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Posted by
GojiMet86
on Mon Jan 27 19:42:03 2020
Found this recently, along with some other PATH-related news of the day
https://www.nytimes.com/1973/01/15/archives/path-aims-to-grow-into-new-commuter-line-path-is-planning-to-expand.html
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1973/01/15/issue.html
PATH Aims to Grow into New Commuter Line
By Frank J. Prial
Jan. 15, 1973
If all goes according to plan, the Port Authority Trans Hudson (PATH) rapid transit system will more than double in size within five years. In the process, it will change from a short‐haul conveyor of other railroad's passengers into a full‐fledged commuter line.
The 13.9‐mile system, which was once planned as a shuttle trolley under the Hudson River, would add 18 miles of track that would take it through Newark Airport and deep into Union County to a new terminal at Plainfield, N.J.
The plan was devised by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey after long and insistent prodding by both states. It includes a rail link to Kennedy International Airport from Manhattan and hookups in the New Jersey Meadows that would permit some Erie ‐ Lackawanna commuter trains to run into Pennsylvania Station istead of to the ErieLackawanna terminal at Hoboken.
The plan, which would cost $650‐million to develop was approved by the New Jersey Legislature last month and is expected to go before the New York Legislature in a week or two. The New Jersey addition is expected to cost $390‐million, of which $240‐million is for the PATH Extension.
For most railroads, such a dramatic jump in size would indicate unusual financial success. In PATH's case, nothing could be further from the truth. When the Port Authority took over the line, then known as the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad, in 1962, it was bankrupt and running an annual deficit of about $500,000.
In 1970 PATH's deficit was $12.8‐million. In 1971 it was $17.8‐million. In addition, the Port Authority has poured $250‐million, much of it Federal funds, into rehabilitating the line, none of which any one expects to see returned in profits.
The rehabilitation and expansion of PATH represents, instead, the conviction on the part of both states that rail mass transit is essential in the metropolitan region, regardless of the cost.
When the Port Authority was about to absorb the H. & M. 10 years ago, the then executive director of the agency, Austin J. Tobin, warned that any delay in the take‐over might spell the end of the badly deteriorated line and the addition of 30,000 commuters to the area's already clogged highways.
The Port Authority rehabilitation program was exhaustive. It included a new fleet of passenger cars. By 1962, there were 162 new air‐conditioned cars in operation, along with 47 cars that had been purchased in 1958. They were said to have made up the first fully air‐conditioned rail fleet in the world. In 1967, 44 more cars were added and in 1972 purchase was made of 46 for the line; and 44 more will be needed for the extension to Newark Airport and Plainfield. These will be equipped for commuter, as opposed to rapidtransit, service. For passengers this means, among other things, larger, upholstered seats.
Passenger stations—there ate 13 of them—have been cleaned up and a Federal grant has insured that they will be completely remodeled in the next several years.
The entire signal system has been rebuilt and the antiquated power‐supply system has been completely replaced. Maintenance shops and yards have been renovated, a systemwide public‐address system has been installed and two‐way radios link each station and train.
In addition, an exactchange fare system was installed, replacing tokens. By installing change‐making machines at each station, PATH has been able virtually to eliminate change agents at its stations, which afe now monitored by closed‐circuit television.
Later this year the new PATH Transportation Center, an $80‐million complex at Journal Square in Jersey City, will open as headquarters for the railroad.
It will feature longer PATH platforms, a bus station with berths for 30 buses, facilities for a PATH Operations Control Center and off‐street parking for 600 cars.
Terminal Finished
Already completed is PATH's new terminal in downtown Manhattan, at the World Trade Center. The terminal is a vast air‐conditioned complex that resembles newer stations on the Paris Metro. Riders say it takes them five minutes longer to get out of the new station each morning, however.
Still to come is a PATH sponsored renovation of Newark's 38‐year‐old Pennsylvania Station, a once handsome center for commuter railroads, PATH trains, long‐distance Amtrak trains and the buses and streetcars of Transport of New Jersey.
In recent years, with the inability of the bankrupt Penn Central to care for the station, it has become, in one policeman's phrase, “a mugger's paradise.” At night much of the station is closed, and few passengers linger in its dingy, empty corridors.
Under a 15‐year lease, PATH will spend $12‐million replacing boilers and plumbing, repairing escalators and generally cleaning up. The station now handles 40,000 passengers a day.
Cahill Presses Authority
The Port Authority took on Penn Station, Newark, at the urging of Governor Cahill of New Jersey, who has been pushing the authority into mass‐transportation projects.
PATH already uses the station as its western terminus and as a major transfer point with Penn Central and Central Railroad of New Jersey commuter lines. The station will become even more important to PATH when the link to Newark Airport and the line to Plainfield open. This is expected to come within five years.
At Newark Airport, PATH is expected to build a separate station south of the main aircraft terminal cluster now under construction. A “people‐mover” conveyor system will link the aircraft terminals and the PATH station.
The Plainfield line will replace the deteriorated commuter service now operated by the Jersey Central, which is as bankrupt as the PATH predecessor. “It will be the Hudson & Manhattan all over again,” said Louis J. Gambaccini, the Port Authority's rail transportation director.
Fares Will Be Equal
The PATH extension would charge the same fares as the present Jersey Central service, Mr. Gambaccini said.
“It will be a fixed fare to Newark and a graduated fare beyond that point,” he said.
