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.

Photographer's "traumatic train"

This photo by Chris Edwards of Leicestershire, U.K., dramatically illustrates the human side of the transportation crisis in Tokyo as a result of the March 2011 earthquake. The transportation crisis was the subject of “How a Shaken City Kept Steady Nerves,” which appeared in the fall 2011 issue of InTransition. Here’s how Edwards described the scene when he posted the photo to Flickr:

I was on board a train in Tokyo yesterday when the big earthquake struck, I was unbelievably scared, I still now don't understand why the train didn't derail completely.

We was evacuated from the train once the main earthquakes stopped and then after a couple of hours or so of walking we found refuge in a hotel basement, where I still remain, although I have a room now. A very wobbly one though, 9 floors up and we're still having quakes.

In a subsequent email correspondence, Edwards related that while, in the end, the city of Tokyo coped with the many challenges posed by the earthquake —including avoiding the loss of life or serious injuries when the transit system shut down —living through the experience left passengers very much “shaken”:

We were on a very traumatic train for 90 minutes with very little information offered. When we eventually got evacuated, the station we walked to was in turmoil. Nobody knew what to do or where to go and the transport authorities were offering no information other than handing out maps.

Whilst we were in that station more earthquakes hit and masonry was falling around us. The roads were gridlocked for many, many hours. Over the next few days the railways were shut down at random intervals with very little warning leaving massive queues for taxis and gridlocked roads again.

The place was in chaos.

That said, we were travelling at a high speed and the speed the train network shut down was very impressive.

Other photos by Edwards on Japan and other subjects can be seen at: www.flickr.com/photos/bubblesphotos/.

You Can't Spell Subsidy Without B-U-S

By Josh Stephens

It's funny to consider the circumstances under which Americans are willing to accept government subsidy or programming. Education: good. Agriculture: Good. Fire and safety: sure. Health care: no comment. As for transportation, we seem to be OK with ambulances, whether they're transporting us to publically supported hospitals or not. But mass transit to someplace else -- be it work, recreation, or your Botox appointment -- is another, more complicated matter.

Public transportation seems like a business because the fare structure is so familiar. Paying for a bus ride feels no different than paying for a movie ticket, so it's natural to think that the marginal cost to the consumer covers the marginal cost to the provider and away we go. Except that hidden from every fare is the 50-70 percent of operating costs that are covered by the public. Since we don't get a receipt saying "70 of your ride has been brought to you by the taxpayers of your city and state," it's even easy to imagine that the people who use public transportation can, and do, just pay for it themselves.

These assumptions complement the fallacy that riders are the only beneficiaries of the system. But as we have seen during this recession, public transportation's benefits are more than vast enough to justify public intervention. Buses and trains rescue people who can no longer afford to drive, and they enable urban economies to function by matching employees with employers -- which is the whole (economic) purpose of cities. This is why a certain radical fringe contends that the benefits to free transit -- that is, transit with a 100 percent subsidy (a la schools) -- would pay for itself many times over.

That might sound a little nuts, except that it's hard to define a substantive difference between the argument in favor of fare-free transit and that in favor of toll-free roads. It's tempting to imagine that, through the magic of elasticity, if you divide the quantity demanded by a price of zero you get infinite demand and therefore an infinite reduction in traffic. The math doesn't work out quite like that, but without the burden of pulling out a wallet, a great many discretionary riders would have a few bucks left over for food and rent.

Which brings us to the recession: All the great ideas in the world matter little if transit agencies have no money to spend and more riders than they know what to do with, which is exactly the state of affairs today, as the nation's transit agencies face a collective deficit well into the billions. My article approached these deficits from a distant, abstract perspective, as if to assure everyone that, indeed, misery loves company. But let's not forget that the real misery is that which afflicts the riders, forced to abandon jobs, remain housebound, or suffer interminable waits while the bus plies its route.

Many agencies don't quite know what they're going to do to close their budget gaps, save raising fares and eliminating service. No matter what, one encouraging outgrowth of this crisis -- from a reporter's standpoint -- is the outpouring of candor from these agencies. While government bureaucracies are notorious for obfuscation and euphemism, my reporting uncovered very little sugar-coating, as if the global crisis has finally allowed public officials to let down their guard.

