Reporter's Photo Tour of Hoboken Terminal

By Karl Vilacoba

My visit to Hoboken for the story "Turning Back the Clock (Tower) on Century-Old Ferry Terminal" marked the first time I'd set foot in the building in about 10 years. A lot had changed, thankfully for the better.

Unfortunately, I could only squeeze in a handful of photos of this classic station in with the printed article. There's a lot to see. Below are a few scenes that didn't make it in.

I happened across the top black and white photo in our archives the other day. I don't know exactly when it's from, although I'd guess the mid-80s. (The current shot on the bottom was provided by the project's lead consultant, STV Inc., and taken by Eduard Huber). The difference is stark. What caught my attention most was the condition of the facade behind the LACKAWANNA lettering. Pieces of the bronze siding had gradually fallen into the water over the years, and it was no doubt much worse once the project began. The green pieces in the bottom photo represent the remaining original parts that could be saved.

Before the restoration project, the ferry area's floor was all at the same elevation as the area at the bottom of the steps. The floor was raised a few feet to make it more resistant to flooding. The rising water levels caused by Hurricane Sandy overcame the higher floor, but reportedly caused no major structural damage to the ferry terminal.

Here's a view of the terminal from the land side. The water in front is an old dock area that was carved out for boats. The bronze exterior on the rectangular section of the building to the right, which is now used by the Hoboken YMCA, will soon be refurbished with new pieces like the river-facing side.

A closeup of some of the bronze details on the building's exterior.

The terminal's elegant waiting room was renovated in 2004 and has been used as a set in several movies. Its stained glass work was done by Louis Comfort Tiffany (unfortunately, my camera doesn't do it justice).

The old machinery on the ceilings above the ferry slips was left intact to contribute to the building's historic industrial atmosphere.

Part of the strategy for keeping that industrial feel intact was the use of materials like steel, concrete, glass and hard woods, as were used for the arches along the ferry slips.

The original deteriorating wooden pilings were replaced by 100 ton steel pipe pilings. A challenge facing the foundation engineers was to drive in the new pilings from within the existing structure with only about 10 feet of headroom, according to the lead consultant, STV.

Two wide view and a closeup of a new steel mural along the wall of the boarding area. The green silhouettes show Hoboken terminal riders and workers from many eras. Soft fiber optic lights shine through the perforations in the metal. 

 

Five of the terminal's original six ferry slips were restored. This one was left as is for historical purposes.

Transit Benefit to Double

By Karl Vilacoba

Some great news for commuters seems to have been lost in the considerable fine print of the federal stimulus package. The law authorizes the IRS to raise the tax-free amount allowed by employer-sponsored commuter benefit programs from $120 to $230 per month, or $1,440 to $2,760 annually.

Under the new formula, set to take effect March 1, mass transit riders and vanpoolers can save nearly $800 per year in federal income taxes, and possibly more than $1,000 once state and Social Security taxes are factored in. Employees whose monthly mass transit fees are less than $230 will be allowed to deduct the full amount from their paychecks.

Over the last few years, the government raised the cap in intervals you could chalk up as “better than nothing.” The last three years saw three consecutive $5 hikes meant to adjust for inflation. In reality, the hikes often didn’t -- the surge in gas costs placed enormous pressure on transit providers to raise fares, in many cases well more than $5.

But by doubling the cap, the government has created a real incentive for commuters to leave their cars home. According to surveys by the nonprofit TransitCenter, one-third of employers who don’t currently offer the benefit said they would if the monthly cap were increased significantly, and 53 percent of employees said they would take advantage of the benefit if it were offered. Employers save money from these programs by lowering their payroll taxes.

Also significant, the law brings the pre-tax allowance in line with the $230 benefit provided for commuters who pay to park at or near their workplaces or at park-and-rides. Transit advocates objected to the previous $230 to $120 disparity, which they argued encouraged commuters to drive rather than ride the rails or bus.

“Given the economic pressures our riders are under, this relief couldn’t have come at a better time,” Steve Schlickman, executive director of the Chicago Regional Transportation Authority, said in a press release. “A thousand dollars a year can make a real difference in the life of a family. This is a victory for Chicago’s commuters.”

HOV Lanes for Dummies

By Karl Vilacoba

Suffolk County (N.Y.) Sheriff’s Deputy Robert Howard saw right through this scheme.

According to CBS News, the officer was patrolling the Long Island Expressway Wednesday when he noticed an animated conversation going on between a driver in the high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lane and his perfectly still passenger. Howard pulled up for a closer look, and what he saw was enough to turn on the flashing lights.

