WoH Port Jervis Line Service, Studies, Work, Status

Stopping and starting a train takes time...two to five minutes off of schedule allowing for decelration, dwell time and acceleration to track speed.. and money. Unless market research shows the cost effectiveness of such a stop, there is no way it will happen. And why shouldn't these malls and entities themselves provide jitney or bus to and from nearby rail stations if they want the trade? We hear so much about governement paying for transit instead of big business, why can't it work the other way around, if business wants the business, let them also provide.

If they built a station at the commons, the Palisades mall will want one on the Pasicak, Tangers would comaplin to the LIRR and want one in riverhead, CDOT would get an earfull from the outlet malls along the NEC and who knows what else. The commons is lucky to have the existing station down the road.

I see your point--mixing public and private sectors is asking for trouble. But, as a resident of the area, something must be done in the near future to alleviate the growing mess. If ever there were a stop, it would have to be located far enough from the mall so as not to receive "preferential treatment" but far enough from the residential area; and believe me there is a spot on the line for this!!

Compare to the Middletown/Town of Wallkill station: it falls in between the Galleria Mall and the residential area of Scotchtown.

Of course, to reap the benefits, Woodbury Common would have to run its jitney to the station, like henry6 mentioned. Do you see it happening?

But Middletown/Town of Walkill station was designed to get the station out of downtown Middletown so as that the track could be abandoned and so that the railroad service could also be accessed easily from Routes NY17 and I84 without regard to malls. Again, if a market survey by NJT or MNRR shows there is a big enough number to build a new station and add a stop regardless of lengthening schedules, then it might be a good idea.

Forget it. The railroad tried and the local community stopped it. While the proposal was for a full-time station, it didn't fly then, and it probably won't fly now.

I don't think the "Hey they got it, I want my station too!" argument would be a show-stopper. People don't take buses to Palisades Center, and my guess (uninformed, but that's what guesses are) is that Tangers in Riverhead doesn't have nearly the tourist/bus market that Woodbury has. Woodbury is the only one I see getting write-ups in the Times about its attraction to tourists.

Regardless, it's all a moot point, because the local community said no. End of story.

Jim

Erie-Lackawanna wrote:Forget it. The railroad tried and the local community stopped it. While the proposal was for a full-time station, it didn't fly then, and it probably won't fly now.

I'm not trying to be a smart-aleck... but in regards to the Black Rock project on the New Haven Line, it was stated that the station had a good chance of being built because it would be paid for 100% by the property developer, at no cost to the State of Connecticut. In fact, in that thread, you happened to say it best. (I'm not trying to put your own words against you -- it just happened to be the most concise answer in the thread.)

Erie-Lackawanna in http://www.railroad.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=317524#p317524 wrote:The proposal is, as Dutch said, part of a private developer's plans to build a new "community" adjacent to the old Georgetown station site. The station would be built by the developer (a la Merritt 7), at (ostensibly) no cost to the State of CT. And as ghastly as the idea seems, it has legs - strong ones - and it will probably be done.

Now, if Woodbury Commons were to pay for the construction of its own station, along with any additional costs demanded by MNR (operational costs for added time to schedules, diesel for stopping and restarting, etc.) why not? The locals may not want a full-time station -- and the mall may not either, since it would essentially turn the mall into a park-and-ride lot. But weekend-only service at the times suggested earlier by TDowling (2 outbound stops in the morning, 2 inbound stops in the late afternoon) would effectively prevent the station from being used by anyone other than shoppers, and it wouldn't cause any major problems for the schedule. The turnaround time for these trains in Port Jervis is hours, not minutes.

With that said, I am going to guess Woodbury Outlets simply can't justify the cost of building a train station only to receive less than 2 trainloads of shoppers (assuming neither train is filled to capacity exclusively with shoppers) on just two days of the week.

Also worth considering: Metro-North already has a pretty detailed "MNR for Dummies" page ( http://www.mta.nyc.ny.us/mnr/html/getaw ... ommons.htm ) that explains which trains stop at Harriman, and how you can get a taxi or a public bus between the station and the mall. I would think, if this particular bus was packed to the gills all the time, the idea of a second station would already be in the works. But considering the bus only meets ONE train in each direction on the weekends, Woodbury would probably be more likely to pay "Main Line" to run more buses before they plunk down the cash for a whole train station.

