NYSW passenger service restoration

Butler does not have the space needed to hold trainsets. Nor does it have ample parking to be the "end of the line" for passenger service.

The former yard has been transformed into the NYS&W maintenance of way facility and the NYS&W Tech Society's enginehouse / repair facility. There is only, one true siding at the present time that is used for freight run around moves. Not to mention the factory adjacent to the yard will become 70 townhomes in the very near future. Having four or five trainsets idling away all night long in this densely populated section of the line will not fly. I love trains, but being a resident of Butler myself I would fight against storing trainsets overnight in town.

Newfoundland is a much better location for both trainset storage and a park ride location. NJT is currently looking to build a large bus park ride facility in the field between the Newfoundland station and Route 23. This could easily be a bi-modal park ride and would work well if train service is restored. Trainset storage could easily be accomodated at the former location of the Morris County Central enginehouse just east of the station and Berkshire Valley Road. No houses near there and plenty of room.

I seriously doubt either would be considered even as temporary train storage areas at this point as the focus has always been Sparta as the western terminus of passenger service.
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With that being said and as previously reported, NJT purchased property in Hardyston, just south of Franklin with the purpose of constructing the storage yard there. The property is a former garbage dump and until recently was used by a model plane flying club. NJT does plan to remove the garbage from the site, which is one of the reasons Hardyston okayed the deal.

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Service beyond Sparta is not worth it at this point! Commuters in Franklin, Hamburg, Vernon and points north are better off driving, yes driving, down to Beaver Lake, Stockholm or even Newfoundland to catch the train there. I have reversed commuted up Route 515, which runs from Route 23 at the old Jorgensen's to the center of Vernon at least twice a month over the last three years during the morning rush hour and there are no morning backups due to traffic volumes on that road. The morning backups typically are on Route 23 just west of Kinnelon.

Train mileage between Stockholm and Vernon is much more than the road mileage. It only takes 15 mintues by car, by train I would guess it would be at least 30 minutes, if not more with station stops.

Service to points such as Middletown and Port Jervis would be a total waste of money and be redundant if you are figuring those commuters are going to NYC or someplace south of Hawthorne. You may get some commuting to points inbetween but not enough to justify the cost.

Maybrook is out as far as a storage yard since the L&HR was ripped out north of the Graham Line. No direct connection to that yard. The Graham line skirts the north side of Middletown, in an area that is not conducive to construction of a storage yard in that area either.

Maybe in 20-30 years extending service beyond Spara would be worth while but with the building regulations continuing to get more stringent, I just don't see that area continuing the growth that it had in the past.

Chris

I didn't realize L&HR had been torn up into Maybrook&taking everything
into consideration Newfoundland seems like a best case scenario for all concerns at this point.Sparta becomes a non-issue&plus access to the station area itself from 23 is good proximity.It's surreal that a spur into what will be Xanadu will in all probabilty be built before this ever happens.

CJVRR wrote:Service beyond Sparta is not worth it at this point! Commuters in Franklin, Hamburg, Vernon and points north are better off driving, yes driving, down to Beaver Lake, Stockholm or even Newfoundland to catch the train there

If they have to drive to get the train, they won't bother with the train. And what do you mean "better off driving" when they may get into an accident on their long way to the train station? Also, when you say "not worth 'it'," what "it" are you referring to? If the "it" is the capital expenditure, then you could use that argument to justify the shrinkage of other NJT lines, such as the AC line.

CJVRR wrote:Service to points such as Middletown and Port Jervis would be a total waste of money and be redundant if you are figuring those commuters are going to NYC or someplace south of Hawthorne. You may get some commuting to points inbetween but not enough to justify the cost.

Redundant in terms of what? There is no service in Warwick or Greycourt at present. Would you regard it as "redundant" that the NEC and NJCL run on the same line between NYP and Rahway? Also, what do you regard as a "total waste of money" because all transit costs more to run than they take in at the farebox.