“I asked him for license and registration and he said, ‘Officer is there something wrong?’ And I said, ‘Yes, in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, in the HOV lane, you are required to have two living passengers -- living!”

Police allege a 51-year-old Long Island man dressed up a transparent Plexiglas mannequin with shades, a jacket and baseball cap in an attempt to beat the traffic. New York law requires that vehicles must have two or more occupants to use these carpool lanes.

According to the report, the driver allegedly asked, “Can’t you give me an ‘E’ for effort?” The deputy said he responded, “No, I’m giving you an ‘S’ for summons.” The violation reportedly costs $90 and carries three points.

This isn’t the first scheme someone’s concocted to experience life in the fast lane by themselves. An Atlanta man was caught using the dummy trick in 2001, but in addition to dressing his passenger up, this one was holding a clever prop – an unfolded newspaper. In 2002, a Washington State woman was ticketed for riding with a dummy after reportedly cutting off a school bus and causing a pileup that sent about 20 people to the hospital. And a pregnant Arizona woman pulled over in 2005 for riding alone in the HOV lane contended that her fetus should count as a passenger. The court rejected her claim, contending the standard for riding in HOV lanes was how many seats were occupied.

In a way, all of this speaks well for HOV lanes. The fact that people are willing to go to such lengths to use them would seem to show their success and strong appeal to our highway system’s motorists and their passengers, living, dead or unborn.

Despite Spike in Paying Riders, Transit Providers Struggle

By Karl Vilacoba

We’ve all seen the reports – public transit ridership is up significantly nationwide. So how are transit agencies responding to this good news? Cutting service.

The Associated Press reported this week that many bus and train service providers are being forced to cut underperforming routes in order to cope with high diesel and gasoline costs. You’d think the rise in paying riders would offset the fuel expenses, but as the story notes, it’s not that simple. One of the reasons is that sales tax revenues that help subsidize these services are flagging, also because of the fuel prices. People just don’t have expendable income these days because they’re giving it all to the gas stations.

The Denver-area’s Regional Transportation District (RTD), which we profiled in our winter issue, was among those forced to trim services, despite record passenger numbers.

“Everything that we do is being undermined by the fuel crisis,” RTD CEO Clarence Marsella said. “It’s really diabolical. The tentacles are everywhere.”

If there’s a bright side to this fuel crisis, it’s that it’s causing Joe Public to take part in serious conversations he wouldn’t have bothered with before. Topics like alternative energies, transportation funding, the nation’s infrastructure and climate change are getting play on the news shows every night now, in part because the people have pushed them into the presidential campaign dialogue. People are realizing, albeit slowly, that the old way of doing things can not be continued forever. The importance of transit as an alternative to single occupancy vehicle trips is a big part of these discussions.

We may soon find out how committed people are to their new commuting habits. Gasoline prices typically peak in the summer, when demand is highest, and drop in the fall. Lately we’ve seen prices slide a little bit due to market forces. If gas plummets back to around $3 per gallon or the high $2s, will the ridership gains be maintained, or will people get back behind the wheel, as if it were all just a bad dream?

If not, transit agencies will have a new base of paying customers with less overhead to pay. We’ll also know the bus and train trips they’ve been making were about more than just sticker shock.

Book 'Em, BART

By Karl Vilacoba

What a novel idea!

The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) has teamed up with a local library to set up a book-lending machine at its Pittsburg/Bay Point Station. According to BART, they are the first transit system in the nation to offer such a service.

Riders can choose from 400 fiction or nonfiction books for free by inserting a valid Contra Costa County library card in the machine. They can borrow up to three books at a time, as long as they return them to the machine within three weeks. The public will have access to the machine during BART’s normal hours of operation.

The county public library plans to install three other machines at a transit village at a BART station in Pleasant Hill, a site in Byron/Discovery Bay and another location that has not yet been determined.

It is also unclear whether standard library silence rules will now apply to the station.

The Amtrak Quiet Car: Where Silence Sells

By Karl Vilacoba

My Tuesday morning train ride felt like it broke new ground for the rudeness of fellow passengers. At one point, there must have been a half-dozen cell phone conversations going on in my direct comfort zone, a maddening feeling for a guy who depends on that extra hour of pre-work shuteye.

On my train, people who loudly subject the rest of us to the unimportant details of their lives are usually scorned. I’ve seen out-of-hand cell phone talkers heckled, confronted and, in one case, even given a round of applause by a whole car full of riders once his conversation was done. But on this morning, it seemed the rules of commuter etiquette were collectively thrown out the vestibule.

My wife warns me I shouldn’t hold in my anger so much because it gets pent up, and one day it will blow. But my fantasies of meting out vigilante commuter justice aside, I’m too mild-mannered to turn around and tell someone to put a sock in it. I just wish a conductor would do it for me.

