As ridership soars, PATH service disruptions cut deep in New Jersey and New York

New York

SCRAMBLING through a crowd of frazzled commuters at a Lower Manhattan train station on a recent Saturday, Romany Saad navigated his limited options for getting to work, hoping he would not be late for the second weekend in a row.

Mr Saad's predicament was shared by many riders who have been forced to shift their routines because the PATH rail line that runs from northern New Jersey to the 33rd Street station in midtown Manhattan has been shut down on weekends.

Mr Saad, who lives in Jersey City and works as a cook at a pizza restaurant on 32nd Street, resorted to taking a PATH train to the World Train Center, where he grabbed a voucher for a shuttle bus from a PATH worker before walking several blocks in sweltering heat to take the bus north.

"It takes me an extra half-hour," Mr Saad, 36, said, extending his arms in frustration. The previous weekend, he tried transferring to a subway train from the World Trade Center, but delays and line changes caused him to arrive at work even later. "It's a hard time, but what can we do?" he asked.

The suspension of trains from Hoboken, New Jersey, to midtown, which will continue through Dec 19, is necessary to accommodate service upgrades and the installation of safety devices mandated by the federal government, PATH officials said. Trains stop running each Saturday at 12:10am and resume each Monday at 5am, excluding some holidays.

The shutdown comes at a time when PATH ridership levels are soaring. In June, ridership reached its highest monthly total ever with nearly seven million passengers in the system - a 3.6 per cent increase over June 2015, according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which has operated PATH since 1962. The system was opened in 1908 by the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad.

In addition, average Saturday ridership through June rose 2.2 per cent compared with the same period last year. "The economy is good, jobs are there, people are taking the system," said Mike Marino, PATH's director and general manager.

The suspension of service underscores the challenges facing ageing rail systems throughout the Northeast, including the closing of parts of the Metro system in Washington, repairs to defective trains in Philadelphia and the recent announcement of plans to temporarily shut down the L train tunnel between Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Veronica Vanterpool, the executive director of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, an advocacy group focused on reducing the use of cars, attributes much of the increase in PATH ridership to the migration of New Yorkers to places where they can find more affordable housing but still commute into the city.

"PATH is a really vital artery of transportation between New Jersey and New York," Ms Vanterpool said. The weekend suspension, she added, is "one of those inconveniences that riders are just going to have to deal with."

To give an alternative for disrupted commuters, the PATH is providing direct train service between Hoboken and the World Trade Center on weekends.

It is also offering vouchers for free shuttle bus service along Avenue of the Americas, from the World Trade Center to West 29th Street.

The service suspension will allow the PATH to install automated safety technology that helps control train speed and movements and is designed to prevent accidents, like the derailment of an Amtrak train in Philadelphia in 2015.

The federal government is requiring all railway systems to install the technology, known as positive train control, by the end of 2018.

The PATH will also replace an outdated method of monitoring a train's whereabouts with an operating system called communications-based train control. Officials say the system will use track sensors and computers to locate trains, allowing them to run more frequently and resulting in shorter wait times and increased passenger capacity.

But for travellers from New Jersey, the disruptions on the 33rd Street line are crippling. Many commuters said the shuttle bus alternative takes too long, and transferring to a subway line from the PATH would double their fare. Others are choosing to change their schedules and weekend plans altogether in order to avoid the longer commute.

Despite abundant signs in English and Spanish warning of the service changes and staff members at stations answering questions, some riders have still been caught off guard.

In a sizzling underground PATH station in Hoboken on a recent Saturday, Ana Novas, 50, sat waiting for a train that would never arrive. Ms Novas, a native of the Dominican Republic who lives in Union City, had planned to take a train to go shopping in midtown.

After waiting for a while, she was told of the service disruption. With her limited English, Ms Novas could not understand a PATH employee's directions on how to adjust her commute and said she felt insecure navigating a new route on her own. She decided to leave the station in search of a familiar bus route into Manhattan. "Oh my God," Ms Novas said. "I have to change everything." NYT