Irish Chieftain wrote:If they have to drive to get the train, they won't bother with the train.

Heh heh. Tell that to my wife who drives from Pompton Lakes to Hawthorne every day. There is a reason why parking is at a premium at most NJT train stations.

Now I think NJT wil lneed more then a mere RDC when running on the NYSW. I say a 3 or 4 car GP-40 train should handle it. As far as Route 23 goes If the trai ngoes no further then the orignal termiantion point of Butler then it's good enough. Or extend it to New Foundland. But don't delay the whole project because Sparta isn't happy. Those hicks will never be pleased at all. I'm suspired that the Daily Record and the other newspapars give that town and those people living in it a pass while Dover is bashed every other day. We're the ones pro NJT enough to build a transit hub. All that has to be worked out is when and how big. So far 4 parking decks will be added.

Hell I'm even surprised Sparta has a passenger station at all. When was the last time they had passenger service? Also is the building about the size of Dover's?

Again Rotue 23 wil lbe fine as logn as the servicie is runnign east of New Foundland/Butler but if it's running no further west then that Route 15 will still be a total parking lot.

NJT wil lnot do well in P Burg if they go there via the M&E line. It goes too far up north as you approach Dover. The RVL is better because it goes in a straight line. But sadly sicne NJT has taken the RVL extension project off their "To do" list it won't happen.

I find that insulting that the RVL won't be atleast extended back into Bloomsbury while the waste of time and $$$ Cape May Project is still on the list and the River Line got all the funding/media attention it needed to get it on line. I sure wish either the MOM,H tunnel, electrifcation of NJCL and Boonton Lines got that much attention.

Butlershops wrote:Heh heh. Tell that to my wife who drives from Pompton Lakes to Hawthorne every day. There is a reason why parking is at a premium at most NJT train stations

Well, I was trying to make a point about being "better off driving". I should have worded it better, to be sure.

Thousands of people a day drive to Metropark from Monmouth and Ocean counties to take NEC line service, and lots of those people have a line (NJCL) in their own backyards!

I know, Im one of them....Almost every day, I drive to Metropark to get to and from NYP, even though I only live a couple of miles from the Coast Line, instead of about 20 miles from Metropark.

People WILL drive to a different (other than local) train station for better service

Irish Chieftain wrote:If they have to drive to get the train, they won't bother with the train. And what do you mean "better off driving" when they may get into an accident on their long way to the train station? Also, when you say "not worth 'it'," what "it" are you referring to? If the "it" is the capital expenditure, then you could use that argument to justify the shrinkage of other NJT lines, such as the AC line.

The towns out west of Butler do not have the traditional "Town centers" near the rail line, so 99.9% of the potential riders will need to drive to the station anyway. If I lived in Vernon I would personally prefer to drive down to Stockholm, an additional 15 minutes, to get the train.

Using the current time for freight train movements it takes 20 minutes to get from Vernon to Sparta, and close to 30 minutes between Sparta and Stockholm. Improvements to the line for passenger service would decrease the time but not by 35 minutes. Currently it take freights 1 hour of travel time between Butler and Sparta, and 45 minutes between Sparta and Warwick.

Another factor is ticket costs. What would the price difference be between tickets at Vernon vs. tickets at Stockholm or Newfoundland? A few bucks a month in my pocket for driving another 15 minutes would be worth it to me. Again taking into consideration current traffic volumes on the roadways, service beyond Sparta is not worth it at this time, IMO.

Irish Chieftain wrote:Redundant in terms of what? There is no service in Warwick or Greycourt at present. Would you regard it as "redundant" that the NEC and NJCL run on the same line between NYP and Rahway? Also, what do you regard as a "total waste of money" because all transit costs more to run than they take in at the farebox.

You really can't compare the NEC and NJCL to the NYS&W and the Port Jervis Line. The NEC and NJCL have different terminus points but share the line as they move east. You are talking about sharing a line at the western terminus where passenger volumes are at there lowest, therefore the revenue is split at its least profitable point. Not the case with NEC or NJCL.