Their collective message is clear: Transit agencies are asking for patience, understanding, and even a little sympathy. Whether or not we're willing to give them any more of our money is, however, another matter.

Josh Stephens’ article, “Mass Transit’s Reversal of Fortune,” appeared in the fall 2009 issue. He is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles.

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.”

Subway Extension Would Make More than a Token Difference for L.A.

By Josh Stephens

Covering what could be the largest infrastructure investment in one’s hometown is naturally a challenge in journalistic objectivity. On the one hand, it would have been difficult for a writer not from Los Angeles to comprehend three decades of background information as well as the present-day complexities of funding, traffic, land use patterns and political wrangling at the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority. On the other hand, one of the proposed portals would be a half-mile from my front door.

Metro serves 88 constituent cities – of which Los Angeles is only one – totaling 10 million people. The Westside, which is the object of the proposed subway – is, in turn, only one part of Los Angeles. But by some measures, it is the largest informal urban region in the country, on par with the New York boroughs and all but the country’s very largest center cities. I describe it as an amorphous Manhattan, a dynamic area of wealth, global prominence and traffic. But it’s even more complicated than that, because Los Angeles city government does not correspond with the transportation authority, and, moreover, the proposed subway would pass through three other entirely independent cities: West Hollywood, Beverly Hills and Santa Monica.

If I’m guilty of anything, it’s hometown pride, except without the real town. The subway might change that. It might finally knit together the Westside’s parts while, at the same time, introducing perhaps the most profound symbol of serious urbanism that policy and engineering has ever devised (even more so than skyscrapers, and certainly more so than freeways -- which are, many would agree, downright anti-urban).

I could wax poetic about either subways or the Westside ad nauseam, but the poetry is beside the point. What matters for my contribution to InTransition are, one the one hand, things like accuracy, balance and objectivity, and, on the other hand, expertise and familiarity. It’s hard to fulfill both.

I readily admit that if the subway gets built to the Westside, I will be first in line at the turnstile (assuming that Metro goes forward with an asinine plan to abandon its current honor system). Even my Libertarian anti-subway sources admitted that the extension would be “nice.” For me, it would be more than nice; it would be a revelation.

But, as one of the three largest public transit projects in the country, it would also cost $5 billion. And let’s be real. If ever it gets approved, it would be more like $10 billion or $12 billion. Who knows.

The fun thing about pursuing objectivity in the face of one’s own interests is that you learn a lot. Some of my sources who were most skeptical about the subway were the most eloquent and indeed most cogent. The cost-benefit analysis results in some pretty daunting calculations, mainly because Los Angeles’ entire subway system will always pale in comparison to single lines in New York. One source even noted that historically, the construction of rail projects in L.A. County has correlated with a decrease in overall transit ridership. Aw, snap.

But that doesn’t mean that Metro should not pursue it and that the federal government should not fund it. Whenever my mind wanders into the billions, I think about all the money that is wasted on things that aren’t very nice: inefficiency, misguided subsidies, and, of course, wars. A subway will last generations, and it will not kill anyone. In fact, it might even save a few lives through less pollution and fewer chances for unfortunate meetings between vehicle and pedestrian on the pavement up above.

And as gas ratchets towards $5 and beyond with hardly any chance of ever coming down, the Los Angeles subway – as “nice” as it might be for me and my fellow Westsiders right now – may become every bit as essential for us as our cars once were.

Ultimately the Federal Transportation Administration’s New Starts program will decide whether the subway extension deserves federal funds. And, failing that, Congress may work its magic. In the meantime, we in Los Angeles have to decide whether a little pride and a little less traffic is going to be worth it. Worth $5 billion, that is.

Josh Stephens is the author of “An Underground Movement Forms in L.A.,” published in the Summer 2008 issue of InTransition.

Arena Gives Crowds New Look at Newark

By Karl Vilacoba

Growing up on the Jersey Shore, I often had to choose between the Meadowlands and Madison Square Garden when it came to spending my entertainment dollars. The choice usually boiled down to this question: the highway or the railway?

