MTA Chairman Says Pilot Program Transit Pass For LIRR, Subway & Bus Riders Coming Soon

cbslocal.com

The MTA promises a combined LIRR-MetroCard ticket for Southeast Queens commuters is coming soon.

The long-awaited transit pass will allow riders to buy one-way, weekly or monthly passes for both the LIRR and the city’s bus and subway systems.

People commuting from southeast Queens were expecting to get the passes last fall, but the pilot was delayed by the summer subway melt down.

At a budget hearing in Albany on Thursday, MTA Chairman Joe Lhota promised the pilot program is imminent.

“We are working on it as we speak. We’re very, very close,” he said. “I fully expect it to happen this year and my expectation, when I say this year, don’t think about it as the end of the year. It could happen relatively soon.”

The ticket would be sold at several LIRR stations including Atlantic Terminal, East New York, Nostrand Avenue, Laurelton, Rosedale, St. Albans and Locust Manor.

The MTA’s hope is commuters seeking to save time and money will tap into underutilized, but more expensive LIRR service.

Local lawmakers pushing for the ticket predict it could save as many as 10 hours of commuting time per week.

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Report Says New York City Buses Are the Slowest in the Nation

The Observer

New York City has the slowest buses of any big city in the United States, according to an analysis unveiled by Comptroller Scott Stringer on Monday morning.

The average New York City Transit bus travels 7.4 miles per hour along its local, Select Bus Service and express routes—the slowest of the 17 largest bus companies in the country, the report found. The typical city bus spends only half of its time in motion or in traffic, with another 21 percent spent at red lights and 22 percent at bus stops.

Average bus speeds differ significantly among the five boroughs, with the slowest average speeds in Manhattan, at 5.5 miles per hour; Brooklyn, at 6.3 miles per hour; and the Bronx, at 6.5 miles per hour, Stringer said. This is substantially lower than local routes in Queens, at 8.1 miles per hour, and Staten Island, at 11.4 miles per hour.

“New York City now has the slowest buses of any big city in America,” Stringer said at a press conference in Midtown Manhattan. “Routes are unreliable, congested… Many of them were designed more than a half-century ago, and over the past 20 years our economy has evolved, but our bus system has not.”

The comptroller noted that the MTA has lost 100 million passenger trips in the last eight years. The decrease in ridership has mainly been concentrated in Manhattan, down 16 percent since 2011, and Brooklyn, where ridership dropped by 4 percent.

Lower-income and immigrant New Yorkers are particularly hurt by the lack of service, he said.

The average personal income of bus commuters is $28,455—much lower than that of subway commuters, at $40,000, and employed New Yorkers overall, at $38,840, according to the report. And 55 percent of bus commuters are foreign-born and 75 percent are people of color, which is substantially higher than subway commuters and New Yorkers in general.

Stringer also said that a fractured management structure has adversely affected the bus system, which is managed by two agencies: the NYC Transit Bus and the MTA Bus Company. He argued that both the MTA and the city Department of Transportation have struggled to implement new technologies and core amenities.

There are only 104 miles of dedicated bus lanes along the city’s 6,000 miles of roadway, a ratio much lower than the share of bus lanes in other cities like Brussels, Barcelona, Dublin, Seattle, Lisbon and the country of Singapore.

The Transit Signal Priority, a technology that enables MTA buses to communicate with DOT traffic lights to extend a green light or shorten a red light at an approaching intersection, is active at 260 intersections along five of the city’s 326 bus routes, the report found. In London and Los Angeles, it has been installed at 3,200 and 654 intersections, respectively. Brussels, Dublin, Barcelona, Seattle, Montreal, Sydney and Zurich have a much higher percentage of traffic signals as well.

Stringer noted that the DOT will finish the year with only 15 of the 20 SBS routes it planned to carry out by the end of 2017 and that the routes have experienced a ridership decline and slow speeds. And of the more than 15,000 bus stops across the five boroughs, only 3,364 have shelters.

The comptroller offers 19 recommendations for the MTA, including adopting “a more rapid, direct and grid-like bus network,” upgrading to battery-electric buses, and building more bus terminals with help from the city. He also urged the DOT to take a more proactive role in redesigning the MTA bus network and recommended that the MTA introduce all-door boarding to reduce time spent at bus stops.

The MTA said much outer borough bus ridership has transferred to subways due to new populations that are increasingly traveling to Manhattan for work and leisure and that NYC Transit and MTA Bus operations, planning, and customer service are unified at the management level.

