New Jersey Transit Trains Almost Always On Time? Who Are They Kidding?

A New York Times article today reports that commuting trains serving New York City ran on schedule some 96 percent of the time last year. But, as the article aptly puts it, many riders beg to differ.

So what do you say? Could it really be that the trains are doing a much better job than planes? Indeed, the nation's largest airlines had a rate of on-time flights this year that was mostly lower than last year.

According to information filed with the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), a part of the Department of Transportation's Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA), the 18 main carriers reporting on-time performance recorded an overall on-time arrival rate of 79.9 percent in May, down from the 80.5 percent on-time rate in May 2009 and April 2010's 85.3 percent.

According to today's New York Times article, trains are doing a better job: "On weekday mornings, 1 in 10 trains entering Pennsylvania Station arrived late, two-thirds by 10 minutes or more. At the peak of the rush, from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m., about 25 percent of New Jersey Transit trains entering Manhattan arrived late; about 2 in 5 of the late trains were tardy by at least 15 minutes. (The trains' scheduled runs are a little more than an hour on average.)

These are among the findings of an examination by The New York Times of the more than 685,000 trips in 2009 involving the region's three major commuter railroads, using records requested by The Times that had not previously been made available to the public." It all adds up to 96 percent of trains serving New York City being on time.

Meanwhile, New Jersey Transit has its hands full this week. A Bloomfield woman was fatally struck by an New Jersey Transit locomotive on Monday morning. It's still not clear, though, what Jennifer English, 29, was doing on the track when she was struck on the Montclair-Boonton rail line by a single locomotive going east.

So what do you think about train travel to and from New York City? Comment or email me at Shelley@patch.com.