April 11
...serving up your daily dish.
Yesterday, while catching up with The Bloomfielder, we found this answer from NJ Transit to a question we’ve been asking for years: When is that weekend train service going to begin?
Several obstacles exist to weekend service right now—weekend outages for overhead bridge rehab work on weekends, constraints on track space in New York tunnels due to Amtrak single tracking (one track for all east and west moves Friday night until Monday morning) for tunnel fire and life safety reconstruction, and most importantly, a major track and station construction project at Newark Broad Street station, which will severely limit train movements on weekends and somewhat on weekdays on the Morris and Essex lines. This project is expected to run 2 to 3 years.
Given all these constraints, it’s fair to assume a weekend startup sometime in 2008, probably summer or fall. We would like to do it sooner but these are real, physical constraints.
This is good news – we’d heard that this wouldn’t happen until 2009. We have a call in to NJ Transit and will update you with any other news....
Annette,
Even after those projects are done, it will be virtually impossible to begin weekend service until after the Bloomfield Avenue Bridge is replaced, currently scheduled for completion in late 2008. Of course, this is not news to the readers of Baristanet.com. I answered this question right here more than a month ago (03/07/06):
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BA:
Does anyone know when New Jersey Transit will start weekend service to NY?
Me:
When I spoke to NJT about this last month, they said that as soon as they finish the weekend construction projects that they are working on further to the east that they would begin to consider adding the service, that would be mid to late 2007. However, as a practical matter, I suspect that if they decide to add weekend service, they won't do it till after the DOT replaces the Bloomfield Avenue bridge, which at this point is projected to be completed in late 2008.
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Frankly, if those projects are behind schedule, I would be very surprised to see it before 2009.
I'm suppossed to be meeting with NJT within the next few weeks, if there is more information, I'll let you know.
Posted by: Carl Bergmanson | Apr 11, 2006 2:51:39 PM