The agency pointed out that the current fleet of buses are the most reliable and advanced in recent history and that it received 277 new buses in 2017 as part of its 2015-2019 capital program. It is slated to receive another 1,700 as part of the program.

The MTA said MTA Chairman Joe Lhota supports congestion pricing and that city government is responsible for most factors that impact bus performance.

“The proper and progressive way to deal with the scourge of traffic is for everyone to support a responsible congestion pricing plan,” Lhota said in a statement. “Traffic congestion is keeping the most reliable and advanced bus fleet in recent history from moving as efficiently as it can and should.”

The DOT said it was surprised that a few recent and major developments were not mentioned in the report, including a plan Mayor Bill de Blasio launched last month to expand SBS to 500,000 more bus riders.

The de Blasio administration, the agency said, doubled the previous rate of SBS implementation, announced an expansion of the Transit Signal Priority in July, and has worked to create new dedicated bus lanes on critical corridors.

Gloria Chin, a DOT spokeswoman, said that the DOT looks forward to working with Stringer to advance state legislation for additional bus lane cameras. She also stated that adding new bus shelters requires modifying existing contracts and making new city expenditures.

“While we are grateful to get the comptroller’s support for all of these efforts, several of the report’s recommendations will require his office’s assistance,” Chin said in a statement.

Lhota proposed that Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the mayor split the cost of the $836 million required for the first phase of his plan. Cuomo has committed to funding half of the first phase but the mayor says that there is funding available in the state budget. The MTA is a state-run agency.

De Blasio has proposed a millionaires tax to fund subway repairs while Cuomo is drafting a congestion pricing proposal. The mayor, who launched a five-point plan to fight congestion in the city at the end of October, said Albany has not put forward a plan.

Last week, the MTA announced that Andy Byford, the current CEO of the Toronto Transit Commission, will lead NYC Transit and carry out Lhota’s subway plan.

Stringer supports congestion pricing, the millionaires tax, and a $3.5 billion transportation bond act to finance state transportation projects that would set aside 60 percent of the funds.

He has not yet spoken with Byford but spoke with Lhota on Sunday night. He supports Lhota’s plan and believes the city should contribute to it.

“I now want to extend his strategy to our buses,” Stringer said.

Andy Byford, MTA’s head of subways, buses, reports for 1st day on the job

The MTA’s new head of subways and buses promised to shake things up at the beleaguered transit agency as he began his first day on the job Tuesday.

Andy Byford, the MTA’s recently hired transit president, said he would give equal focus to four key pillars of his job — subway, bus, paratransit and employee morale — during a brief interview with reporters that touched on the agency’s ancient subway infrastructure; funding and cost reforms; 24-hour train service and the politics at play as subway delays soar and bus ridership plummets.

“I’ve certainly not come here to hold the fort or to maintain the status quo. My job is to drive up the level of service and thereby customer satisfaction for all New Yorkers,” Byford told reporters awaiting him outside MTA headquarters at the Bowling Green subway station.

The former CEO of the Toronto Transit Commission, who has never owned a car, rode into work just after 7 a.m. on a downtown 4 train from Grand Central. He said he plans to rely on subways and buses to get to work each day. He had prepared for a “packed” first day of meetings with his new colleagues and higher ups, including his boss Veronique Hakim, the MTA’s managing director, and Phil Eng, the agency’s COO.

Byford, a UK native who began his transit career as a station foreman in the London Underground, said his first priority on the subways is to “maximize the capability” of the MTA’s current signal system, which relies on technology dating back nearly a century, and improve maintenance of the MTA’s fleet of trains.

“The short term is getting the existing system to work reliably,” Byford said. “Doors typically are the Achilles’ heel of trains — particularly aging trains. You’ve got to maintain your doors, you’ve got to maintain your signal equipment.”

Upgrading the MTA’s signals will allow the agency to add more trains to lines throughout the day because trains could run tighter together. The MTA in the past has estimated that such an endeavor would cost tens of billions of dollars and take nearly a half-century. Round-the-clock service — in some form — might have to be sacrificed, Byford said.

“You cannot upgrade signals effectively … unless you give crews access to the track and that does mean that we will have to find a way of doing that,” Byford said. “I do appreciate that this is a 24/7 city. New Yorkers rightfully hold the (24-hour) subway dear to their hearts. But equally, they expect me to provide more reliable service. If we’re to do that, there is no gain without some pain.”

