Monthly Archives: April 2018

April 2018 NJ Transit changes that will affect jitney bus service

Since I interned at NJ Transit’s bus scheduling office one summer, i find it interesting to see how the timetables change every season on the various bus routes in my area. This time around, the schedules are changing for the 84 and the 123.

The 84 is a local route that uses the same streets as the Bergenline jitney bus route between Journal Square and North Bergen. The new timetable shows service on weekdays being reduced from a bus every 15 minutes to a bus every 20 minutes.

To me, this change is logical. The 84 probably has low ridership because it competes against jitney buses that run every 1-2 minutes. I have seen these buses, and they are almost always close to empty. So are the Bergenline buses at most times of day, but that’s another story.

It will be interesting to see how this change affects the jitney world. My assumption is that it means a small number of fares that would have gone to NJ Transit will now go to jitney drivers’ living. NJ Transit will benefit because they won’t spend as much money running buses that aren’t needed.

The second change is to the 123, a bus that connects Palisade Ave in Jersey City and New York to the Port Authority. Until recently, almost all morning rush hour trips started at the Congress Street Light Rail station. There was only one 123 bus every hour or so in the morning rush between Congress Street and Christ Hospital. This was probably because the Palisade – New York jitney route provides a more direct service, with fewer stops.

Now, there will be a 123 from Christ Hospital every 20 minutes or so in the morning rush. I am concerned that this will take passengers away from the New York – Palisade jitney, which is already a very small route with only a few departures a day. If the margins become too slim, the drivers may quit or find a more productive route. And the passengers won’t even be better off, because the 123 is a good 10-20 minutes longer in the mornings, because of its local stops, and the fact that it approaches the Lincoln Tunnel from the north instead of the South.

Another possibility is that the extra 123s will provide an “anchor” that will actually benefit the New York – Palisade route. This is an effect where passengers, knowing that a regular service like the 123 is available, will wait at bus stops at designated times. This allows the jitney drivers to arrive before the 123, and offer transportation to these people.  Either outcome is possible, making this an interesting natural experiment.

 

 

 

Service during snowstorms

On March 21st, Northern New Jersey had a snowstorm. 12-18 inches were forecast, and the total accummulation was on the lower end of that, but still substantial. It was wet heavy snow that brought down a lot of branches!

During the storm, this website received quite a number of inquiries about whether their bus was running. Of course, as an independent observer, I have no way of knowing that. My only source of information was looking out the window and seeing if a Bergenline jitney was passing by.

Since jitney drivers are independent contractors or owner-operators, there is usually no central dispatch office that tells everyone when to shut down service. A driver can decide to go home early, or they can decide to stick it out and keep working during the snow.

NJ Transit and other private bus operators in New jersey canceled service that day between 1pm and 4pm. All local NJ Transit bus service shut down at 3pm.

The roads were slushy but navigable. I saw that bergenline jitneys kept coming, less frequently than usual, but they were coming.

Lots of people wrote me emails to ask the status of their bus. I told them I did not have reliable information, but that if they caught their bus, to let me know. That way, I could tell others with the same inquiry. This was a crude way to assess the status of jitney operations during the snow, but it was very useful!

It seems that jitney service continued to be robust several hours after other modes of transportation shut down. One person wrote to me saying he got on a Kennedy Boulevard bus at around 5:00 pm. Another told me they boarded a Boulevard East bus at 6pm. The Paterson lines were also still running in the evening rush hour.

Why is this? Either jitney bus drivers are ok with working in more hazardous conditions, OR, the service is just more reliable. Another big factor for drivers is that once NJ Transit shuts down, there are more passengers the jitney drivers can transport. With the competition out of the way, the drivers can earn more money.

Thank you to all the commuters who updated me about their commutes that day!