Dear Editor:
I hope emergency legislation can be passed to establish overnight service from New York to New Jersey. Legislation should also be considered to revoke the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey from operating the Path transportation, formerly the Hudson and Manhattan railroad. A new operator shall be found, and should be required to operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The operator shall be required to operate an even headway during midnight hours. Example: every hour, or 5, 10, 15, 20 or 30 minutes (35 minutes is not an even headway). In addition, the new operator shall be required to operate an emergency bus as soon as safely possible whenever the system is down 24 hours, 7 days.
The Port Authority has, I feel, made several administrative errors that warrant expulsion. First, the Port Authority is there to run the ports. The Port Authority did not even want to take over the bankrupt Hudson and Manhattan Railroad. Under Path, weekend and midnight service has deteriorated over the years.
We now have an irregular 36 minute headway in the midnights (when the trains used to run), I found out at least the reason for this is the new trains Pa 5’s are slower that the Pa 1 through Pa 4. The new 35 minute irregular pattern was designed to cover up the fact that the Pa 5 and should have retained for rush hour and midnight service.
It appears to me that neither Path nor New Jersey Transit give a damn about customer service especially overnight. Mta New York City Transit after Hurricane Sandy deployed 350 buses in Brooklyn to get people to Manhattan. Remember that you can walk over the Brooklyn Bridge; you cannot walk through the Holland Tunnel. Call Mta, they would send some busses. Perhaps Mta should take over the Path trains. You have many people working there that are pro transit and concerned about customers.
Sincerely,
David W. Robinson