Whether it was a concert tour or a pro-wrestling card, the venues sometimes hosted the same events days apart. I could make the car trip up the New Jersey Turnpike to the Meadowlands sports complex (home to Giants Stadium and the Izod Center) or hop on a train to Penn Station New York, which is basically the Garden’s basement. Although it was a good half-hour longer, MSG usually won out. The train eliminated the stress of driving as well as the pesky tack-on prices for tolls, parking and gas. But with Newark’s Prudential Center now up and running, I’ll probably be seeing less of MSG in the future.

Pulling out of Penn Station Newark one night, I glanced out the train window at the 4,800-square-foot TV screen on the arena’s exterior and it dawned on me how important transportation is to a venue’s success. Out of this commuter’s daydream was born the idea for this issue’s look at sports arenas and transportation. I learned a lot from reading and writing the various articles in this series, and I hope you did, too.

One of the most thought-provoking of the bunch was a sidebar I worked on called “Academics Say Stadiums Don’t Pay.” The piece features an interview with Professor Rick Eckstein, author of a book that challenges the notion of the sports arena as a catalyst for economic revitalization. Eckstein said that of the dozens of publicly financed stadium projects he’s studied, not one has lived up to its financial promises. When you crunch all of the relevant numbers -- jobs created, tax ratables, sales revenues, etc. -- it never justifies the public investment, he said. And when confronted by these facts, he said, people will defend the stadiums with lame arguments along the lines of community pride.

Which brings me back to Newark. At the expense of sounding just like the suckers Professor Eckstein warned me about, I still think the city’s decision to invest in the Prudential Center was a no-brainer.

Before I started working here, I flat out feared Newark. Notice I said “before.” Because once I spent some time downtown, I felt as safe there as Manhattan. This area today has plenty of great things going for it – the trick is getting people here to see for themselves. That’s exactly what the Prudential Center has been doing, thousands of people a night.

Former Mayor Sharpe James relentlessly pursued a downtown arena a few years ago, casting total faith in the idea that it would be the great economic cornerstone for the city’s future. He offered team owners the heavens to relocate to a blighted patch of properties a few blocks from Newark Penn Station. Just when it seemed like the plan had flatlined, James sealed the deal by pledging $210 million toward its construction. He took some lumps for the move, and rightfully so. After all, the city has no shortage of pressing needs that money could have been spent on.

Let’s say Newark earns back just half of that money through arena-related tax revenues. Can the rest of what it gains really be quantified? In the years since the 1967 riots, attracting tourists has been a huge challenge and good national publicity has been scarce. If you asked me two years ago what the first word to come to mind would be when you said “Newark,” I’d have responded with something like “crime.” Standing around the streets before a recent Devils game, I couldn’t help but wonder how many of those fans would have said the same.

But not after they left. Now the first word they think of might be “Devils,” “hockey,” “arena” or “fun.” If they’ve looked around a little, it could even be something like “museums,” “restaurants” or “universities.” That sure beats “crime.” How much is a change like that worth?

Karl Vilacoba is the author of “The Devils in the Details,” published in the Summer 2008 issue of InTransition. He is the magazine’s managing editor.

When Moving Huge Crowds, a Few Thousand Cars Makes a Big Difference

By Jason Martin

My second trip out to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway this summer was quite different from the first. I was back at the track on Sunday, July 27, for the NASCAR Allstate 400, and getting in and out was not nearly the traffic nightmare that I and many others encountered for the Indianapolis 500 back on Memorial Day weekend.

I left my house on the north side of town, about a 10-mile drive, at the same time for both races – four hours in advance of the race start. In May, the trip in was a brutal crawl once I passed the White River on 30th Street and approached Cold Spring Road. We were bumper to bumper for more than an hour, and this is one of the more secretive passages into the track.

Fast-forward to the NASCAR race, attended by another enormous crowd of about 225,000 people, but significantly less than the 300,000-plus that showed up for the 500. For the NASCAR race, I zipped along 30th Street all the way to the light at Georgetown Road by the edge of the track in less than 20 minutes total. I had to wait on police to shuttle pedestrians, and had to merge in front of a tractor trailer, but turning left there was little problem.

Getting out of the track was also less harried this time around. Media parking is inside the lot, and for the Indy 500, it was more than an hour trip home after waiting more than an hour for the race to end. For the NASCAR race, I waited only a half-hour, and it took only 20 minutes to get home.

