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Originally posted by gct29:
Regarding Hoboken's viability versus Penn Station, let's keep in mind that by the time Pocono service starts, PATH will almost certainly be running to downtown NYC again

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Two words: Midtown Direct. Even when PATH was still in full swing pre-911, many passengers had already abandoned trains going to/from Hoboken in favor of those going to NY Penn. Continued service to/from Hoboken on lines such as the Boonton line kept the service sleepy by comparison (which I had hoped would be alleviated by the opening of the Montclair Connection, but, alas, was not and will not be, due to no electrification between Great Notch-Denville and Dover-Hackettstown).

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...and added ferry service in the works will probably be running too.

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Well, there's no counting on Imperatore; he isn't buying double-deck ferryboats that would be more suited to the Lackawanna ferry slips, nor is he instituting more Hoboken-38th Street ferry trips...and something tells me that passengers will find it inconvenient to jump on HBLRT (when northern leg is finished) to go to the Port Imperial ferry terminal (which itself used to be a rail terminal for the West Shore line).

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That would make Hoboken easily as convenient to the city as Penn, since most Penn passengers transfer to subways anyway

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Well, since PATH is not part of the NYCTA system (at least not yet), the comparison is invalid since it's a double-transfer out of Hoboken, i.e. NJT to PATH to NYCTA, as opposed to NYP to NYCTA or NYP to street. Last I looked, you can't walk across the Hudson River...besides, if you could, you wouldn't want to get run over by a jet-ski, or worse, a Princess Cruise ship...

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Penn is also ridiculously overcrowded in both train and person capacity, and will only get worse in the future

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Quite so...which is something that the Access to the Region's Core project - www.accesstotheregionscore.com - is supposed to be addressing. Grand Central has plenty of extra space to take the overcrowding, especially on the lower level...only thing is, to tunnel from the NYP tracks to reach the GCT tracks, and that's no mean trick. As for the other shore of the Hudson, there used to be four other rail terminals over there...so the capacity problem should have been addressed by using them, but they were all demolished. The Midtown Direct attitude, however, continues to reign supreme...and if NJT's going to cross the Delaware River, they had better offer a one-seat ride right into Midtown Manhattan. Trains to Hoboken will be mediocre at best; they'll be decently full, but people transferring at Dover will strain the capacity of that small station. A direct train would eliminate many of the headaches (just not for the crews that would need to change engines...unless they reactivate the third-rail and do dual-mode service; there are no catenary dual-mode engines yet...)

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The only problem with Hoboken is the psychological barrier of not arriving in NY -- silly, but not to be underestimated.

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Not quite as silly as it appears...the other active waterfront terminal in the NYC area, LIRR's Long Island City terminal, is far, far less active than Penn Station (or Flatbush Avenue, for that matter). Also, when it comes to Hoboken, there's the problem of low platforms (all of NJT's rolling stock, with the exception of unrebuilt Comet I cars, are high-platform oriented), and there's also the quite scary fact that Hoboken Terminal remains susceptible to flooding from the Hudson River (which many area passengers may recall from a "Nor'easter" storm in the mid-1990s, when the Hudson flooded out all the NJT platforms and turned the PATH platforms into an aquarium).

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But maybe I'm just biased. Hoboken is a train station. Penn Station is a basement (no, we're not getting the Farley PO anytime soon). I prefer train stations.

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Well, by US definitions, Hoboken is a terminal, while NYP is a through station. I'm sure that others prefer train stations of the Hoboken type also, but they just prefer them to be in Manhattan. (As far as the Farley Post Office goes, it's merely supposed to be a new concourse plus ticket/waiting area for Amtrak only, no NJT passengers permitted to loiter; there are no additional platforms going in at the same time of its planned opening.)

I agree that much of the Cutoff service should go to Penn station, and (let's be realistic here) an extra 2 or 3 round-trips a day will not break Penn Station's back, even if they were extra to the Dover trains, which they probably wouldn't be. The broader issue I was addressing was that of capacity. The plan proposed in Access to the Region's Core is a good one in terms of fluidity, but digging a tunnel through some of the thickest infrastructure in the world would make Robert Moses quiver in his grave. Besides, GCT is as much of a rush-hour mad house as the rest of them. The track capacity may be there, but funnelling all those extra people through the terminal and onto 42nd street or the overburdened Lex Ave line seems cumbersome for a multi-billion dollar investment. (Many say the 2nd Ave subway would take care of this, but it's hard to believe that both that and ARC's plan could be built in the city's financial atmpsphere.)

A more ready allieviation, and one that wouldn't necessarily pre-empt anything else financially, would be to bring Hoboken up to the throughput capacity of its earlier years -- primarily meaning greater ferry service. I may be mistaken, but I was under the impression that the increased service was going to be municipal (PA? NYDOT?). I'm sure Imperatore wouldn't be interested in buying anything that could fit those gangways, and his present fleet wouldn't do the job. (Can you imagine those puny little things bumping into a real slip? They'd break.) Granted, most people would prefer to go straight to Manhattan, but if they were able to avoid the mess of Penn Station at a sacrifice of only 10-15 minutes (or none at all, depending on where they're going), they may be compelled to do so. The caveat is that the ferries would need to access viable points on Manhattan's waterfront (i.e. not NY Waterway's 38st terminal) where people can walk east without risking their lives on the West Side Hwy, or worse, taking a bus.

As for PATH, most passengers who use it (which is enough to run it to capacity) do not transfer to the NYCTA, but take it straight to their destinations. It runs straight up 6th Ave, which is convenient to many offices, and there are plans for a downtown loop.

The platform problem is a good point. It's not so much an issue of equipment as it is the time it takes to load or unload the cars (seems the general public doesn't know how to use stairs anymore), and they can't be heightened without considerable difficulty, but still, it's not a fatal problem. Yes, the flooding is serious, but it happens far less frequently than power outages on the NEC. And Hoboken can't be compared to Long Island City any more than it can be compared to Port Kent. LIC is too small and underserved to judge traffic patterns on a high-density scale.

And now that I'm done ranting about NYC passenger capacity, I suddenly remember that this string is about Lackawanna Cutoff service -- I'm all for it!

- Dover - Hackettstown can't be easily electrified past Netcong because the line runs through a state park and a "green acres program" restricted-development area.

- I'm sure Great Notch-Denville electrification is on their "Do it as soon as we have money" list

I've already taken more than my share of off-topic space on this string, but I've got to ask: Did these preliminary plans show a restoration of the ferry slips, or a more utilitarian refurbishment?