William Couch didn’t even know the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail existed, but he can be forgiven: He left Jersey City more than 10 years ago.
In town for two days from North Carolina to visit family and friends, Couch was staying at the Doubletree Suite Hotel on Washington Boulevard. As he prepared to board the light rail at the Harsimus Cove stop en route to Martin Luther King Drive, the 75-year-old retired firefighter marveled at the new system.
“It’s clean and efficient,” he said. “It takes no time to get where it’s going.”
He hopped on the train a little over a year after the system was born in April, 2000. And he had plenty of room to get where he was going.
That’s been one problem for the light rail system, which will ultimately run from Bayonne to Ridgefield Park – low ridership. Money loss is another matter that needs to be addressed.
Yet those who back it, like U.S. Representative Robert Menendez (D-Union City) and NJ Transit Executive Director Jeffrey Warsh, say that growing pains for a system are to be expected in its first year.
“There is no mass transit system that has broken even in the first few years of operation,” said Menendez.
The light rail lost about $17.4 million in its inaugural year. Still, officials point to the fact that companies see the system as a huge incentive to locating here and anticipate more riders as years go by.
The number of riders fell short of initial expectations, but NJ Transit spokesman Ken Miller attributed those shortfalls to the delayed opening of the Hoboken station.
Now, NJ Transit said that ridership has risen 22 percent from the last quarter of 2000 to the first quarter of 2001. The average weekday rider number is now at 2,575. Tickets are $1.50 per trip.
The system currently runs from 34th Street in Bayonne up to the Newport Center Mall in Jersey City. A second line starts at West Side Avenue and also terminates at Newport.
Eventually, the line will run up through Hoboken, on through Tonnelle Avenue in North Bergen and will terminate at the Vince Lombardi Turnpike stop in Ridgefield Park. An extension to 22nd Street in Bayonne will come on line as well. A connection to Paterson is in the discussion stages, with the hope that the region will be linked by a rail system.
Discussions are continuing, Warsh said, on a regional fare card that would help make a seamless transfer among the varieties of transit systems in the New York metropolitan region.
By the fall of 2002, officials hope to have the Hoboken station open.
Officials recently unveiled a new “credit card sized” foldout map of the system. The card is available at Trust Company bank locations, as the bank helped pay for the cards, or customers can get cards by calling NJ Transit’s Customer line at (800) 772-3606.
At a recent event at Newport marking the year anniversary, Rep. Robert Menendez, a senior member of the House Transportation Committee and a major backer of the light rail, joked with Senator Jon Corzine “I see he was wearing a green suit,” said Menendez of the junior senator, “which was very appropriate, because we’re going to need a lot of money to build the rest of the lines.”