I use this comparison as a means of demonstrating the effect that public transportation might have on traffic congestion at these races. Seventy-five thousand less people attended, but it made a world of difference in congestion. About 50,000 people take the public shuttles to the Indy 500. Without those shuttles, how much more of a headache would it? With more shuttles, how much easier?

It’s very likely that the shuttles will return next year after IndyGo follows the proper Federal Transit Administration procedures, but this is an example where the government might consider amending its rules to suit certain population centers. The Indianapolis area needs all the public transportation help it can get – it’s the 13th-most populated city in America and I can’t imagine there’s a worse one in the top 20 for moving the public.

A new airport opening in the fall comes with plans to add light rail connecting the terminal and downtown. For a city that thrives on conventions, that’s essential.

Here’s hoping that in regards to public transportation and the track, the city keeps its current service or even increases it instead of taking a drastic step back.

Jason Martin is the author of “A Slow-Go to the Speedway,” published in the Summer 2008 issue of InTransition.

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.

Putting Mountaineers in Gear

By Karl Vilacoba

Planetizen.com has posted a column which took me down Memory Lane – which in this case is an elevated, electrified roadway traversed by unmanned blue and gold vans.

In “Personal Rapid Transit: The Connective Tissue of Better Mobility,” University of Washington Professor Emeritus Jerry Schneider discusses two PRT systems and how they might serve as models for other cities. Schneider was enthusiastic about PRTs’ potential to provide relatively cheap, reliable and environmentally friendly public transportation. The two systems he focuses on chiefly – the ULTra PRT at London’s Heathrow Airport and the Vectus PRT in Sweden – are both under construction and considered cutting edge. A PRT I grew to know well was once, too, but those days are long gone.

In the early 1970s, Morgantown, W.Va.’s PRT was built to connect West Virginia University’s original downtown campus to a newer one springing up two miles away in the city’s Evansdale section. The system has five stops: Walnut Street, in the downtown shopping area; Beechurst Avenue, in the heart of the downtown campus buildings; Engineering, the stop for the Coliseum hoops arena, engineering school and other university buildings in Evansdale; the Towers dorms; and Medical, the drop-off point for Mountaineer Field, the medical school and local hospital. You can ride from one end of the line to the other in about 20 minutes; going by foot would mean crossing a mini-mountain that separates the two areas.

Before I put in my dorm request as an incoming freshman, I sought living advice from an upperclassman I knew. He laid it out like this: The Towers dorms are modern, cleaner, and have better cafeterias and amenities, but you have to ride the PRT to class every day. The downtown dorms are ancient, cold and crumbling, but are in the middle of it all. Ever the Jersey boy, I gravitated to the more urban downtown area.

Although I lived downtown, the PRT nonetheless became a major part of my college life. On football game mornings, when Morgantown becomes the largest city in West Virginia, ridership swelled as visitors and students like myself sardined ourselves in the (allegedly) 20-person capacity cars. You’d also be hard-pressed not to get stuck with at least a few courses out in Evansdale over your career, no matter how hard you tried to avoid it.

I can’t imagine how I would have gotten by without the PRT. It ran steadily from morning to the evening, and cars weren’t difficult to come by. Rides were free by swiping your student ID through the turnstile and 50 cents for anyone else; next to a newspaper or a postage stamp, can you think of a better value today than that? I lived in a house with a track running through my backyard, yet it was so quiet I rarely even noticed it.

There were also times I thought PRT could have stood for Pain in the Rear Tailbone. The university touts its 98 percent reliability, but I’m willing to bet that 2 percent failure came inordinately during the rough Morgantown winters, when you dreaded getting stranded the most. There were other times when it felt like the so-called “PRT Gods” –faceless operators who controlled the cars from a remote location, never making themselves known except to scald a misbehaving student on the platform over the loudspeaker – were playing tricks on me. You’d push the button for your destination, then watch a car pull up to you and just idle there, doors closed, for minutes on end.

Today, the PRT is an indispensable part of campus life and a selling point for prospective students. According to a recent New York Times piece, there’s a debate going on now over whether to expand the system by five more stops. If something were to happen that caused the PRT to vanish tomorrow, it would be a disaster. Morgantown is an old city of narrow, wildly sloped streets that were not planned to handle anything near its modern traffic. Anything that means getting cars off these streets is profoundly positive, especially when you’re talking about drivers 18-22 years old.

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?