Quote of the Day (Colin Jost, on Bus Rides Home From NYC During High School)

“I was always on edge when I travelled home alone late at night. I was very conscious of never smiling, because I was afraid that if I smiled someone would punch me. I actively tried to look sad, and, in keeping with my slow-to-talk, living in-my-head approach to life, I would invent awful things that had happened to me to tell a robber so that he would feel guilty and then not rob me. Like, I expected a robber to say, ‘I’m so sorry, Colin. I was going to steal your ten dollars, but after hearing that your cat killed your sister I cannot in good conscience take your money. In fact, here’s five dollars from me. In memory of your sister, Noxzema.’”—Saturday Night Live writer and “Weekend Update” co-anchor Colin Jost, “Commuting,” The New Yorker, Mar. 16, 2020

(The accompanying photo of Colin Jost—cropped from another showing him with Michael Che—was taken at Citi Field, Oct. 12, 2015, by Arturo Pardavila III on Flickr.)

Photo of the Day: World Cup Distraction at NY’s Port Authority

New York’s Port Authority Bus Terminal at 42st Street was built during the second term of Mayor Bill O’Dwyer—which, for anyone keeping score, ended (hastily) in 1950. Commuters like me are familiar with how much it is showing its age, most notably during the winter, when buckets all over the place try to keep the leaks from the roof.

Maybe because it keeps hoping against hope that Something Big (like enough money for a completely new building, perhaps?), maintenance on this structure has been haphazard. Maybe the PA also thinks that, if they can give us some entertainment, bus and subway passengers won’t radiate so much palpable discontent.

In the evening rush hour, passengers have gotten used to seeing musicians and singers (even sopranos, for Heaven’s sake!) in a perch on the second floor. During the last two mornings, though, I’ve noticed something different: a big screen offering footage of the World Cup. 

I took this photo yesterday, when the crowd, as you can see, was already substantial. This morning, the crowd around this video had grown even more. One possible explanation of the intense interest in these video proceedings: Commuters were suffering delays in getting to their normal destinations, so why not while the time away a bit longer by watching the games?

As you can see, it looked like it worked.

Photo of the Day: Reopened George Washington Bridge Bus Terminal

In mid-May, the George Washington Bridge Bus Terminal in upper Manhattan finally reopened two years behind schedule and $17 million over budget. In many parts of the U.S. and the world, this would be regarded as a boondoggle, even a scandal. Here in the Northeast, it's seen as blessed relief after endless commuter abuse. 

A couple of weekends ago, I took this photograph of the interior, where the buses come in.

I was not enamored of the renovation—partly because, I think, I did not enter where I could see the new gym, restaurants, shopping, and even a dentist office. Moreover, I was not thrilled with the cashless ticketing process. (Bad enough that commuters now won’t be able to buy tickets from a bus driver and must board with tickets or monthly passes. But the terminal should have at least one window open where clerks are available to provide tickets, rather than conferring with each other while passengers were left to fend for themselves in finding ticket-dispensing machines, as occurred when I was there.)

Still, passengers like me are glad for little things, like not having to climb up stairs that were a horror show for the elderly and disabled. And the 125-seat waiting room won’t be exposed to the elements, while providing air conditioning and heating.

Further downtown, a far bigger project—the renovation of the Port Authority Bus Terminal in midtown Manhattan—hasn’t even gotten off the ground yet. (Construction can’t start until an environmental review, which won’t be completed for another two years.) 

Meanwhile, commuters have gotten used to the sight of buckets capturing drops from leaky roofs during winter in the creaking midtown structure. We’ll see how long the entire process takes for this to be finished. If I'm lucky, I'll be able to enjoy it by the time I retire. Maybe.

New Jersey Transit: The Disaster That Was Waiting to Happen

Twenty-six years ago, when I worked briefly for a company on 12^th Street in Manhattan, I linked up with the PATH train that took me to my office by taking a New Jersey Transit commuter train from Bergen County, NJ, to Hoboken.

In many ways, riding the Pascack Valley line was the most satisfying time of my day; I could eat, talk to other passengers, and most of all, not worry about overcrowding or getting stuck in traffic. “New Jersey Transit has the best on-time performance of any railroad in the tristate area,” a fellow passenger told me once.

