There were a number of factors the resulted in the Aldene Plan, and the abandonment of the CNJ complexes in Jersey City.
I wrote a term paper on it back in 1979, and spent many hours researching it in the NJ Studies Room at the Newark Public Library.
The overriding issue that came up was the huge cost involved in running the CNJ ferry boat fleet, and the lack of alternatives based on the location of the
CNJ terminal. The exisiting Hoboken Terminal, and the former Erie terminal in Jersey City had the benefits of Hudson Tubes/PATH service. When the Erie-Lackawanna ended ferry service in November of'67, life went on, with PATH trains and Public Service busses filling the void.
What I found interesting is that both the CNJ and Lackawanna ferries provided car service right up to the end. The traffic nightmares that would become the norm at the Lincoln and Holland tunnels were not yet an issue, so the value of these ferries was not respected at that time.
The issue of running busses between the CNJ terminal and points in New York City was viewed as possible during "off-peak" and weekend hours,
but not during the all important rush hour periods. Prior to 1958 when the B & O ran daily trains to and from Jersey City they provided bus connections, but their services were not as rush hour focused as the CNJ and Reading.
However, you also had the "gorilla in the room" during the mid to late 1960's. That gorilla being the fact that at that point there was a question as to whether commuter rail would be needed in the future. When NJ-DOT started to subsidize commuter rail in the mid-1960's the overall feeling was that it was needed as a stop-gap until a permanent solution could be determined. Some felt that bus service could fully replace commuter rail, others felt that a combination of the 2 was a solution. The Palmer Plan, the precourser to the Aldene Plan, called for this rail/bus combination. The volume of passengers that the New York to Trenton line carries today, was not viewed as a possibility back then. Even the Aldene Plan connection was not built as it should have been (with 2 tracks), since it was considered an exploratory way to see if CNJ commuter service was viable going forward.
Finally the CNJ was able to use the Aldene Plan as a passenger train "house cleaning" time. In addition to the schedule changes made for the Aldene Plan, the CNJ ended 24 hour service to and from Raritan, ended all passenger services to Easton, Bethlehem and Allentown, and truncated passenger service on the main line to run only as far west as Hampton. In addition the CNJ ended all passenger service on it's Newark and Elizabeth branch which not only included the Broad Street to Elizabethport shuttles, but 2 rush hour round trips between Broad Street and South Kearny (to serve the remaining industries there and Western Electric), and a single rush trip between Plainfield and South Kearny.
One interesting note in all of this came up in some of the newspapers clippings I reviewed way back then. There were some state politicos that thought the Aldene Plan was foolhardy since it would shrink the states passenger train network, and options. It was brought up that back in 1946 when the CNJ's Hackensack River swing bridge was damaged beyond repair, the CNJ should have been allowed to rebuild it was a low level swing bridge. The Dept of The Army required that the bridge be rebuilt as a high level lift bridge, if rebuilt at all. The CNJ opted to remove what was left of the bridge, and thus the Newark Bay Bridge became the sole connection between the Jersey City complex and the mainland. Had a Hackensack River bridge been rebuilt back in '46, perhaps the
Jersey City terminal and freight yards would have been viewed as more viable.
Ken
