New Commuting Options For South Orange-Maplewood Residents

MAPLEWOOD - Residents lamenting their daily commute may have cause for celebration in the new year as beginning Jan. 2 NJ Transit will offer express bus service to the Port Authority Bus Terminal from South Orange and Maplewood train stations.

The new service will be offered during peak morning hours: 7 a.m., 7:30 a.m., and 8 a.m. South Orange and Maplewood officials met with NJ Transit officials to discuss service improvements, timetables, communications, capacity and infrastructure on Friday, Dec. 14.

The meeting followed correspondence from the towns with concerns and suggestions from nearly 1,000 commuters who participated in providing responses to a survey in addition to ongoing concerns and suggestions.

“It’s been a tough year for our commuters and we want the public to know that we hear you, we’ve been advocating for you, and we’re holding NJ Transit accountable. Implementation of Positive Train Control coupled with engineer shortages have led to an untenable situation for our NJ Transit riders and right now, we’re focused on minimizing impacts and providing better service and certainty to our riders,” said Maplewood Mayor Victor De Luca.

Rail tickets or passes from either South Orange or Maplewood respectively to Penn Station New York will be valid and cross honored to utilize this service. Bus service will be an option for train commuters and will be on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Also in the meeting, NJ Transit Executive Director Kevin Corbett provided the following updates and committed to strengthen communications with local officials and commuters moving forward:

NJ Transit has put all key communications personnel into an Emergency Operations Center including rail, bus and NJ Transit Police to coordinate notifications and timeliness of when messages are dispatched to customers across various communication platforms. This was the first step in a comprehensive reorganization of the entire NJ Transit Communications Department to provide better information faster.

Customized transit alerts on the NJ Transit Mobile Application were introduced earlier this month and will roll-out to all users by Friday, December 21. Alerts will enable users to receive “push notifications” even if they don’t have the mobile application open

NJ Transit officials said shared that with respect to Positive Train Control (“PTC”), they have completed a very important equipment installation interim milestone, one which allows the agency to have until December 2020 to integrate, test and fully implement the system in full service. This federal mandate was primarily the source of delays and cancellations during the summer and fall with fewer pieces of rail equipment to operate service. Additionally, NJ Transit is still dealing with engineer shortages and in response, quadrupled new training classes with graduation anticipated between next May and December. Moreover, multi-level rail cars are being added with up to twenty-percent added passenger capacity.

Along with the immediate response to transit customers, South Orange Village President Sheena Collum expressed concern about the status of the Gateway Program and highlighted that the State is encouraging growth and expansion of affordable housing in transit hubs but without sufficient capacity and reliable service, the absence of a new tunnel will have devastating local and regional impacts on the economy, the environment, public safety, and property values.

“This is the most critical infrastructure project in the country and we need decision-makers to step up,” said Collum. “Getting people to work in our region may not seem like a big deal to a Senator in Texas but it should since our region is responsible for 20 percent of the national GDP. I’m more hopeful following the midterm elections but urge all commuters and riders to continue advocating for this project at all levels of government. We can’t afford another eight-year delay and the time is now.”

(Photo courtesy of Shutterstock)

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