Port Jervis has service, Middletown has service. Servicing any station west of Campbell Hall via the NYS&W would be redundant (ie waste of money). It could also decrease the revenues collected by Metro North. You are correct that there is no current service to Warwick or Greycourt, but how many of those people would you capture with this service? Greycourt is only 10 miles away from the Metro North station in Harriman. Thats pretty convenient train service to me. Warwick is the larger of the two and has more ridership potential, but again these folks could easily drive down to Tuxedo, to catch the train. For those folks it is and will continue to be a much shorter commute than taking a train down the NYS&W.

People want a shorter commute not a longer one. An estimate on mileage the train would need to travers from Campbell Hall to Hawthorne via the NYS&W is 85 miles and via the current MN / NJT service its only about 55 miles. Thats a 30 minute difference in commute time.

Service beyond Sparta is just not going to be worth it at this time.


Chris

Question is: Is there enough potential commuter traffic willing to drive to Newfoundland....and along the line from there to Paterson to justify it?]

OR

Enough more if end of line was Hardyston?

Again. The service shouldn't go beyond Stockholm or New Foundland. sicne those Nimbys in Sparta doesn't want the rail service at all then let that area drive over to Stockholm or New Foundland while towns east of the New Foundland/Stockholm enjoy their service.

It'll be worth it for the traisn to terminate there and New Foundland and Stockholm do have more then enough space around the ROW for a big P/R like what Dover and Mt Arlignton has.

Irish Chieftain wrote:
Redundant in terms of what? There is no service in Warwick or Greycourt at present.

FWIW, NJT operates the 196 and 197 bus routes between Warwick and the Port Authority Bus Terminal. The 196 seems to take about 1:47. I doubt rail service can do much better than this.

The distance between Warwick and Hawthorne is about 63 miles by train. Assuming an average speed of 45 mph (which is quite high for NJT) we're still talking 1:24 just to get from Warwick to Hawthorne.

It is also interesting to note that the distance between Newfoundland and Warwick by rail is 41 miles, whereas the distance by highway is just over 20 miles. Who would want to ride an additional 21 miles?

In all probability the largest concentration of patronage would be from
Newfoundland eastward.Hypothetically,were the service to start this week with say 3 trains in each direction I believe you'd easily have enough monthly commuters inside of 3-4 months to justify it.Stockholm might be viable, but anything beyond that would be a customer base that would take long term to develop.No need to stall this any longer with Sparta's petty politics.The park&ride planned for Newfoundland should be catalyst
for pushing this along.With so little freight coming through these days, neither NJT nor NYS&W can rationalize a delay.It's a best case scenario waiting to happen.

About the "so little frieght" statement. I would just like to add that the NYSW has been having a lot of freight on the Southern Division. So its not just some dead little line. The line has been seeing 100+ car westbound trains lately even some requiring pushers. Even the eastbound trains have been getting long with empty garbage cars going to the end of the division to be loaded for westbounds. So NJT would have to deal with a good amount of freight traffic. For one the NYSW has the triweekly SU100 (east) and SU99 (west) plus further east there is a good amount of local traffic. Most locals go only as far as Butler though. The NYSW still has a good amount of freight to handle.

I realize there is still freight coming through but it isn't what it was B4
Conrail breakup.My point is both the railroad&NJT really have no valid
reason why this couldn't have already been done.Certainly a morning/afternoon commuter service could be worked around current
NYS&W schedule.

trainfreak wrote: So NJT would have to deal with a good amount of freight traffic.

11 trains a week is not a lot of freight traffic. Most of the work is east of Passaic Junction. The local comes out in the late evening to work between Passaic Junction and Butler. There are 6 road trains per week.

The Pascack Valley has quite a bit of fright traffic as well, and NJT seems to be doing just fine there.

The NYSW has work, but it is no Lehigh or River Line. The route west of PC is still relatively quiet.