While Byford said there will need to be a larger investment in the MTA to turn around service, he also admitted that costs are unusually high. Building out the first leg of the second Avenue subway was the most expensive subway project on Earth at $4.5 billion.

“We should be looking to be as efficient as possible in everything that we do so that we can maximize scarce tax dollars,” Byford said.

The MTA, which is effectively controlled by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, has experienced a roughly 200 percent increase in subway delays since 2012. While ridership on the rails has begun to plateau and drop, bus ridership has declined much faster, dropping 100 million passenger trips over the past eight years. Meanwhile, Cuomo has tried to pass some responsibility of the subways to the city and Mayor Bill de Blasio. Both the mayor and the governor have agreed that the MTA needs more funding, though each has their own dueling proposals.

Byford said that he hopes he’s “allowed the time and the space to do what I need to do.” Over the past 10 years, Transit presidents have typically stayed on the job for a little over two years, on average.

“At the end of the day the MTA is a state-run authority,” Byford said. “So it’s the governor’s prerogative to have a view. I think it would be perverse if the governor wasn’t interested in transit or in the subway because, at the end of the day, he’s an elected official and I think all elected officials should be concerned about making sure this city’s transit system runs effectively.”

As Byford trekked downtown, trains were still running smoothly in the early hours of the morning rush. He used a word to describe his commute that not many New Yorkers would associate with the subway: “flawless.”

But, just about an hour after he entered MTA headquarters, the MTA reported delays or service changes on B, D, 2, 3, 6 and 7 trains and the morning commute looked more familiar.

Manhattan Gridlock: Plan to Relieve It & Impact On Transit Debt

Bumper-to bumper, horn-honking traffic through Manhattan streets is about as New York as bagels and Broadway. A plan to ease that problem is tapping into another mainstay of city life: high driving tolls.

The idea, called “congestion pricing,” involves using electronic tolling technology to charge fees to vehicles entering the most heavily trafficked parts of town during certain hours.

Some big cities already do it, including Singapore, Stockholm and London, where it can cost more than $15 to drive into the city center during peak periods.

Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed it for New York a decade ago and got a firm rejection from lawmakers who said drivers headed into Manhattan already get slammed enough by bridge and highway tolls and high parking fees.

But with the city’s subway system deteriorating, and politicians looking for ways to pay for a fix, the concept has gotten new life.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat who said last summer that “congestion pricing” is an idea whose time has come, could unveil a plan to implement a system as early as next week. A spokesman for the governor said a committee, called FixNY, is finalizing recommendations.

Alex Matthiessen, director of the MoveNY campaign — the most vocal advocate for congestion pricing — says New York would become the first city in the United States to charge drivers under such a system, but said others like San Francisco, Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles are paying close attention.

“We have a full-blown crisis,” Matthiessen said. “Our subway system is severely underfunded; it is quite unreliable, there are delays and overcrowding and the situation is potentially dangerous. No other idea has the twin benefit of also tackling a very severe traffic problem.”

There are still plenty of roadblocks.

Democratic New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said he likes the idea of getting cars off the street but isn’t convinced high tolls is the way to do it.

“I think there are serious fairness issues when it comes to congestion pricing,” he said at a recent news conference, citing the financial burden on drivers who can’t afford tolls as easily as the many millionaires who call Manhattan home. De Blasio has said he prefers dealing with the subway’s financial problems by imposing higher income taxes on the rich.

Key details, like how much it might cost, or where, exactly, drivers might get hit with the tolls have yet to be unveiled. Bloomberg’s plan would have charged $8 to drive south of 60th Street, or roughly the southern end of Central Park.

Adam Glassman, a Lynbrook, Long Island-based attorney, spoke in midtown Manhattan before getting into his car to go home.

“It is impossible to get into the city,” said Glassman, who is familiar with Bloomberg’s proposed plan years ago. He commutes into Manhattan twice a week.

He’s in favor of possible tolls. “I’d be willing to suck it up.”

Although no specific congestion pricing plan has been formally announced, many agree that any system would be likely to create surcharges for ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft. That’s OK with Uber, which is behind a public relations campaign backing congestion pricing.

“Users of Manhattan’s congested roads should bear part of the cost of helping to reduce congestion and improve our public transit system,” said Uber spokeswoman Alix Anfang. “Everyone should pay their fair share to keep New York City moving forward.”

Brooklyn state Assemblyman William Colton, a Democrat, said any proposals that would create tolls across bridges into Manhattan that are currently free, or a system that would ping drivers in areas like Times Square south through Greenwich Village and into the Wall Street business district, would be seen as an unfair tax by his constituents.