Mr. Gambaccini said PATH trains to Plainfield would run at three‐to‐seven‐minute headways during the rush hours and at half‐hour intervals on off‐hours. This is about twice as often as under the present schedule.
“The day the new service opens,” Mr. Gambaccini said, “we expect to pick up an additional 7,500 commuters, plus 2,500 riders from and to Newark Airport” and users from the three proposed parkride lots along the extension. The park‐ride lots would be at Newark Airport, at the Garden State Parkway in Cranford and a third in Plainfield. Within five years, Mr. Gambaccini said, PATH hopes to carry 37,000 more riders a day on the proposed extension.
Whether PATH eventually will go to the end of the Jersey Central commuter line —13 additional miles to Raritan — is currently “under study,” the PATH chief said.
Not everyone is convinced of PATH's good intentions. Salvatore Raia, chairman of the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen local for PATH employes, recently accused the line of seeking to do away with weekend service altogether.
During recent contract ne gotiations with PATH, Mr. Raia said the railroad wanted a strike to test its plan to substitute buses for its trains on weekends. Mr. Raia also charged that the railroad planned to use a strike, if it took place, as an excuse to raise its 30‐cent, systemwide fare to 75 cents.
Mr. Gambaccini said that the idea of ending service on weekends was “absolutely absurd.” He said the possibility of a fare increase was under study all the time but there were no present plans for an increase.
“PATH's losses are such that any reasonable fare increase would have little effect on our financial status,” Mr. Garnbaccini said.
Pay Rise Sought
Mr. Raia and PATH are currently in the midst of a 60‐day cooling ‐ off period, which could end in a strike. His carmen, seeking pay increases and retirement at 50 years old with half pay, had planned to walk out Jan. I. The 60‐day postponment became mandatory when President Nixon appointed an emergency fact‐finding board to study the situation.
PATH's financial status has never been anything to warm a banker's heart. The first two attempts to build the railroad ended in bankruptcy, and the project was abandoned several times. During its entire history, the predecessor company paid dividends on its common stock only seven times. By any financial yardstick, the H.&M.'s bankruptcy in 1954 was long overdue.
The first attempt to build the railroad began around 1870 when a British engineer, DeWitt Haskin, conceived the idea of a rail tunnel under the Hudson that would serve a number of railroads.
At the time all the major railroads from the South and West terminated in New Jersey. Because of the Palisades, they were bunched together in Hoboken and Jersey City. Haskin's idea was to build one tunnel and a railroad station near Washington Square in Manhattan, both of which he would lease to any railroad that wanted to use them.
Injunction Halts Work
Work began in 1874. Mr. Haskin progressed exactly 20 feet when the Lackawanna Railroad obtained an injunction that halted work for five years. In 1880, the proposal was changed from one large tunnel to two smaller ones, carrying shuttle trolleys.
One history of the line said that this was to prevent any single railroad from buying up the tunnels and barring all the other carriers. To this day, PATH cars are more than a foot narrower than standard railroad cars and 22 feet shorter than New York City's newest R‐46 subway cars.
Another version of the story held that the promoters could only buy rights‐of‐way up the middle of Manhattan streets and not under buildings. The cars had to be smaller to make sharp turns.
William Gibbs McAdoo bought the franchise and the abandoned, partly finished tunnel in 1902. He raised some money and resumed work. This time work was started also on a second tunnel, from Jersey City to Cortlandt Street in Manhattan. The Hoboken tunnel was opened in February, 1908, and the southern tunnel 17 months later.
Monopoly Ends
At a banquet celebrating the opening of the Hoboken tunnel, Gov. John Franklin Fort of New Jersey predicted that his state would always be the terminus for the major railroads because they could not afford to build terminals in New York. Two years later, the Pennsylvania Railroad completed its tunnel to 33d Street, ending the H. & M. monopoly.
Still, the H. & M.—or Hudson Tube, as it came to be known—prospered for a while, at least in terms of public acceptance. The service was extended to Newark in 1911 and traffic crept upward until, in 1929, it carried 112 million riders.
But that was it. The Holland Tunnel, which opened in 1927, changed commuter patterns permanently. By 1933, H. & M. ridership was down to 75 million. When the United States entered World War II in 1941, it had slipped to 65 million.
‘Gas’ Rationing an Aid
Gasoline rationing increased patronage for a while, but in the late nineteen‐forties the long slide began again. Not even the Port Authority take‐over in 1962 stemmed it, and ridership hit bottom in 1965 with 26.4 million passengers.
Then, it started up again, aided considerably by the demise of the Hudson River
Commuter Rail Line ferries and the implementation of the state‐sponsored so‐called Aldege Plan in 1967. That plan brought Jersey Central trains into Newark rather than Jersey City. At Newark, the passengers switch to PATH for the rest of the trip to downtown Manhattan. Last year, ridership on PATH was estimated at 40 million—still only 30 per cent of what it was in 1929.
An annoying feature of PATH service is the unusual peak loads it carries during both morning and evening rush hours. PATH officials say their line's peaks are the worst in the commuter business.
More than half of all PATH passengers are carried between 8 A.M. and 9 A.M. and between 4:30 and 5:30 P.M.
Six‐car trains have been replaced by seven‐car trains and soon—at least between Newark and the World Trade Center — all trains will be eight cars long. Tight scheduling has permitted PATH to squeeze several more trains into the peak periods, and the peaks themselves have been flattened out a bit by encouraging downtown businesses to stagger employes' hours.
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