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Comment by _delirium | Hacker News Reader

There's a project currently in planning stages that is supposed to upgrade the 11-mile section of century-old infrastructure between Newark and NYC, improving both Amtrak and NJ Transit service. It'd add a new Hudson River tunnel, a faster modern routing through the Meadowlands, and expand Penn Station into the old James Farley Post Office. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway_Project

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The gateway tunnel has been postponed indefinitely. But no worries, apparently the only reason the Gateway Tunnel was necessary was because the MTA previously refused to run things efficiently.

http://transportationnation.org/2012/06/14/ny-mta-chief-says...

Also interesting: "The Regional Plan Association, which held the conference at which Lhota spoke, and other advocacy groups have expressed support for through-running—at least until Gateway Tunnel gets built."

I.e., they want to be more efficient, but only as a stopgap measure until the tunnel is built.

(Also check out Market Urbanism's blog post on the topic: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ycccmpt... )

Interesting. I suppose there are not high odds that these multiple systems will ever get integrated into one regional agency, the way the various NYC subways were eventually merged into the MTA and interconnected?

As some comments say on that page, there are numerous technical details as to why it isn't nearly as simple as proposed. AFAIK you can't easily run LIRR trains to NJ because only a few engines support catenary operation, everything else requires a third rail to be built.

So while this might get us a few percent increase in the number of trains for now, at the cost of a few hundred million to build out third rails in NJ (or catenaries in LIRR areas where NJ transit trains might be routed), it doesn't change the fundamental infrastructure issue given the growth of mass transit in the NYC metro area.

None of that will move people off of buses to a subway or train. The proposal of extending the 7 line to NJ, for example, would certainly help.

If I understand correctly, the NJ Transit trans-Hudson services have been at maximum capacity for years, so they could carry more riders if they were able to add more trains at peak times, but without a new tunnel (and probably more platforms) it's just not possible to run more trains.

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