Out of curiosity, I searched around the Web the other day to see if any companies or transit agencies had come up with any interesting rules regarding cell phone abuse, and I came across a very novel approach being taken by Amtrak. In late 1999, a group of frustrated regular riders of the Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., morning train banded together and requested a car be set aside as a sanctuary from the beeps, blabbing and Beethoven symphonies. The Quiet Car soon became a reality and a patented concept.

The Quiet Car’s success shows not only that silence is a virtue, but silence sells.

“It has been popular enough that we’ve extended the Quiet Car to several Amtrak trains,” said Tracy Connell, a spokesperson for Amtrak. “I don’t have any stats on it, but I know the response has been very positive and we’ve had a lot of compliments on it.”

Quiet Car rules state that riders may not use any noise-making devices such as cell phones, pagers, laptops with audible features enabled, or handheld games and music players without headphones. Conversation must be kept in quiet, subdued tones. Conductors are instructed to ask anyone who disregards these rules to leave the car, Connell said.

The Quiet Car seems like a sensible way for Amtrak to balance the needs of riders seeking peace and quiet with those of business travelers who have work to do that requires their being in touch with the outside world. It also addresses a problem that will only get worse. At the time those passengers first took a stand in 1999, about 86 million people had cell phone subscriptions in the U.S., according to CTIA-The Wireless Association, an organization representing members of the wireless telecommunications industry. That number has since nearly tripled to about 254 million subscribers today.

So what’s the lesson here? If you’re looking for some peace and quiet on your commute, your best bet may be to gather up some friends and ask for it. Just please don’t do it over your cell phone, sitting next to me.

Commuter benefit rises $5

For a second consecutive year, the IRS has approved an increase in the monthly allowable tax-free amount toward commuter benefits, raising the maximum from $110 to $115 for transit costs. The change became effective Jan. 1.

The IRS reportedly raised the commuter benefit amount to adjust for inflation based on the Department of Labor’s Consumer Price Index. However, the $5 may offer little comfort to many public transit riders. With fuel costs skyrocketing in recent years, transportation agencies have hiked their fares to compensate – by almost double in some cases – but transit benefits haven’t nearly kept the pace.

Help could be on the way. Bills introduced both in the House of Representatives and the Senate last year would revise the laws to increase the monthly transit and vanpool limit to $200 per month, if passed. Both, as of this writing, were assigned to committees for review.

In a press release, the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) praised the $5 hike as a win for commuters and the environment. The organization cited a recent study which claimed riding public transportation could reduce a commuter’s daily carbon emissions by 20 pounds.

The Less Stress Express

By Karl Vilacoba

I’m seeing more grays than I’d care to when I look in the mirror lately, but I read something the other day that reminded me it could be worse.

A recent study suggests that commuters who take the train to work were less stressed by their trip than those who drove. According to “Leave the Driving to Them: Comparing Stress of Car and Train Commuters,” motorists reported significantly higher levels of stress, more negative moods and indicated their trip took more effort and was far less predictable compared to rail riders.

I can certainly relate to this study. When I joined the magazine a few months ago, I had a decision to make: To drive or not to drive. I, too, would be choosing between the NJ Transit rails or the highways. Even my commute time was the same as the average for people in the study, roughly 75 minutes.

I decided to base my decision on a drive I took to our Newark offices for an interview. The meeting was set for 9 a.m., so it would serve as a pretty good indicator for the rush hour traffic I’d face each morning behind the wheel.

On my way in, I got confused by the signs in a construction area and missed my exit. I allowed myself about a half-hour extra to be on the safe side, but I watched in panic as the minutes ticked off on my dashboard clock while I desperately sought a way to turn around in the glorified parking lot that was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard gridlock traffic. I made the embarrassing call to let my future supervisor know I was running late.

I explained what a disaster Route 280 was to a current co-worker who sat in on that meeting, and he asked with puzzlement why I would ever take that road. I told him that’s what the directions on the Web site said to do. “They do?” he said with a chuckle. “Oops.” Thanks, partner!

If it were purely a matter of speed, I would drive. It would save time, although not enough to be a deal-breaker. If it were purely a matter of money, I probably would save by getting a parking pass and driving, although parking garage fees, tolls, high gas prices and the attrition on my car all add up. But there’s something to be said for living without the fear of getting in a high-speed crash, or the relatively few surprises of a train ride. At the end of the day, it’s a quality of life decision, and I devised a checklist about my drive to help myself make it.

Congestion? Check. Expensive? Check. Stressful? Check. Check. Check. … So where can I get my monthly pass?