“This is going to have a negative effect on working people, small business people and seniors who have medical appointments in Manhattan,” Colton said. “This is going to be a big problem. I don’t know the details, but I’m very leery.”

Commuter Joe Murphy said he would be “absolutely opposed to it.”

He lives in Ridgewood, New Jersey, and already pays for the George Washington Bridge, where tolls range from $10.50 to $15 a car, plus a midtown Manhattan parking garage. His half-hour, pre-rush hour commute is the fastest and easiest option for him; using public transportation would triple his commuting time.

“Just to get to work, the cost of parking and tolls and everything is just astronomical,” he said.

MTA Drivers, Advocates Call For All-Door Bus Entry

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has introduced a new program in hopes of making bus service faster and safer.

Bus drivers and transit advocates joined outside the MTA Headquarters (2 Broadway, New York) to call for all-door boarding.

Brooklyn bus driver James Fuller said he has been assaulted and spat at for asking someone to get off his bus. “We have to divide our attention between a possible assault and driving down the road,” Fuller said.

New Select Bus Service routes have customers pay at a sidewalk kiosk and allow them to enter at any door. Beth Childs takes it from the Upper East Side to Lower Manhattan. She said it has “has cut probably 20 minutes off that trip.”

As the MTA prepares to choose a contractor for so-called mobile ticketing, advocates say ticket readers could be placed at all bus doors.

(Guest article by Ken Kinlock)

 

Call it Mess Transit

Like under Bloomberg who wanted congesting pricing to enter the city, that proposal went nowhere. Now, once again, the same idea has surfaced to get people out of their cars to pay to pay for mass transit. Yet, with the way the system works, when it works, how many overcrowded trains do we have? Constant delays and breakdowns will not attract more people to take mass transit.

The same could be said about the buses.

How often have you waited for a bus, then noticed one bus, and a minute later, a second bus arrived?

How long did it take to build a portion of the Second Avenue subway?? Seems like 100 years ago. So how do the smart people think the subways can handle more passengers if the trains have constant problems. Let’s not forget what will happen when the L line is shut down. Better think about that, “brain trust.”

How come mass transit in other parts of the world work so much better, cleaner, efficient, and much much more reliable?? With all the supposed technology we have it lacks vision — and that’s a shame.

BrooklynDaily.com

Electric Trolley Busses

Trolley buses are still with us in San Francisco, Seattle, SanRemo, Italy (pictured above) and many other places. They are quiet, have great pickup, don’t have any diesel exhaust and have low maintenance costs. I once asked a friend in the GE transportation products business in Erie, PA (where the GE locomotives are made) why there aren’t more trolley buses out there in many cities. He said that when one sells a trolley bus, he has to make his profit on the sale of the bus. There will be little profits in spare parts and maintenance supplies after the sale. But when one sells a diesel bus, he makes his profit on the maintenance supplies, so the initial selling price of diesel bus need not include much, if any, profit. Since everyone today buys on first cost, the diesels get all the business. Now that the price of oil is going up, and the availability of oil is subject to the whims of the Mid-East, the trolley bus may yet become very popular. It doesn’t pollute and the electrical energy to drive it can be produced economically, without pollution, from nuclear energy. In fact, it would be feasible to put wires over the interstate highway system and use electrically propelled tractors and buses rather than diesels. SanRemo, Italy (pictured above) and many other places. They are quiet, have great pickup, don’t have any diesel exhaust and have low maintenance costs. I once asked a friend in the GE transportation products business in Erie, PA (where the GE locomotives are made) why there aren’t more trolley buses out there in many cities. He said that when one sells a trolley bus, he has to make his profit on the sale of the bus. There will be little profits in spare parts and maintenance supplies after the sale. But when one sells a diesel bus, he makes his profit on the maintenance supplies, so the initial selling price of diesel bus need not include much, if any, profit. Since everyone today buys on first cost, the diesels get all the business. Now that the price of oil is going up, and the availability of oil is subject to the whims of the Mid-East, the trolley bus may yet become very popular. It doesn’t pollute and the electrical energy to drive it can be produced economically, without pollution, from nuclear energy. In fact, it would be feasible to put wires over the interstate highway system and use electrically propelled tractors and buses rather than diesels.

Find out more on electric propulsion

https://penneyandkc.wordpress.com/electric-railroads/

Car Culture

A real story for this era is how General Motors, Ford and Chrysler reshaped American ground transportation to serve their corporate wants instead of social needs.

