Bad news for weekend commuters who rely on the WTC line.
Starting January 5, 2019, the Port Authority will close the WTC station every weekend — excluding holiday weekends — through 2020. That’s right, the WTC station will close 45 weekends each year while the PA makes Hurricane Sandy-related tunnel repairs. The announcement is being made one month before the closures are set to begin.
“We understand the loss of the WTC PATH station on weekends will cause hardship and inconvenience for many of our customers, but these repairs are vitally important to our continuing effort to overcome the worst storm we’ve experienced here in our lifetimes,” said PATH General Manager/Director Michael Marino via press release.
The WTC station will close at 12:01am on Saturdays, starting January 5, 2019, and will reopen the following Monday at 5am after each weekend of work.
Stranded passengers will get free ferry service to and from Brookfield Place via the Harborside ferry slip each Saturday and Sunday from 7am to 11:30pm.
During this time, the “WTC line” will terminate at Exchange Place, so commuters coming from Newark/Harrison/JSQ/Grove will get off at Exchange Place and walk to the Harborside ferry slip. Commuters coming from Hoboken/Pavonia will have to travel to Grove (via the 33rd/Hoboken line) and catch the “WTC” line to Exchange Place.
The PA states that it will also increase service on the 33rd Street/Hoboken line overnight when the ferry is not in operation. (Sadly, there’s no talk about separating the lines to avoid overcrowding).
If you’re wondering why it’s taken so long to make those Sandy repairs, the PA states that it deferred repairs while it installed Positive Train Control.
Suddenly that cellular coverage doesn’t seem all that impressive.
I appreciate that work needs to be done, but:
1) They did a horrible job of managing expectations. After a year+ of already experiencing weekend line closures for PTC/CBTC signalling system installation, they gave us the impression that key work was done and we would finally be able to enjoy weekend service interruption-free. Now, just weeks before, they tell us we have another 2 years of maintenance related service cancellations. Why didn’t they tell residents of Jersey City, Newark etc long ago that we would have to experience 3-5 years of weekend service interruptions?
2) The ferry service is not a sufficient off-set. The walk from Brookfield Place to most of the subway transfers at Fulton Centre is at least 15 minutes. Why can’t they add service on the 33rd street line to increase frequency and also avoid the slow and annoying turnaround in Hoboken? If they can offer straight JSQ-33rd street service during the week without a stop in Hoboken then why can’t they do it on the weekend!?
3) Why the obsession with 24 hour service? Most rapid transit systems world wide do essential maintenance at night-time between midnight-6:00am. Couldn’t we speed up this process and avoid weekend closures if they just did the work at night? With less traffic at night, you could easily run efficient rail replacement rapid bus services during the overnight period from WTC to Jersey City and Newark.
4) We are still waiting on information on other much-needed improvements: additional rail cars to increase service frequency during rush hour, platform extensions on the 33rd street line to have longer train cars to reduce crowding, platform doors to improve safety on over-crowded stations with narrow platforms (ie. Grove Street), an integrated payment card that works on other transit networks so passengers don’t have to carry multiple cards for Light rail, NY Subway, NJ Transit etc…
Agree on all points. When I first moved to JC there was straight JSQ-33rd service on wkds. That would help so much during these closures. Also, the ferry currently runs every 20 mins on wkds. Wondering if they’ll keep that 20-min sched through 11:30pm or if it’ll be increased.
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