New Jersey didn’t have much to crow about then, but that passenger and I--and I would wager nearly every other passenger on that line and that rail system--knew we had a good thing going. A change of jobs in a new location closer to midtown led me to start taking the bus into the Port Authority station in midtown, and though I didn’t regret the job switch, I had often wished in the quarter-century since that I could continue taking the train into work.

That is, until last week, when a train on the very route that I took long ago crashed inside Hoboken Terminal, killing one passenger and injuring hundreds more.

My initial “There but for the grace of God, go I” reaction and sympathy for the victims of the accident soon gave way to horror over the disruption that the massively damaged terminal was causing for area commuters. More recently, I was filled with a sense of angry déjà vu over how institutional rot led to long-term deterioration and this sudden, savage exposure of that system’s ills.

The news of this catastrophe, you see, occurred at the height of a closely watched trial in New Jersey, featuring testimony by Gov. Chris Christie’s former enforcer at the Port Authority, David Wildstein, the mastermind of a September 2013 scheme to retaliate against the Democratic Mayor of Fort Lee by closing two of three of the borough’s lane approaches to the George Washington Bridge during rush hour for a fictitious “traffic study.”

Christie has already seen his hopes for the GOP Presidential nomination evaporate because of Bridgegate. But he had to be seriously sweating that a new, needless disaster could be laid at his door, because—within 32 hours of the train crash—he announced a compromise that ended his two-month stalemate with the state legislature over funding public transit.  (Even then, the 23-cent-per-gallon gas-tax increase was passed so quickly that the public had little time to weigh in.)

Naturally, for the several years he was planning or conducting his Presidential campaign, he refused to approve any legislation that might allow GOP primary opponents to charge him with raising taxes. And, to be fair, Republican and Democratic predecessors also did not adequately maintain the transportation trust fund at acceptable levels.

But allowing NJ Transit steadily dwindling transit-specific funding—from $285 million in 2012 to $33 million this year—was all on Christie’s watch, and utterly unconscionable given higher mass-transit ridership during this time. Increasingly, rather than using funds as intended for capital projects, the agency has had to dip into them more immediately for ongoing operational needs.

During his prolonged standoff with the legislature, Christie would only allow work to proceed on emergencies. This meant that he froze hundreds of ongoing projects, including $2.7 billion worth of New Jersey Transit work. That doesn’t begin to measure the true cost of inaction, either, because, with deferred maintenance, expenses rise as the condition of a site deteriorates.

At the same time it has suffered funding shortfalls, New Jersey Transit has also experienced a vacuum in leadership. Its executive director resigned last November to become head of the New York subway system, and since then the agency has been managed on an interim basis by its former chief of bus operations. Moreover, New Jersey Transit has canceled every public board meeting since June, so it is also operating without oversight.

Although, for a few years, Republicans nationwide couldn’t get enough of Christie’s in-your-face style—and the media, to his handlers’ delight, responded—few noticed what a hash he was making of the fiscal stewardship that the GOP long claimed as one of its hallmarks. In terms of New Jersey transit, that involved funding legerdemain: moving dollars away to the agency from where it had been originally intended (e.g., other state financial pools such as the New Jersey Turnpike Authority and a state clean energy fund), as well as raising New Jersey transit fares twice since Christie took office). And still, the agency experienced massive funding shortfalls.

Now, New Jersey commuters are reaping the whirlwind of this neglect:

*New Jersey Transit now has 12 times more equipment failures than any other commuter railroad in the country, according to a CBS News New York report.

*A leader in the 1990s in developing the automatic braking system known as Positive Train Control (a technology that many believe might have averted this latest crash), New Jersey Transit has now fallen far behind other states in implementing this technology.

* A late-September collision between two NJ Transit buses in the Lincoln Tunnel injured more than two dozen people.

* In August, a high-speed crash between two NJ Transit buses in downtown Newark left two fatalities.

*This past summer, the agency cut service on the Pascack Valley Line by reducing the number of trains and running trains with fewer cars, with a predictable outcome: overcrowding.

*In August, New Jersey Transit regularly canceled its second morning express train.

*Early this summer, sparked by commuter complaints, the Federal Railroad Administration investigated NJ Transit’s safety practices, finding multiple violations.

Perhaps in no other realm has Chris Christie’s Washington ambitions caused more damage, now and in the near future, for so many as transportation. Commuters suffer the consequences on a daily basis. In the end, neglect of infrastructure will only make individuals and businesses reexamine whether they really want to deal with the endless hassles that come with living and working in New Jersey.

