name at the moment) from the lines heading into Hoboken and the Northeast Corridor so the NJ Transit could pump more trains directly into Midtown from locales where the service was not offered, and urged construction of a transfer station at Secaucus where the lines that didn’t connect directly with the NE corridor service could change cars just once and ride anywhere in New Jersey and elsewhere that NJ Transit’s rail service tentacles extended. When and if implemented, of course, these proposed servcie changes could only put more riders directly into Midtown, and reroute them away from Hoboken.

Such potential changes in ridership habits threatened the livelihood of interests in Hoboken who operated the candy and tobacco concessions, who faced a potentially whopping (for them) loss of revenue. Needless to say, they opposed with great vig

I am still not sure I follow everything Billo says…he wanders through long sentences and I get lost. However, there a few things. His cronology is off and his understanding of the way tihngs were before is not fully true. Yes, DL&W, and to a lesser extent the Erie, talked access to Manhatten for years but never had the wherewithal so settled for operating ferries and handing off to the Tubes, later PATH. It wasn’t until NJT had control of all lines in the late 80s’ that the DL&W lines, by that time EL or CR, could be consdered to be able to connect to the Corridor. The idea of bringing the former EL lines in came next and thus Sec. Jct. MidTown Direct, as the service from the electrified DL&W/EL lines from Gladstone, Dover, and Montclair was dubbed, was a success well ahead of predictions and the need to bring the former ERIE/EL lines to the service became an important project leading to Sec. Jct. It was an attempt to alter passenger travlling patterns and was extremely successful. But what is also overlooked here is that in the overall scheme of things, there was, and still is, expected potential growth which have to be planned for now and not after the fact. NJT and NJDOT along with NYNJPA and its subsidiary components, along with local governments and agencies in NJ, have all been working on plans, some complimentry, some supplimentry, some at cross purposes I am sure. And if poltics, et al, doesn’t happen, I would be surprised. Has any of which BIllo complains really been unexpected or has it stopped projects…and progress…from really happening? Am I saying turn your head, don’t look, just let things happen? I don’t mean to, I just mean that that is they way things are done and until Mr. Clean can be in charge, we aren’t going to change the way things get done. Why didn’t the DL&W or the Erie or the Lehigh Valley or the New York Central or the CNJ-B&O-RDG build a new set o

My trip went very smoothly. We alighted Amtrak at Newark Penn Station and booked a trip to Middletown, NJ on the Port Jervis line with the helpful trainee ticket clerk in the beautiful main waiting room of Newark Penn Station.

We then got on the same tracks we just alighted from on a random Penn-Station bound Northeast Corridor Line NJT electric train. I didn’t pay too much attention to this train as I was excited to get to Secaucus Junction.

Secaucus Junction should really be called Secaucus Transfer. The Northeast Corridor is upstairs. The Hoboken-bound line (whose name I can’t recall) is downstairs. The path is clearly marked and the station is spotlessly clean.

No matter where you’re transferring to or from you’re forced upstairs one or two flights to go through the fare gates. You get a magstripe ticket when booking any trip that requires a transfer at Secaucus, and that magstripe activates the automated fare gates on the upper-upper level at Secaucus. Although we had plenty of time to wait we didn’t explore the concessions but I’m pretty sure there were not enough. The lower platform sits underneath the very loud highway overpass and gives a great view of several signal sets for us railroad signal geeks. Got lots of different aspect photos of those signals.

The customer service folks upstairs were extremely helpful and friendly and were quick to correct me that I wanted the lines through to Port Jervis, not Suffern as we had assumed.

The video screens on the platforms were correct for all the trains that stopped.

I should note that the lower platforms appeared to be significantly older than the NEC platforms do.

Both M-N and NJT have great conductors. The conductor on the Port Jervis line operated totally by Metro-North took our magstripe tickets but let the kids keep them as souvenirs. They were always in such a good mood and my kids had a great time whenever they came by checki

The PJ trains on NJT/MNRR have some great conductors who have made several of our trips real fun…

Platforms up and down at SJ were opened at the same time…

There are only three, I think, vendors at SJ…

SJ has also just been remodled and reconfigured for some platform entrences…

Oh, and Thomas Nast lived in Morristown, NJ therefore rode the Morris and Essex/Deleware, Lackawanna, and Western…