New Dinky to Nassau Street

It obviously makes zero sense to have multilevel EMUs on this route. Streetcars or LRVs would make sense, but that requires the city and the university to buy into the plan. A busway isn’t the worst idea - the worst would be allowing the ROW to revert - but this better be a short-mid-term plan where the long-term plan includes rail transit again.

I don't think the borough and University would want tracks running on their property. One thing about University Pl is that there are already buildings on both sides of the road, I think. Building a busway wouldn't be terrible. The one big advantage with doing this along the Dinky route is that after the buses can end their runs in Downtown Princeton, much closer to the Palmer Sq, than the previous NJT rail station in Princeton. If the Dinky is replaced with a busway, I wouldn't hold your breath about the rails coming back again. Yes, the bus ride would take longer than the train from the current Princeton Station but I guess maybe by no more than five minutes. Your walk from Downtown Princeton to a proposed bus stop closer to Downtown Princeton than the current NJT rail station would be cut timewise over walking from the present NJT station to Downtown Princeton. One concern that I have with these buses though is once they would enter the local streets, they would probably be subjected to traffic.

Bustitution is inevitable!

NJT should have thought about a solution back in the late 90s when the Arrows were about 20-25 years from the end of their useful lives, with plenty of time to think and act.

It would have been nice to start thinking about this in the late 90s. It seems that these days, the Dinky gets cancelled because of mechanical issues and with the poor unreliability of the Arrow IIIs, I'm not surprised.

Yes, carter, I hate to say it but down the road, the permanent bustitution would probably be inevitable. NJT, more often than not, runs only one open car on the Dinky and probably that one car isn't even that full. By not running the Multilevel MUs on the Dinky, they can be used on lines with more ridership. Do we want to inconvenience 100 or 1000 people? I'd much rather see the Multilevel MUs operate on lines where the stations are a "light rail" distance from each other. For example, the M&E could use them, especially on any local train. On the Princeton Branch, only running one car open out of the two cars on almost all of the trains is basically transporting a busload of passengers.

How many Arrow IIIs does NJT have left? If there are enough cars to string together to cover the 2.5 miles or so along the Princeton branch, they could just have a stationary 2.5 mile long train where you board at one end, walk the length of the train, and disembark at the other end. Rail connection maintained, zero operational cost!

Matt Johnson wrote: ↑Sun Aug 09, 2020 7:28 pm How many Arrow IIIs does NJT have left? If there are enough cars to string together to cover the 2.5 miles or so along the Princeton branch, they could just have a stationary 2.5 mile long train where you board at one end, walk the length of the train, and disembark at the other end. Rail connection maintained, zero operational cost!

Wouldn't that basically be a modified rail trail though??? XD

Matt, I wish I could answer how many Arrow IIIs are left. I like your humor about connecting those Arrow IIIs and having people walk through them but I don't think that that will really happen. I can imagine that there wouldn't be a lot of room for people to walk past each other through the railcars. Once those Arrow IIIs are gone, I don't know if they will never be converted into anything else. The Dinky route is a little above 2.7 miles and people who just want to get off of the train and into their cars probably don't always want to walk too far.

njtmnrrbuff wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 5:06 pm Once those Arrow IIIs are gone, I don't know if they will ever be converted into anything else.

SEPTA might grab them as cab car conversions (they already have an Arrow I and II as cab cars).

About under 160 Arrow IIIs left, perhaps more like 130-150 range.

it seems to me that if NJT runs out of functioning Arrow 3s, they could "isolate" the line from the national system to get
out from under FRA crash standards and such and run some basicallyoff -the-shelf DMUs like the River Line cars. They'd only need a couple.

R36 Combine Coach wrote: ↑Sun Aug 09, 2020 6:10 pm NJT should have thought about a solution back in the late 90s when the Arrows were about 20-25 years from the end of their useful lives, with plenty of time to think and act.

Pretty sure they did, and this was the answer

TomNelligan wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 8:47 pm it seems to me that if NJT runs out of functioning Arrow 3s, they could "isolate" the line from the national system to get out from under FRA crash standards and such and run some basicallyoff -the-shelf DMUs like the River Line cars. They'd only need a couple.

Yes, because such cars are maintenance free, right? The Stadler GTW 2/6 cars that are running on the River Line are all being re-engined due to very low mean distance between failures (they're 16 years old). And then where are you going to maintain them anyway, since they won't be allowed onto the NEC? There would also be the matter of who would operate them, presuming that NJTR personnel will not.

I don't know how much money NJT spent to build the high platform at Princeton Junction for the dinky, never mind how much money was blown to move the Dinky out of its long-standing Princeton terminal for the sake of that "arts and transit" thing, but that will mean yet more money (since the Stadler cars do not have an alternate form that can use platforms that are four feet above rail, although Stadler does say they will sell "tailor-made" cars albeit not specifying how much more money that would be) and the dinky will not run any closer to the center of Princeton than it currently does.

BTW, the Stadler GTW 2/6 also comes in EMU form.

Another option:

Not very practical--would have to be push-pull ...

Not practical--would have to be push--pull ...