As a result of their monopolistic structure, the Big Three automakers acted in a way detrimental to public interest. GM had control of auto, truck, bus and locomotive production. We are seeing a collapse of a society based on the automobile. We have consumed too much oil, polluted the atmosphere, and turned our cities into highways and parking lots. We see a government bias in favor of highways, failure to produce transport vehicles consistent with energy/environmental restraints, and a consumer dependence on the auto.

GM had the power and economic incentive to suppress rail and bus transportation: one bus can eliminate 35 automobiles; one rail transit vehicle can supplant 50 passenger cars; one train can displace 1000 cars or a fleet of 150 cargo-laden trucks.

GM had a role in the destruction of more than 100 electric surface rail systems in 45 cities including New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, St. Louis, Oakland, Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. In southern California, GM and other highway interests acquired local transit companies and replaced them with busses. The noisy, foul-smelling busses turned people away from mass transit and therefore sold millions of automobiles.

General Motors received a criminal conviction for its part in monopolizing street transportation. In spite of this, GM continued to acquire and dieselize electric transit properties into 1955. 40,000 streetcars were in service in 1936 when National City Lines was organized by GM. By 1955, only 5,000 remained. While substituting buses for electric street railways helped GM stockholders, it deprived the riding public of a pollution free and energy efficient mode of transportation.

Substitution of buses for streetcar lines contributed indirectly to the abandonment of electric railway freight service. Merchants used to rely on this service to deliver goods and interchange with railroads. For instance, Pacific Electric was once the third largest freight railroad in California. It just proved uneconomical to maintain city track for freight-only. General Motors even benefited from this demise. They also sold trucks! They even used to have an interest in Associated Transport and Consolidated Freightways.

GM used its leverage as the largest freight shipper to coerce railroads to scrap their equipment, including pollution-free electrics, in favor of less durable, less efficient GM diesels. New Haven Railroad showed a profit during 50 years of electrification but started heavy losses after it dieselized its operations.

General Motors diversification into bus transportation: (1) shifted passengers from rail to bus and eventually into automobiles; and (2) shifted freight from rail to truck. An additional factor was GM’s integration into locomotive production. In 1930, they acquired Winton Engine and Electro-Motive. Unfortunately, GM could make 25 to 30 times more gross revenue selling cars and trucks than it could diesel locomotives.

In 1956 the government sued General Motors for monopolization of the bus industry and requested divestiture of its bus production facilities. The case was a failure for the government because GM had combined bus and truck production within the same facilities. A few years later the Justice Department started and then abandoned an antitrust case against GM Locomotive.

Many of the anti-competitive forces of the automobile industry could be diffused by a remedy suggested several years ago by Bradford C. Snell of the International Conference on Appropriate Transportation. First, deconcentration of the motor vehicle industry would reduce the automakers ability to pass on the cost of their anti-rail lobbying to consumers. Second, reorganization of GM’s bus and rail divisions into independent corporations would enable them to operate free from the conflict of interest they currently have. Finally, the facilitation of entry by a number of new bus and rail enterprises would provide competitive capability to build a modern passenger and freight transport system.

It has been the policy of Congress in the past to maintain competition by prohibiting common control of competing modes of transport. The Air Mail Act of 1934 forced GM to sell its interests in several airlines. GM also had interests in several aircraft manufacturers. At that time, GM chairman Sloan implied to Congress that his company had entered the aviation industry to protect its interests in the promotion of automobiles.

At one time there were more than 150 competing manufacturers of bus and rail vehicles. The technological development of these vehicles stopped in the 1930’s.

In Europe and Japan, where there is a limited amount of common auto/rail/bus ownership, there are much more balanced transportation systems.

GM owned Hertz from 1925 to 1953. Because it was perceived to lessen sales of cars, GM limited its growth. Its success after disposition by GM shows what could happen to bus and rail operations.

General Motors got into bus production in 1925 by acquiring Yellow Coach. In 1926 they assisted in the formation of the Greyhound Corporation. 1932 saw GM going into the business of converting interurban electric railways as well as electric streetcar systems to bus operations. Due to the high cost of operation and slow speed on congested streets, buses ultimately contributed to the collapse of hundreds of transit systems.

