Light rail commuters may stretch PATH far beyond capacity Having trouble squeezing into that PATH train in the morning? Riding home from work with your nose pressed up against the train doors?
Blame it on the economy.
The strong economy, and recent improvements to stations and service, boosted PATH ridership to its highest levels since 1947, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates PATH, announced earlier this month.
The trains could get even more crowded when the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail Transit System begins operating in the next few months. While the PATH system mainly brings county residents from west to east and back, the first phase of light rail will bring residents from Bayonne and the southern part of Jersey City to Exchange Place and eventually Hoboken.
NY Waterway, which began ferrying passengers across the Hudson River in 1986, has also seen steady annual increases in ridership, according to company President Arthur E. Imperatore Jr.
PATH riders don't need data to be persuaded cars are more crowded than ever. As PATH riders rushed up and down Jersey City's Journal Square station escalators recently, Herman Casiano, a Jersey City resident who takes the trains, said the PATH is often crowded.
"There's too many people, not enough seats," he said. "At Newark it becomes crowded. They can't get off their stop in time, and they get annoyed. There's a lot of attitude."
But Pam Taylor, who commutes between Exchange Place and Journal Square City, didn't have too many complaints.
Well, at rush hour it's going to be crowded," she said. "But it's not too bad, and it's pretty on time."
Hudson County Executive Robert Janiszewski, a former Port Authority commissioner and now chairman of the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority, said the commuting and economic booms are related.
"A few years ago, some (Port Authority officials) were thinking the whole notion of the Internet ... would lead to more telecommuting and a decrease of riders," Janiszewski said. "That is not happening. The economy actually led to increased numbers of commuters."
Port Authority officials say station improvements on the 33rd Street line in Manhattan and expanded weekend service have also attracted more riders. PATH's annual ridership increased 11 percent since 1996, to 67.3 million passengers last year.
But increasing numbers of riders means decreasing leg room for passengers.
Steve Coleman, spokesman for the Port Authority, said the trains are running near or at capacity during rush hour.
"You know most people have to be at work from 8:30 to 9 a.m., so they're on the trains at about 8 in the morning," Coleman said.
More than 30,000 commuters take NY Waterway ferries to and from New York every day, and the company is planning several new terminals and routes, according to Imperatore.
"1999 was probably one of our best years - the company continues to grow very strongly," Imperatore said, adding that ridership has increased every year the company has been in existence.
PATH has reported ridership in each of the last nine years. But Janiszewski said a major overhaul of the PATH system is almost impossible.
"The baseline problem is this, this is a rapid-transit system, the Hudson tubes, that was built over a century ago," he said. "You have new technological cars running on rails and stations built for that earlier time. To grow the capacity, you can't have larger cars or longer trains. The platforms is too small."
Janiszewski said the Port Authority has a few strategies to "tweak" train performance: redesigning the cars to fit more passengers, improving the signaling technology in the tubes and encouraging people to be more flexible and come in to work before or after peak rush-hour periods.
Replacing the current signaling technology with a computerized system would decrease "headway," the amount of time between trains, he said. Right now, trains pull into stations every three to seven minutes during rush hour.
In 1997, the Port Authority added a minute between trains because trains were stopping between stations while waiting for the train in front of them to let passengers on and off.
Coleman said officials hope plans to redesign new PATH cars will be included in this year's budget. Each PATH car currently holds a maximum of 129 passengers. An average trains has seven cars, which means each train can move 900 riders at a time.
Hoboken is the busiest PATH station in Hudson County. About 33,300 riders crowded the Hoboken train station each day last year, a 2,100 person increase from 1998.
Ridership at Journal Square is at 25,200 people per day, up from 23,800 in 1998, and over 1,000 new riders used the Pavonia/Newport station last year. Daily ridership at Exchange Place, Grove Street and Harrison remained about the same, at 12,400, 11,900 and 5,700 people, respectively.