time wrote:Not a bad idea. Feeder services support additional ridership.
Except these towns already have nearby service actually going somewhere useful (SEC/HOB) in most cases. Why add an additional ride in the wrong direction rather than just taking your local train?
Even if you're trying to just get people who want to walk to the station, there's a lot of overlap of the catchment areas with the existing services. And if people are willing to get in a car/get dropped off/bike, then it's even more of a no brainer to go to the existing services instead.
While it's too close to the existing direct services to pull riders from those services, it's also too far from them to enable any real radial connectivity benefits. It's not going to be significantly useful for enabling reverse commutes or the like since you can't switch lines. If I want to take the PVL in to switch to the Bergen Line for my job that's out on that line, I'm still riding into SEC to do it because I'm not adding another train (point of failure in my schedule) and two seriously lengthy walks to make the transfer between lines.
--------------------
If extended out with stops in Bogota, Ridgefield Park, and connected to the HBLR it might be a little more useful. If connected (with added/moved stops) to the Bergen Line/PVL more directly to enable transfers it might also be a little more useful.
Without one or both of those, it seems almost entirely useless. Even with both, I'm extremely skeptical that it would be an intelligent use of funds as compared with improving the shabby frequencies on the existing 3 lines.