Several railroads converted substantial portions of their commuter rail service with buses: Pennsylvania Greyhound Lines (Pennsylvania RR); Central Greyhound Lines (New York Central); Pacific Greyhound Lines (Southern Pacific); New England Greyhound Lines (New York, New Haven & Hartford); Northland Greyhound Lines (Great Northern); and Southwestern Greyhound Lines (St. Louis Southwestern Railroad). The railroads were eventually forced out of ownership by the government. By 1950, Greyhound carried half as many intercity passengers as the railroads. Until 1948, General Motors was the largest stockholder in Greyhound.

General Motors used various devices to convert street car lines to bus. At first, United Cities Motor Transit was directly owned by GM and would buy electric street car companies, convert them to GM motorbus operation, and then resell them. After being censured by the American Transit Association, GM went “undercover” with other organizations, primarily National City Lines, Inc. Other participants in National City Lines were Greyhound, Standard Oil of California and Firestone Tire. By reselling properties after conversion, they were assured that capital was continually reinvested in the motorization of additional systems. The biggest GM “triumph” was California’s Pacific Electric. Within a 75-mile radius of Los Angeles, it carried 80 million people annually. In 1949, GM, Greyhound, Standard Oil and Firestone were found guilty of criminally conspiring to monopolize the sale of buses. General Motors was fined $5,000! The GM treasurer who masterminded the destruction of Pacific Electric was fined $1!

Additional Reading on this subject: great reference is Revisiting the Great American Streetcar Scandal, by Al Mankoff– Vol. 4, Summer 1999

and The Great American Streetcar Myth

Please read “The Streetcar Conspiracy” by Bradford Snell and “The Conspiracy Revisted Rebutted” by Louis Guilbault. I do not have links and will not tell you about Amazon or Borders and Noble because those people would not even give me the time of day.

See more about similar articles

https://penneyandkc.wordpress.com/Connecticut%20To%20Philadelphia/

Uber Can’t Replace Transit — Here Are 3 Reasons Why

Transit projects from Detroit to Nashville are running up against a new argument from opponents. The latest line from anti-transit types is that ride-hailing apps like Uber and Lyft are going to make fixed-route bus or rail service obsolete.

It doesn’t hold up if you’ve given some thought to the huge amount of space cars consume compared to buses or trains. But many people don’t spend their days thinking about the spatial efficiency of transit.

1. Uber and Lyft hog too much space

Let’s say, hypothetically, that a city gives up on transit service because officials think Uber and Lyft can take care of things from now on. Imagine what happens next: Everyone who rides the LA Metro Bus system suddenly crowds onto the 405 in an Uber, every passenger on New York’s L train has to hail a ride over the Williamsburg Bridge. The result would be total gridlock.

Uber and Lyft have some advantages in certain contexts. But car services can’t overcome urban geometry.

2. Even lightly-used transit beats heavily-used ride-hailing services

Not every bus is packed, but even a mostly-empty bus can use streets more efficiently than Ubercars. A bus carrying about 10 passengers per service hour is generally considered to be “low-performing,” TransitCenter points out. But that still beats the pants off ride-hail services.

“For an Uber or Lyft driver to serve ten people per hour,” writes TransitCenter, “it would mean the driver is picking up a new passenger every six minutes, physically impossible in American cities.”

3. Demand for transit peaks at different times than demand for taxis

If you look at when Uber and Lyft are most popular, it’s during the night, when transit runs less often. Meanwhile, transit is at its fullest during the a.m. and p.m. rush. Not many people use Uber and Lyft for regular commuting.

Transit and ride-hailing services can complement each other — especially at times or in places where transit is weaker. But don’t be taken in by anyone predicting the end of transit — buses and trains aren’t going anywhere.

CNE 2017 BUS TRIP

The annual CNE 2017 Trip will be on Sunday April 2, 2017.
We will be departing Renegade Stadium, Wappingers Falls at 9:00 AM.

Our route takes us on the mountain division of the NYNH&H between
Hopewell Jct. and Danbury which employed pushers up the hill.

Our route shows what we can see of the row which is still in place and we are using the
57 seat coaches which have PA’s and restrooms.

The cost includes lunch and guide book and is still $55 per person.

Make your check out to Joe Mato-CNE 2017 and mail it to
Joe Mato, 62 Wood Rd, Redding, CT 06896

For further questions, I can be reached at (203) 938-9992 or email at
joemato@sbcglobal.net

Please arrive at 8:30 AM for guide-book, coffee and muffin. We will depart
promptly at 9:00 AM.

Renegade Stadium Address:
1500 Rt. 9D
Wappingers Falls, N.Y. 12590

Find out more about the Central New England Railway