Will Secaucus, Hoboken be ghost towns if one-seat is built

[hs3730]

Hoboken would still have off-peak demand, the question is would NJT be smart enough to keep satisfying it - go down between 6 and 9PM on Thursday/Friday/Saturday and you'd think it was rush hour. Hoboken is the place for a night of drinking and partying. Send those trains direct to NYC and those customers (and their tax revenue) go to NYC instead. The only reason this developed is because there is no direct to NYC service and the trains have to turn somewhere [along with the cheaper fare]; a happy accident that is fragile enough to break with one wrong schedule choice (like, "lets make HOB weekend service a shuttle!").

[amtrakowitz]

The closest parallels would be LIRR's Atlantic Terminal and Jamaica. Are those ghost towns? No. One is used mostly as a transfer facility and the other is a quicker way to reach Lower Manhattan. Hoboken will be fine as a lesser used but still important station. Harder to keep relevant in the future will be Secaucus which has no PATH or subway connections. Yes, development there is being contemplated but environmental obstacles will probably limit what can be done there.

I'm just not understanding that loop arrangement. What's keeping New York bound trains from turning left after departing lower level Secaucus and merging with the NEC that way?

Not Long Island City? That is the most parallel to Hoboken; a waterfront terminal on the East River with connection to one subway line. There is, though, no connecting light rail line at LIC like there is at Hoboken.

Secaucus is quite relevant as a connecting stop for intra-Jersey rail service; NJT would never suddenly try to run the equivalent of the Bergen Shore Xpress to replace that transfer station in any way. The fare structure would need to be revised, however.

There will never, ever be a one-seat ride for all NYC-area commuter trains from NJ into Manhattan any more than all trains on LIRR and Metro-North will operate all the way into Manhattan, however.

[bleet]

The closest parallels would be LIRR's Atlantic Terminal and Jamaica. Are those ghost towns? No. One is used mostly as a transfer facility and the other is a quicker way to reach Lower Manhattan. Hoboken will be fine as a lesser used but still important station. Harder to keep relevant in the future will be Secaucus which has no PATH or subway connections. Yes, development there is being contemplated but environmental obstacles will probably limit what can be done there.

I'm just not understanding that loop arrangement. What's keeping New York bound trains from turning left after departing lower level Secaucus and merging with the NEC that way?

Not Long Island City? That is the most parallel to Hoboken; a waterfront terminal on the East River with connection to one subway line. There is, though, no connecting light rail line at LIC like there is at Hoboken.

Secaucus is quite relevant as a connecting stop for intra-Jersey rail service; NJT would never suddenly try to run the equivalent of the Bergen Shore Xpress to replace that transfer station in any way. The fare structure would need to be revised, however.

There will never, ever be a one-seat ride for all NYC-area commuter trains from NJ into Manhattan any more than all trains on LIRR and Metro-North will operate all the way into Manhattan, however.

Regarding the loop, pretty much all the ROW exists whereas to make the left you still have to create something of a loop going the other way which would mean creating a new ROW and taking private land.

Also the NEC Future plan calls for Amtrak to begin using Secaucus and the loop being built so I think there'll be plenty of things happening at Secaucus.

And regarding Hoboken it's still a destination for a fair number of commuters who want to go downtown not midtown.

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Funny how everything is still "eggs in one basket" when it comes to travel to Manhattan; only the existing stations can be considered. Never any consideration for tunneling from Hoboken East End into downtown (plenty of need for redevelopment in the Houston Street area), from any of the parties, with the possibility of continuing through onto the LIRR's Bushwick Branch onto the Lower Montauk or Montauk Cutoff; this should have been done instead of ESA or ARC/"Gateway", or, frankly Kearny/Swift. Such a route could naturally include a deep-level stop at Hoboken, to maintain local service (think along the lines of Market East under Reading Terminal in Philly), and would have potential for far better connections to subway routes than NYP or GCT. Of course, hindsight is 20/20 and big money becomes bigger money the higher inflation goes and the greater the regulations emerge from the administrative state in DC, never mind the egos of the politicians involved.

