Blog: New Jersey

In 1664, James, Duke of York and later King James II, divided the Colony of New York, granting the portion between the Hudson and Delaware Rivers to two friends, Sir George Carteret and Lord Berkeley of Stratton, who had been loyal to him during the English Civil War. This portion later became New Jersey.

If James had never split the colony, would the New York subway cross the Hudson to destinations in New Jersey? Would the L train reach Hoboken? Or perhaps the 7 train would run to Secaucus, as this site advocates (map) in a cute but unrealistic plan?

It would certainly be useful to have a subway to the Meadowlands, though. Now if only the Yankees could move there instead of destroying the Bronx's parks.

When your 12:12 pm train on Fridays is so crowded that people are standing from the first stop (33rd St) and almost completely unable to cram into the train at the last Manhattan stop (Christopher) with a 30 minute wait until the next train, perhaps it's time to consider that you should be running more service nights.

Between 10 am and 4 pm trains run Hoboken-33rd every 10 minutes (6 trains per hour), every 12 minutes Hoboken-WTC (5 TPH), and every 10 minutes Journal Sq-33rd (6 TPH), and these trains are practically empty (approximately 10 people per car, and that's for the more popular cars near the stairs).

If you reduced Hoboken-33 and JSQ-33 to 5 TPH as well, you'd save 12 trains. Let's say that it costs twice as much to run a train in the middle of the night due to paying people more (I doubt it's twice). With the cost savings you could run trains every 15 minutes instead of every 30 between 11:42 (the current last train before the 30-minute gaps) until 2:42, or trains every 10 minutes from 11:42 to 1:12, or extend the daytime service pattern (4 lines instead of 2). Or extend service a little less on weeknights but also extend it on weekends. Any of these alternatives would serve many, many more people than the current brain-dead sardine-can night service today.