Not mind blowing but I like it. Understated but a good step up from what it is currently.

Looks like the drumhead station signs at the corner of Broad and Washington St are being replaced too.

I'm a train nerd and I find the challenges of modern railroading enthralling, if not frustrating. This quote from an article on Freightwaves sums of the situation quite well. "The basic attractiveness of carload freight is its equivalent load factor, tonnage carrying capacity, and cheaper cost per ton-mile relative to truck. A modern 60- to 70-ton boxcar, to cite one example, offers the carrying capacity of three to four truckloads. The volume advantage allows a railroad company to charge the shipper considerably less than what a shipper is charged by a truck service on a per ton-mile price quote. A rail movement might cost in the 4.5 cents per ton-mile price range versus a truck price in the 9 cents or higher range. The trade-off to the shipper, however, can often be a higher inventory carrying cost because carloads arrives a day early or a day late as much as 40% of the time. That poor carload performance makes it difficult for logisticians to schedule."

The problem is that railroads post 1960's struggled to compete with trucks in the less-than-carload freight arena. If you're a low volume shipper, you won't find any coast savings going to the effort of putting your container onto a train, now if you had multiple containers reliably going between the same origin and destination than it starts to make sense. The same basic logic applies to freight traffic shipped in rail cars (box cars, hoppers, tank cars, etc). To borrow from another railroad forum "Anything not going by truck already with the advent of cheap trucking, and still going through some sort of railroad freight house, containerization took care of. There was no reason to put it on a truck, then offload that at a freight house, load that onto a car, offload that at destination, load that back into a trailer, then deliver -- when you could just drop the trailer onto a train."

Thanks for providing that link.

The problem with this video I have is that it ignores certain realities about the limitations of railroads as mode of transportation. That is not to say that the issues he brings up are not accurate, its just that it doesn't account for changing realities in the logistics sphere since the 1960s. Changes in industrial/production philosophies, containerization, rise of the interstate highway system, the brokenness of the e-commerce model, etc. These realities exist whether you nationalize or the major railroads completely change their mindset overnight. There needs to be a broad change in US Transportation policy, where the costs of the damages put on our road network by trucks are adequately accounted for. To nationalize without addressing this basic issue is futile. Even if this issue is rectified there are still issues inherent to freight rail transportation you'd struggle to solve.

The number is actually closer to 30-35%. Rail transportation works best for longer distances but it not well suited for short distances. It wouldn't make sense for a shipper to put a container full of good on a train, if that container destination was to a warehouse in the tri-state area. However, if I'm a shipper and I'm sending goods to a distribution center in the Midwest it makes perfect sense. The percentage however low, in 2019 still amounted to 1.8 billions tons of freight. It would take an additional 99 million trucks to move that amount of tonnage.

A. The rise of "Just in Time Logistics" which drastically reduced the need for traditional warehouses. B. Intermodal traffic "container traffic and truck trailer" has atrocious profit margins for railroads despite increased intermodal rail traffic. C. The fulfillment center shipping model does not lend itself to rail transportation quite well.
D. Effective freight rail systems aren't measured by speed but by efficiency. Railroads are excellent for bulk shipments for this reason.

You're welcome. The answer is sort of yes and sort of no. To borrow from a railroad forum, "The old model was to have a few warehouses but use rapid rail or air shipping to get the goods to the customer in a few days. Good for UPS, FedEx, USPS, railroads, etc. The new model is to have the goods within a day's or an hour's reach. Very bad for the rails, not good for the others."

They are, PANYNJ built an massive rail container facility there as part of their ExpressRail project.

Wikipedia article on all four ExpressRail facilities

Even if the % of tonnage hauled is low compared to trucks it doesn't mean they aren't congestion issues in our local area and across the network. Clearance limits and operational fluidity are big concerns. The primary freight main lines in lower Hudson County are the Passaic & Harsimus Branch which is double tracked and runs via Newark Ironbound into South Kearny before entering JC in the Marion section of town. The other line is the National Docks Secondary. Coming out of Oak Island Yard in Newark, the line crosses Newark Bay on a double tracked bridge, after passing the turnout for Port Jersey and the NYNJ Railroad car float yard, the line condenses to a single track. There is passing siding between Linden Avenue and the HBLR yard. Afterwards the line condenses onto a single track viaduct before entering a tunnel under the PATH yard. The line remains singled track as enters Long Dock tunnel before meeting the P&H in the Marion Section of town. Up until 2010, one of the big issues that hampered this line's usefulness to dispatchers and operational planners were height restrictions on the rail cars that could operate on the line. Redundant overheard bridges were removed, and tunnel clearances were improved. Another issue is that many modern warehouse facilities aren't suited to being rail served. Additionally, in an ideal world, freight and passenger rail operation would be segregated.

Was literally on the GO28 bus yesterday thinking how good it would be if this building was rehabbed.

Probably spillover from the road closures for the New York City Marathon, the VZ was closed part of the day so that may have been people flocking to cut through Lower Manhattan to Brooklyn instead of going across the SIE and VZ as they normally would.

You're welcome. When the holiday gets a little closer, you can plug in your travel into the NJ Transit trip planner and that should give you the best option.

You should be fine with the 107 bus. NJ Transit will publish special schedules with extra service for New Years Eve in December. On the regular schedule there is a gap between 145am and 6am when there are no scheduled departures for the 107 but NJ Transit may add some for the holiday festivities.

I prefer the selection of Little City Books, Word isn't bad tho.

I like the north side of town around the Bloomfield, Belleville border. Depending on where you live on the north side, the light rail will provide very convenient access to NJIT. Buses along the Bloomfield Avenue corridor are also pretty good as well. If you wanna live outside of Newark; Belleville, Bloomfield and Kearny are all good choices imo. I use to live in Belleville.

Looks like the bike lane received its green paint today.

That makes sense, a few weeks ago Amtrak was having a helicopter doing inspection work of the NEC in the vicinity of North Brunswick.

I'm not talking just about crime but basically how everyone is acting. Everyone seems to have a bug up there ass.

Was watching them restripe the road the other day when I was on the train to Hoboken.

Since the pandemic, it feels like everyone across all facets of society has lost what was left of their minds.

Almost all train systems have some type of signalling system. The Newark light rail system has signals at any level crossing like Franklin Avenue and Orange Street. Any place where there is switch/crossover for trains to change tracks (these are fairly numerous), go in and out terminals and yards. Additionally I believe the Light Rail uses a block signal system of sorts.

I think part of that comes down to two reasons. Railfan photographers focused on the trains arriving and departing the old terminal and the fact that it was demolished so early as the Erie moved their passenger operations to Hoboken just before they merged with the Lackawanna Railroad. Finding photos of the interiors of both Exchange Place Terminal (Pennsylvania Railroad) and Weehawken Terminal (New York Central Railroad) is also tricky, as they both were torn down around the same time as Pavonia.

I checked with a person who use to work on the Erie Lackawanna Railroad, he mentioned that the Erie had a coach shop on Monmouth Street.