Hoboken to Lower Manhattan to Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn is the best routing and was studied immediately after 9/11 and dropped because of the complexity.

This not only provides a one-seat ride to Downtown from LI and NJ, but also removes 50,000 riders from the subway, which is sorely needed on the overcrowded lines of today.

[amtrakowitz]

Funny how everything is still "eggs in one basket" when it comes to travel to Manhattan; only the existing stations can be considered. Never any consideration for tunneling from Hoboken East End into downtown (plenty of need for redevelopment in the Houston Street area), from any of the parties, with the possibility of continuing through onto the LIRR's Bushwick Branch onto the Lower Montauk or Montauk Cutoff; this should have been done instead of ESA or ARC/"Gateway", or, frankly Kearny/Swift. Such a route could naturally include a deep-level stop at Hoboken, to maintain local service (think along the lines of Market East under Reading Terminal in Philly), and would have potential for far better connections to subway routes than NYP or GCT. Of course, hindsight is 20/20 and big money becomes bigger money the higher inflation goes and the greater the regulations emerge from the administrative state in DC, never mind the egos of the politicians involved.

Hoboken to Lower Manhattan to Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn is the best routing and was studied immediately after 9/11 and dropped because of the complexity.

This not only provides a one-seat ride to Downtown from LI and NJ, but also removes 50,000 riders from the subway, which is sorely needed on the overcrowded lines of today.

Studied by whom, exactly?

And what "complexity"?

[bleet]

Funny how everything is still "eggs in one basket" when it comes to travel to Manhattan; only the existing stations can be considered. Never any consideration for tunneling from Hoboken East End into downtown (plenty of need for redevelopment in the Houston Street area), from any of the parties, with the possibility of continuing through onto the LIRR's Bushwick Branch onto the Lower Montauk or Montauk Cutoff; this should have been done instead of ESA or ARC/"Gateway", or, frankly Kearny/Swift. Such a route could naturally include a deep-level stop at Hoboken, to maintain local service (think along the lines of Market East under Reading Terminal in Philly), and would have potential for far better connections to subway routes than NYP or GCT. Of course, hindsight is 20/20 and big money becomes bigger money the higher inflation goes and the greater the regulations emerge from the administrative state in DC, never mind the egos of the politicians involved.

Hoboken to Lower Manhattan to Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn is the best routing and was studied immediately after 9/11 and dropped because of the complexity.

This not only provides a one-seat ride to Downtown from LI and NJ, but also removes 50,000 riders from the subway, which is sorely needed on the overcrowded lines of today.

Studied by whom, exactly?

And what "complexity"?

The only official proposal I'm aware of was this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_Manhattan" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;–Jamaica/JFK_Transportation_Project

It did not include Hoboken and it seems to not really have been dropped for complexity as much as cost -- which I suppose could be the same thing.

There was another proposal post 9/11 by a NJ straphangers group to link the PATH train line through the WTC site to the eastside IRT. Likewise that never went anywhere.

[TDowling]

The answer to the title of this thread can be summarized as such: if Secaucus and Hoboken rely that much on the railroad, then yes. If not, then no.

[amtrakowitz]

The only official proposal I'm aware of was this.

It did not include Hoboken and it seems to not really have been dropped for complexity as much as cost — which I suppose could be the same thing.

There was another proposal post 9/11 by a NJ straphangers group to link the PATH train line through the WTC site to the eastside IRT. Likewise that never went anywhere.

That project does not seem to have been dropped even due to cost, but rather because Spitzer opposed it; since it actually entailed (AFAICS) replacing the LIRR with the AirTrain via that route.

And in retrospect, ESA (favored by the now-disgraced Spitzer), now being at $10.8 billion versus the original $4.3 billion, seems like the greater error even though it was started over half a century ago.

Also, it seems like the Atlantic/JFK idea is not related to connecting the disparate commuter rail systems to each other.