By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
The pre-recorded message broadcast through a mostly empty Princeton train station in the middle of Monday afternoon, to tell customers of NJ Transit what most already knew.
To accommodate track work by Amtrak at New York Penn Station, NJ Transit has instituted its modified weekday service schedules from now to Sept.1. While many commuters in some parts of the state must make do without direct train service into Manhattan, riders from Princeton and other stops along the Northeast Corridor line will see only “minor time changes,” NJ Transit has said.
“The changes don’t really affect Northeast Corridor commuters,” said NJ Transit spokeswoman Lisa Torbic by phone.
Just the opposite is true in parts of north Jersey, particularly in a swath of bedroom communities to Manhattan. Commuters on the Morris and Essex lines are bearing the brunt, as their train service — with the exception of a few trains in the morning — is being diverted to Hoboken.
“We have adequate capacity to safely and reliably divert M&E trains into Hoboken with three full tracks available,” the transportation agency has said on its website. “We don’t have similar capacity into Hoboken from the Northeast Corridor, North Jersey Coast and the Raritan Valley lines.”
NJ Transit customers at Princeton station were not short on opinions Monday, as one said the time has come to have a rail system that can accommodate faster trains like those in Europe and Japan.
Sean Nolan, waiting to catch the Dinky in the afternoon, said he is a regular train rider who uses NJ Transit every day. He said he favors the repair work, and said that as New Jersey gets more densely populated, the state needs a good mass transit system for people to get around.
Another commuter shared the experience of the morning rush hour. Lisa Torquato said that at Princeton Junction, the train into New York was more crowded than usual. She had left a little earlier on purpose, something others might have done. Arriving at Penn Station, she found it to be “crowded.”
Toward the late afternoon, NJ Transit reported a train from Princeton Junction was running 15 minutes late due to “congestion from Amtrak track maintenance.”
One state lawmaker who represents Princeton weighed in and lamented that people who are using public transportation are being inconvenienced.
“July and August have been accurately labeled as the summer of hell for NJ Transit riders,” said state Assemblyman Jack M. Ciattarelli (R-16) by email. “It is a sad commentary when we inconvenience the very people who do exactly what we need more and more people to do – use mass transit. Between vacation time, possible work-from-home arrangements, and minimizing train schedule adjustments, the hope is most commuters will be spared major disruptions and the Amtrak work is completed on time.”
Cheryl Kastrenakes, executive director of the Greater Mercer Transportation Agency, said last week that despite the inconveniences that might occur, taking the train is “still going to beat being in a car.”