Long story short: even more reasons why this probably will never happen. But in the unlikely event Woodbury Commons gets crazy enough to open up the checkbook and cover all the costs... money has a way of making the impossible possible.

If they pay for it all, nobody else can sue MTA for their own stations. But then MTA would be more pressured into accepting ANY new station from any other railside property owner who's willing to pay. So no matter who pays, it's still a slippery slope. At least with the Black Rock thing, it's the State of Connecticut's problem, not the MTA.

It doesn't matter who pays for the station, if MNRR/NJT deem nobody would use it, if it adds three to five minutes to a schedule with no financial benefit, in short, if market survey says "no", then why bother building it. OR even discussing it. You have made your point, pnaw, but unless you have market research showing positive results for MNRR/NJT, there is not much more to be said.

In general, I think Mall stations make sense from a parking perspective. Commuters use the station during the week when the mall is not busy and parking is available (and maybe they shop or eat at a restaurant/food court); on the weekends, you get shoppers reverse-"commuting" to the mall.

henry6 wrote:It doesn't matter who pays for the station, if MNRR/NJT deem nobody would use it, if it adds three to five minutes to a schedule with no financial benefit, in short, if market survey says "no", then why bother building it. OR even discussing it. You have made your point, pnaw, but unless you have market research showing positive results for MNRR/NJT, there is not much more to be said.

Without having ready access to the market research that was done, my guess is that, since the railroad tried, it was something the railroad wanted. The issue here is not one of the railroad being opposed, it's that the local community didn't want it.

Jim

Tom,

FWIW the topic has been discussed heavily in the past. Here is an old thread:
Woodbury Common

and another: http://www.railroad.net/forums/viewtopi ... t=woodbury

There us an existing thread on this subject:
Existing "Railroad Stops Woodbury Station" Thread

Plus, this is the second new thread started on this subject.

Passaic River Rat wrote:There us an existing thread on this subject:
Existing "Railroad Stops Woodbury Station" Thread

You can go crazy with this. There's already a thread, somebody already asked that.

I wanted to ask a question about M8s, but I didn't want to see the question get killed dead in it's tracks by someone immediately responding, "We already discussed this." So I went through all 15 or 16 pages of the thread before finding NO ONE HAD asked my question, there had been no discussion. It took me a couple of days and I almost said screw it (as I have many many times here) but I was interested in the topic so I stuck with it.

The earlier thread referenced was last active three years and nine months ago! How far back do you have to search before you can ask a simple question?

Answer is simple , why would all that reponded 3 years and 9 months ago, have to re-type their answers, because the person is to lazy to read previous thread ???
read and learn

DutchRailnut wrote:Answer is simple , why would all that reponded 3 years and 9 months ago, have to re-type their answers, because the person is to lazy to read previous thread ???

Mr. Dutch the obvious answer is two-fold. First, if you're asking about something right now why would you want to read things people posted four years ago?? Don't things ever change?

Second, how do you know people posted these things four years ago unless you have time to search through four years of messages? You ever try and use the search function on these forums? You get hundreds and hundreds of hits. I'm sorry I don't have that kind of time to spend hours searching through the forum on the chance, "Gee maybe somebody already asked this." You think that's being lazy? You obviously have a lot more free time than I do. You're very lucky!

I can sympathize with both sides of this argument. I too, have many times referred people to "original" threads for discussions that were already had. But I also have had frustration digging through page after page of search results, just to find one needle in a haystack of irrelevant topics.

In general, I still think it's good to go back and look for older threads. It doesn't always have to be a massive pain in the neck, as long as you use specific search terms that will narrow it down. For example, instead of just "New Haven Line" you could try "New Haven Line caternary replacement" or something like that. Yes, you can make a search too specific, and it won't return any results -- but if you can get it down to 10 or 15 items, instead of 150, it's not so bad. Use the "Advanced Search" page to your advantage -- that's why it's there.

As you probably know, whenever you add a reply to ANY thread, no matter how old, it gets bumped up to the top of the first page (after the sticky posts). This allows everyone else to not only see your new question, but it gives everyone a "refresher" on all the old posts. So your hard work would be rewarded, because your new post would bring the entire conversation back up to the top of the list.