Commuting

Bhavna and I were talking about cars and that although a car is a necessity for this part of New Jersey it feels like such a waste of money.

My commute from my home via public transportation versus driving in my car. Bhavna and I were talking about cars yesterday. My sister-in-law is looking to buy a pre-owned car to replace her 2006 Toyota Hylander. My 2006 Honda Accord needs work. My sister-in-law works from home all week so her car is only used to do errands, visit family and friends in town, get my nephews from school. My car is used to commute to work. But for both of us, the car spends most of the time idle. It feels like such a waste but in this part of New Jersey, a car is a necessity. Public transportation is not a reasonable option.

Commute to MetroPark, New Jersey via car, about 45 minutes
Commute to MetroPark, New Jersey via Public Transportation, almost 3 hours.
Commute to Wall Street via Car, about 90 minutes
Commute to Wall Street via Public Transportation, almost 4 hours

Commuting

My client has run out of office space in their Northern New Jersey location. They are seeking new office space. Listening to some employees speculate about where the company may relocate and whether the new location would be close to a train station is interesting. Commuting in New Jersey can be challenging.

If the company relocates further north, closer to New York City, many current employees would have a more challenging commute. Employees from the central part of the state could see car commute times as high 90 minutes. Trains time could be more than that; New Jersey Transit (NJT) lines don’t run past the state capital of Trenton. If the new location is not near a train station - the current one is a 10-minute walk from a northeast corridor (NEC) line - then all employees would be impacted.

I know that I have an upper limit of tolerance for shitty travel. I might lose my mind if I had to travel the NEC NJT line daily. It's a horrible experience.

New Jersey Transit commuter trains have hit their worst on-time and reliability records in the 18 months since Governor Phil Murphy promised to overhaul the nation’s second-biggest commuter railroad.

For the 12 months ended in March, 90% of peak trains departed or arrived on schedule. That’s the lowest average among 16 years of such data on NJ Transit’s website. Trains also broke down more frequently than ever from the July start of the fiscal year through March, records show.

Commuters face even more inconvenience. The agency through 2020 is testing federally mandated emergency braking, a project that caused unprecedented disruption last year as locomotives were sidelined for software installations. And for 12 weeks starting June 17, at least 5,000 daily Manhattan commuters will have to take a ferry or another railroad to cross the Hudson River to accommodate track work at Pennsylvania Station.NJ Transit train delays hit a record after Murphy's pledge to fix them