Adventures in Commuting, Part II: Auto Inferno

After my three-hour morning bus ride into New York the other day (an adventure recounted in this prior post), I thought I was done for the week with commuting disasters.

Well, I’m not going to say that my experience the very next day topped a commute that took triple its normal time. (Indeed, it’s hard to surpass in wretched excess a ride described by a fellow passenger as “the worst I’ve seen in 35 years.”)

But it sure was different in a way I had never seen before.

Yet, in the New York metropolitan area, you simply never know what will happen—particularly when, even with a substantial mass-transit system, cars and their unexpected problems are still a huge part of the commuting experience.

As I got on the bus in my hometown of Englewood, NJ, on the day after my blood pressure-boosting trip through the highway wilderness of New Jersey, I did a fast countdown of what seemed different from the day before:

*I didn’t have to wait long for the bus;

*There was neither a long line of passengers nor an abundance of empty seats—meaning that it would be unlikely that the bus would or could stop for many people after me; and

*I knew, from prior rides, that this bus driver was friendly, funny, patient and competent.

That last quality, so often assumed about drivers by their passengers, should not, as I had occasion to be reminded of the day before, ever be taken for granted. And that experience and skill would prove important within five minutes of my boarding the bus.

As the bus headed onto the entrance to I-95, I looked to my right, where Crystal Lake loomed as the last bit of natural landscaping (aside from the Meadowlands) before the bus bumped and vroomed on miles of asphalt down the interstate and into the Lincoln Tunnel on the way into the Port Authority at 42^nd Street. That glimpse of water (or, when it solidified in winter, ice) was nirvana to me. In fact, I had often wished I could have stopped to take pictures of this serene scenery.

Immersed momentarily in this morning daydream, I was jolted back into reality by two disquieting words from the bus driver: “Oh, shit.”

Now, the immensity of that exclamation can only be absorbed when you recall that bus drivers in the New York area have seen pretty much everything. They are justly proud of their “been there, done that” attitude. What this meant is that whatever the bus driver had seen now had really, really thrown him.

I leaned forward, straining my eyes to see what had alarmed the driver. So did the other passengers—so many that it was a wonder that the bus didn’t topple forward from the sudden shift.

Ahead of us, not quite off the ramp entrance, was a car starting to smoke. I couldn’t make out if there was a human being inside. By this time, our driver had stopped the bus, called an emergency number on his cellphone to advise of the situation, and thrust his arms back toward the street we had just left, yelling frantically to the four or five cars that had followed us quickly onto the ramp, “Back, back, BACK!!!”

We had already obeyed his order to us, “Everybody out!”, by rising from our seats and moving toward the front of the bus. But, as we watched the smoke in the car ahead of us begin to lick up larger and larger flames, the urgency not just to get out but to move far away had risen to the point that a human stampede began to form. 

As I got off the bus, I had to hold onto the railing more tightly than usual because the people behind were practically tripping me. For the first time, I felt what it might have been like to be among the fans trampled to death at The Who concert in Cincinnati in December 1979.

One after another, under the guidance of police officers who had arrived at the scene, the cars behind our bus backed down the ramp. I spotted another bus waiting behind these cars and wondered if I should try to board it.

The rapid calculations involved with this (would I be charged for the transfer, including if it was for a different bus company, and would there be enough room for me?) were  swept completely out of my mind when our driver told us we could board again. Thank God he had been quick-thinking.

We moved to get back on, but many did so without the alacrity that the driver thought was necessary. “Let’s go!” he urged. “Forget about the pictures and get on the bus so we can get out of here!”

I was one of the people who pulled cameras out. I am not the type of person ghoulish enough to photograph a disaster or potential tragedy in the making. (I did not, for instance, pull out my camera to record a bigger blaze one morning the prior week: an SUV at the end of my block that had caught fire inside a garage, thereby filling the house to which it was attached with smoke, too.)

What our driver didn’t realize was that many of us were refugees on the three-hour trip to the Port Authority yesterday. We did not believe that our bosses could accept that there had been traffic problems for the second straight day. So we needed photographic evidence to show (such as the image I took accompanying this post). Otherwise, it would sound too outrageous to be believed.

Our driver, once he corralled us all in, got us into New York as quickly as possible. However, we  had been slowed down terribly. Though I didn’t miss nearly half the day, as I had done just before, I still ended up 20  minutes behind the eight ball.