Yonah Freemark looks at how to increase rail ridership without adding trains.
There will be no new tunnel under the Hudson for the foreseeable future, so New Jersey Transit and Amtrak must take other measures in order to grow, says Freemark. He argues that New Jersey Transit should remove a dozen seats per car on their commuter trains to up capacity from 1,400 to 2,000. Amtrak, he says, should lengthen its trains on intercity routes-the Acela only has six passenger cars when most stations it stops at can accommodate eight.
Both companies must rethink how to do business without ARC, or they risk leaving potential passengers behind, writes Freemark:
"New Jersey Transit and Amtrak have a unique opportunity to take advantage of the limitations in tunnel capacity to reform the way they do business, to improve and speed up operations in ways that will bring some benefit to their customers but also seriously increase the number of people that can travel under the Hudson River to work every day."
FULL STORY: ARC Project Definitively Canceled, But There Are Other Ways to Improve New Jersey’s Transit Future
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