Call it Train-ageddon. The Portal Pivot. Or maybe the Hoboken Shuffle.
New Jersey Transit’s recent announcement that it would temporarily halt direct service of some trains to Penn Station, while also reducing the total number of trains running into New York City, has caused headaches aplenty for many New Jerseyans just trying to get to and from work.
This 30-day schedule reduction, through March 15, is due to the final phase of construction on the new Portal North Bridge over the Hackensack River in Kearny, which is being readied for commuter trains this spring. Many NJ Transit trains from New Jersey are not going directly to Penn Station during this period; instead, they are being diverted to Hoboken, where riders must transfer to the PATH.
As if this rerouting weren’t frustrating enough, a track fire on Friday suspended all PATH service in and out of Hoboken by the Port Authority during the evening commute, leaving commuters scrambling for a way home.
Will the spiffy new Portal North Bridge (which cost more than $1.8 billion) eventually ease the commute to the city? New Jerseyans certainly hope so. The old bridge was a notorious bottleneck whenever it failed to close properly after opening for marine traffic. The new bridge, 50 feet higher, eliminates the need to open and close entirely.
Montclair resident Mike Searls has been commuting to his Midtown job for the past two years. He says that while the current commute into Manhattan hasn’t been as bad as he expected—and he actually likes going through Hoboken now—the journey home has sometimes been frustrating, since the PATH train times rarely align with NJ Transit trains returning to New Jersey—making his evening commute nearly twice as long. He does, however, appreciate the temporarily free PATH rides.
Josh Crandall, also a Montclair resident, has been commuting to his technology job at a New York bank for more than 20 years. He knows firsthand the toll of a grueling commute. In 2006, he created the Clever Commute to help riders find workarounds when trains were down and alert them when they needed an alternate route into Manhattan.
“It was the kind of day after one of those bad commutes, and I was looking around, thinking, Why couldn’t we have helped each other last night?” he recalls. This was before New Jersey Transit and other agencies were sending out alerts, and long before the technology landscape looked the way it does today. “So I got some people together and said, ‘Hey, give me your email address, and let’s share information with each other in case there’s a problem.’ And that’s what we would do,” he says.
Crandall started the Clever Commute on the Montclair line. “And then somebody on another train line…approached me and said, ‘Hey, can you do this on the Morristown line, too?’ And so I rigged up the technology, and it just grew.”
What began as a website—clevercommute.com, which lists all of the travel options from the Montclair-Boonton line into New York City—is now a more comprehensive app for iPhone and Android that provides riders with information on NJ Transit, Metro-North and the Long Island Rail Road.
The app is free, with the option to upgrade to Clever Commute Premium for additional features. For instance, commuters know how chaotic Penn Station can be when a train’s track is announced and everyone rushes there at once. The Premium version includes analytics designed to help users beat those crowds, including a track predictor.
So what does Crandall recommend fellow riders do to ease the current commuting crunch?
Personally, he’s been leaving especially early to avoid the crush on the trains, though he says it’s still crowded even at 6:30 am, when he can usually snag a seat. Are fellow commuters being considerate and keeping their bags off the seat next to them? He laughs: “There’s always some of that.”
While every commuter’s situation is different, Crandall points to “some good bus options—especially the New Jersey Transit Park & Rides, such as the one at Allwood Road in Clifton,” he says. “In addition to NJ Transit, there are private bus services, such as Boxcar, but they tend to be expensive, and you have to reserve your seat.”
There are also several ferry services throughout New Jersey, from Hoboken down to the Highlands.
These recent disruptions amid have been especially punishing for people who work in uptown Manhattan, as each additional transfer or uptown train adds significant time to their already extended commutes. If commuters can get to Secaucus Junction—where there are two large private commuter parking lots—two lines are still running directly into Manhattan: the Northeast Corridor and North Jersey Coast lines, though both are operating on reduced schedules. Crandall says a fair number of trains continue to run to and from the city each day on those lines.
“Beyond that, there’s really not much magic,” he says. “You get on a bus or a train or a ferry, or you drive yourself in. Or”—as NJ Transit recently recommended—you work from home.”
And mentally prepare yourself for future headaches, he says, as NJ Transit is planning another shutdown this fall.
