NJ Transit plans to move more people could be derailed

• NJ Transit%27s plans to buy bigger buses and rail cars to move an expected increase of people commuting to New York could be derailed by capacity issues at Penn Station %2C the Port Authority Bus Terminal and financing issues

Big plans were announced last week by NJ Transit to buy larger trains and buses to transport more people who are predicted to commute to New York.

How big are those plans? About 1,388 buses and 113 multi-level rail cars big.

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The plan is to simplify NJ Transit's rail car fleet by reducing the five different types of rail cars now in service to two types, both based on the multi-level railcars now in service. NJ Transit's fleet would be purged of single-level cars in favor of the multi-levels, which can seat more people per car than single-deckers.

ALTERNATE ROUTE: NJ Transit plans to replace trains, buses and add seats

NJ Transit officials said they hope to increase the number of seats by 6 percent while decreasing the number of rail cars in the fleet by 7 percent. The reason for this is to handle an anticipated increase in ridership and to increase the miles that trains and buses travel between breakdowns.

In theory it sounds like the extra trains and buses might swallow the added riders. A 12-car train of multi-levels seats 1,522 compared to 1,380 seats available in a 12-car train of single-level Arrow III rail cars, currently the oldest cars in NJ Transit's fleet. New, longer buses would have eight more seats per bus.

But four issues could derail NJ Transit's plans to handle increased capacity by building bigger trains and buses:

• The Port Authority Bus Terminal

• Penn Station New York

• The 104-year-old Hudson River tunnels

• Funding this equipment with a Transportation Trust Fund that only has enough revenue to pay for funds borrowed in past years.

We've written about how the problems due to age in the tunnels have been made worse by Superstorm Sandy and how Amtrak officials said they have 20 years left before they have to be closed for repairs. The bus terminal is a crowded, confusing mess that tests commuters' patience for terrible conditions on a daily basis.

And Penn Station is getting crowded to the point that commuters have expressed fears for their safety on crowded platforms during rush hour.

Something needs to be done — and only the governor and the congressional delegation can do it — to get funding to aggressively start work on new tunnels before the old ones have to be taken out of service.

NJ Transit isn't the master of its own destiny when it comes to the bus terminal, Hudson River tunnels and Penn Station. Once these commuters get off the train or bus, their destiny is in the hands of the people who run the station or bus terminal. And that's where there is likely to be trouble.

Then there is the looming disaster of the Transportation Trust Fund, which has to be reauthorized in 2016. The bad news is that the state has exhausted most, if not all the short-term gimmicks used to provide revenue without increasing the gas tax. The last of these, $1.8 billion in Port Authority funds, diverted from the canceled Access to the Regions Core project to replace the Route 7 WittPenn bridge and rehabilitate the Pulaski Skyway, will have been spent.

NJ Transit Executive Director Veronique Hakim said the new equipment will be funded through the agencies' annual capital budget. But that is funded through the TTF, along with major road and bridge projects. Renewing the trust fund isn't a problem she can solve; it's up to the big thinkers in Trenton to do that.

The most recent purchase of 63 new compressed natural gas Cruiser buses approved by NJ Transit's board in June cost $41 million. That purchase was funded by a federal grant and comes to $650,793 per bus. That might not be the exact price for diesel-powered buses, since CNG-fueled buses require a special fuel tank, but it gives you an idea that the price tag for 1,388 new commuter buses isn't low.

So will seats trump on-time performance? One Facebook commenter said he'd rather ride on an older, crowded train as long as it arrived on time.

A trend maybe slowly starting: Commuter Jan Levin of Princeton spoke about it when she told NJ Transit's board of directors that she is regularly late to work three out of five mornings because of delays.

"I am at the brink of losing my job or moving to Brooklyn," Levin said. "NJ Transit is ruining my life."

Matt Walters and Michael Tucker of the Delayed on NJ Transit Facebook group documented at least seven people who've tweeted that they've moved out of New Jersey and have taken their last train or bus ride across the Hudson, specifically to ditch their commute by moving to the state they work in.