Amtrak, B-Movies, Web Development, and other nonsense

Tag: Newark

The LaGuardia-Newark Shuffle

Due to circumstances beyond my control I found myself on a flight to LaGuardia (LGA) the other day, but needing to get back to Newark Liberty (EWR) to retrieve my car. LGA was terra incognita to me but I knew the crossing Manhattan via to reach New Jersey is a fool’s errand. I decided against the various van shuttles and used public transport. The only thing I knew about LGA going in is that it has no direct subway service, although it has been proposed. In the end, I used a combination of a bus, a subway, a train, and a people mover. On a good day it’ll take you an hour and 45 minutes and cost $15.

Bus

A bus in blue livery on a street

A Q70 Select Bus Service under the 61st Street–Woodside subway station in Woodside, Queens. Image by Tdorante10 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons

I chose the Q70, because it offered the quickest access to Midtown via the Roosevelt Avenue/Jackson Heights station.
The MTA makes this pretty easy on you. As you’re walking out of LGA you see various signs directing you to the “Bus to Subway.” There are several MTA express buses operating out of LGA to various destinations:

  • The M60, which runs west into Harlem for a connection with the Metro-North Railroad at 125th Street and various subway services.
  • The Q70, which runs south into Queens for a connection with the Long Island Rail Road at Woodside and various subway services.

If you have a MetroCard this is easy. There are vending machines inside LGA to buy a card or refill it. Outside at the bus pickup area there are ticketing machines for the various services. It’s proof-of-payment: you insert your card, it debits the standard fare ($2.75) and you get a receipt. There was an MTA worker aboard the bus but our receipts weren’t inspected.

You have a valid transfer with this purchase, which I discovered when I swiped through the gates at Roosevelt Avenue/Jackson Heights and went down to catch an E. I took an E because it’s familiar to me and it’s cheap. The Long Island Rail Road at Woodside is faster, but it’s more expensive and I haven’t taken it before (shame).

The bus circles through all the terminals at LGA before running nonstop to Roosevelt Avenue/Jackson Heights via the Grand Central Parkway. This does put you at the mercy of traffic; it’s unavoidable. In rush-hour traffic on a very rainy day it took 23 minutes. Roosevelt Avenue/Jackson Heights is a large station and there appeared to be plenty of shops and restaurants in the immediate vicinity.

Subway

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The E runs express through Queens and Manhattan before dumping you off at Pennsylvania Station. On a congested day this took 37 minutes; normally it would take 21-25. The E gives you some excellent options: right before Penn Station it stops at 42nd Street with a direct connection to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, should you wish to try your hand at one of the airport bus shuttles. If you stay on the E to the World Trade Center (another 5-10 minutes) you can take PATH to Newark Penn or the Hoboken Terminal.

Getting off the E at Penn, you follow a maze of twisty passages, all alike, to reach the New Jersey Transit (NJT) platforms. I’m convinced that this maze rearranges itself every time I visit. Numerous NJT services stop at the Airport; departure boards in Penn indicate them with an airplane symbol. During the day you can expect a train every 15-20 minutes.

Train

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AirTrain Newark grinding over a parking lot.

NJT trains are unreserved; tickets are sold in vending machines on the NJT concourse. One-way from Penn to EWR is $13/person; this includes a surcharge for using the EWR station. Tickets are inspected aboard the train. With EWR, as with Secaucus, you will need your ticket to exit the station.

It’s a 25-minute trip from New York Penn to EWR; the train will also stop in Secaucus and Newark Penn. At Newark Penn there’s a bus that runs to the airport. I’ve never taken it, but if you feel like adding a mode of transport it’s cheaper than continuing to the airport station and it might be faster for a reason I’m about to discuss. If you chose to take PATH from the World Trade Center you’d want to take this bus in lieu of NJT.

When you get off at the EWR station you go up the stairs, swipe through a fare gate with your NJT ticket, and make your way to the Newark AirTrain. This is the weakest link in the process. It’s an airport circulator serving the station, various parking lots, and all three terminals. It’s old and prone to breakdowns. It’s vulnerable to bad weather and has to be closed when there’s high wind, in which case it’s replaced by an infrequent bus. It’s also just slow, even when it’s running.

Anyway, if the AirTrain is running, it’ll take 10-15 minutes to reach the terminals. Catch a flight. Retrieve your car. Ponder the choices that led you to this moment.

Metropark

This is part of a series of posts chronicling our difficult journey to the 2014 edition of B-Fest, the annual bad movie festival at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

When you last left us, we had bailed out of a badly-delayed Trans-Bridge Lines bus at the Newark Airport with the intention of hopping a train down to Metropark to catch up our Amtrak Northeast Regional (train 125) coming down from New York.

