Some departures and arrivals during peak hours were eliminated starting this past Sunday, Oct. 26, from the schedule of NJ Transit’s Montclair-Boonton Rail Line, while the times of some other trains were adjusted to cover the resulting gaps.
The timetables were revised since, under the previous schedule, there were instances when a diesel and an electric train would be in almost the same areas at nearly the same time, said Dan Stessel, a spokesman for NJ Transit. Generally, the diesel trains originated in Morris County and made all the stops west of Montclair State University (MSU), then served as express trains as they headed farther east, traveling nonstop to Newark and Hoboken.
Meanwhile, the electric trains that started their routes at the MSU station would make all the local stops throughout Montclair and other Essex and Hudson County towns.
One of the goals of implementing this new schedule was to avoid that overlap, and to have the diesels, in some cases, serving as local trains across the entire line and handling the Montclair stops, too, Stessel said.
It is common practice in the railroad industry to evaluate and change schedules at least twice a year, he said. Usually this schedule tweaking takes place in April and October, at around the same time that the clocks are changed and the nation switches from standard time to daylight-savings time and back again.
The efficiencies that NJ Transit achieves by consolidating trains "are enabling us to respond to record-high ridership," as more people turn to mass transportation, "in a tight budget environment," Stessel said.
The agency’s budget for fiscal year 2009 "assumes no net increase in service," according to Stessel, since at present NJ Transit can’t afford to expand its operations. An additional $60 million the quasi-public transportation agency received from the state for this fiscal year simply enabled NJ Transit to avoid a fare hike as it absorbs "tens of millions" more in fuel costs alone, Stessel told The Times.
He said that whenever any railroad operator rearranges its schedules, some customers are bound to be negatively impacted.
"Every time a railroad does a schedule change, obviously someone is not going to be pleased with every detail of the schedule," he said.
One customer who’s not thrilled with the new schedule is Eric Sherman, a Montclair resident who spends three days of his workweek in New York and two days in Montclair. On the days he commuted, Sherman got up at 5:30 a.m. to catch the 6:22 a.m. train at the Mountain Avenue Train Station on Upper Mountain Avenue, he said.
Under the new schedule, that train has been nixed. As a result, Sherman would either need to head to the Montclair Heights or Upper Montclair stations to catch a train at around the same time, or he would need to take a train that arrives about 20 minutes earlier, if he wanted to continue using the Mountain Avenue stop.
Sherman said he’s already waking up at "a pretty ungodly" hour, and that rising at 5:10 a.m. to catch the earlier train would be a tall order.
In terms of time, walking to another station would be nearly the same deal. Driving would be tough, also, Sherman said, since he would need to try purchasing a permit for the other stations’ parking lots, as street parking is limited to two hours. Generally there are waiting lists for permits, he noted.
Beyond the inconvenience, he said he is worried this could be "the handwriting on the wall" for the Mountain Avenue station, which has fairly low ridership compared to other stations in Montclair.
