Mess transit:

[jrittenhouse]

New Jersey town builds commuter station for $450 million - without a parking lot for commuters.

A parking facility, the agency claims, would simply draw more cars to an area already clogged with traffic. Then why did the New Jersey Turnpike Authority spend millions on a long exit ramp connecting the station to the turnpike? The reason, obviously,

Comments

[hai_kah_uhk]

How very New Jersey! (I lived there for 5 memorable years.)

[jrittenhouse]

Well, read the next comment...

[pheltzer]

It's amazing the institutional amnesia or inability to admit the original purpose. I was living there when they built that station. And the original justification was to build that train station as a transfer point so buses could drop off passengers close to the city and get them on trains that would make it in faster. This would be a boon for the commuters and get a considerable amount of traffic out of the Lincoln Tunnel. Of course the Bus side of NJ Transit and the Train side of NJ Transit clearly never met each other because very few of the buslines actually route through there. It's not helped by the fact that most of the NJ Transit bus routes are essentially leased out to private bus companies who operate the transit lines but aren't transit and have no obligations to do anything but operate the pre-existing routes.

[jrittenhouse]

That's just mindblowingly stupid.

[pheltzer]

Well yes. But it's not the stupidest thing I've seen involving NJ Transit. When I was still living there and working in Manhattan I would take the bus in every day. So I drove to Park-n-Ride lot of my choice which also happened to be at a rest stop on the GS Parkway. They provided access from a surface street to the parking lot so you didn't have to actually get on the parkway to get there. But since it was the rest stop on the road it had access to/from the parkway as well. Problem was that lot was routinely full by 6:30 AM. So if you went into the lot couldn't find a spot you had three choices, park illegally, get onto the parkway, or back out to the surface street. All of which would earn you a ticket if the State Police were around. Situation 1 is obvious, illegal parking... you get what you deserve. But Situations 2 and 3 they'd write you a ticket for avoiding paying tolls.

[princejvstin]

Brilliant!

That rivals the AMC theater chain which spent a chuck of change to build a theater here where the ticket booths were all outside.

Not a problem in August...but in January when its 10 below zero...

They spent a chuck of change redesigning the front area to have it be inside.