This plan unraveled almost immediately. We arrived at the AirTrain station around 10:30 in a bit of a rush. Two New Jersey Transit trains were scheduled to reach Metropark ahead of 125. One departed at 11:00 AM, the other at 11:30. The second train would be cutting things a bit fine (~10 minutes). Newark advertises four-minute headways on the AirTrain, and it’s about a 10-minute trip from Terminal A to the train station.

Time passes. No train. More time passes. Still no train. Apparently there’s some kind of mechanical issue. I pace and fret. It’s quarter of 11. The window is closing. Finally a train comes. Each minute feels like an hour. We hit the train station at 10:55. We’re sprinting. I buy tickets from the vending machine and we race for the southbound platform. There’s a train there. Our train? I rush up to the conductor: “DOES THIS TRAIN GO TO METROPARK?!” Yes, she says, with a big smile. We’re on. Thirty seconds later we’re rolling down the Corridor. It’s my first ride on New Jersey Transit.

We arrive at Metropark in good order and set about inspecting the station. I’ve seen worse. Much worse. The biggest knock is that the station is elevated, and to reach the station building itself from the southbound platform you face a somewhat long walk through a dank tunnel. Otherwise it’s fine.

We arrived at 11:20. 125 was due to depart New York at 11:35 and arrive in Metropark at 12:05. Meantime, in New York, another drama was playing itself out. It was cold today. Very cold. The creations of Man do not appreciate cold nor fine, blowing snow which gets into electrics and causes all manner of problems. In New York, the pipes froze on the consist which was to be train 125. FDA regulations do not allow an intercity train to operate without running water. Probably for the best. Unfortunately, this meant Sunnyside Yard had to cobble together a new equipment set before 125 could depart.

Meanwhile, I’m sitting outside at Metropark as a form of penance, an offering to the Transport Gods. It’s very cold. I don’t know about the equipment problem yet. I do know that 125 hasn’t left New York and the clock is ticking. I assume (wrongly), that the problem is weather-related congestion in New York; perhaps one of the North River tunnel tubes is out of service. More time passes. I explain to other passengers what I know about operations. As we stand there an Amtrak train arrives at the station, unheralded and unexpected.

“What train are you?”, I call out.

“645,” comes the answer.

It’s a Keystone Service, bound for Harrisburg. Normally it doesn’t stop here. Jovial conductors offer a lift to anyone headed there and points in between. It’s much appreciated but we’re all headed south of Philadelphia. They pass on the news from New York: 125 has an equipment problem.

Featured image courtesy of Hermann Luyken (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

The Bus

This is part of a series of posts chronicling our difficult journey to the 2014 edition of B-Fest, the annual bad movie festival at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

I’m sitting on a bench at the Metropark train station in Iselin, New Jersey. It’s January 23. It’s very cold. I’m pondering how it came to this. Some form of cosmic retribution for the near-perfect runs on the Vermonter and Silver Star earlier in the month?

It started well enough, with Ken dropping us off at the Easton Bus Terminal a little before 8 AM. We planned to take the 8:10 Trans-Bridge Lines bus, which would deliver us to New York by 10:00, more than enough time to catch the 11:35 Northeast Regional (train 125) for Washington, D.C.

It went wrong almost immediately, as multiple crashes in the cold, snowy weather turned I-78 into a gigantic parking lot. By 10:20 or so we had reached Terminal A at Newark Airport (nearly an hour late), and the traffic situation into New York didn’t sound promising. Google Maps predicted an arrival in New York at 11:20-11:30, which was far too close for comfort.

If we misconnected in New York with 125 we were out of luck on the Amtrak front. 125 is the last train with a valid connection to the Capitol Limited, and the last train period scheduled to reach DC prior to the Capitol Limited‘s departure owing to weather-induced cancellations. If we arrived late into New York the only choice would be to rebook for the Lake Shore Limited, accepting the necessary repricing and likely unavailability of sleeping accommodations. I’ve documented at length why the Lake Shore Limited isn’t a desirable option.

The alternative was to bail out at Newark, ride the AirTrain out to the airport train station (on the Northeast Corridor), and catch our train south of New York. Using the last of my laptop’s battery I worked out a plan. We would get off at Newark, ride the AirTrain to station, and hop a New Jersey Transit train to Metropark in Iselin. As we walked through the terminal I called Amtrak and adjusted our itinerary to originate from Metropark instead of New York. We left the Trans-Bridge bus to its fate.

Featured image courtesy of Adam E. Moreira (Own work) [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.