By RICHARD PEARSALL
Courier-Post Staff
PENNSAUKEN
Looking to boost ridership on the South Jersey Light Rail Line, NJ Transit Executive Director George Warrington is considering adding a station to link the line to the Atlantic City Line.
The stop, in the Delair section here, would allow riders of the 34-mile, Camden-to-Trenton light rail line to transfer to trains bound for Atlantic City or Philadelphia.
The station would have to be a two-level structure, with stairs and an elevator, as the Atlantic City Line crosses 20 feet above the other.
The link would unite NJ Transit's least-traveled route, the Atlantic City Line, with what is expected to be the second "loneliest" route when it opens sometime this fall.
That has prompted some to question the utility of such a link.
"How much is each new rider going to cost?" asks James Dunn, a political science professor at Rutgers. "$5,000? $10,000?"
But for Warrington, the struggling nature of the two lines is all the more reason to try to attract riders.
Mired in a budget crisis himself, Warrington is well aware of the need for a cost-benefit analysis before proceeding with anything new on the already burdensome light rail line.
"We're going to do this right, not on the back of an envelope," he says in reference to what he considers the poor planning that led to construction of the light rail line in the first place.
"We'll look at the layout, the demand, the cost, the engineering challenges," Warrington said in a recent interview. "Then we'll make a decision."
Also under consideration, state officials say, is having the light rail join the Atlantic City Line at Delair.
That would provide the "seamless" ride to Atlantic City that transit riders like (transfers are said to cost rail lines 40 percent of their potential riders).
It would probably also entail the conversion of the shore line to light rail and the elimination of service to Philadelphia.
Light rail cars by law cannot share tracks with freight trains, the case now on much of the track the Atlantic City Line uses in Philadelphia.
Such a union would be expensive, however - more expensive than a hard-pressed NJ Transit can afford.
The Atlantic City Line now carries about 2,600 fares a day. The light rail line is expected to carry about 5,700 when it opens this fall.
By comparison, the PATCO Hi-Speedline now carries about 34,000 fares a day.
Bob Wright, a transportation engineer in Philadelphia who studies rail travel as a hobby, said that a transfer station in Delair would probably have more appeal for riders bound for Atlantic City than Philadelphia.
"The Atlantic City line has never seemed much like a Philadelphia commuter route to me," he said, noting that it terminates at 30th Street Station, not Center City, and that it takes a somewhat circuitous route to get there.
It takes about 25 minutes to get from the Cherry Hill stop at the old Garden State Park racetrack to 30th Street Station on the Atlantic City Line. The train crosses the Delaware at Delair, heads west to the North Philadelphia Station, then southwest across the Schuylkill before heading south to 30th Street Station.
To the east, the line stops in Cherry Hill, Lindenwold, Atco, Hammonton, Egg Harbor and Absecon before pulling into the Convention Center in Atlantic City.
Don Nigro, the president of the Delaware Valley Association of Rail Passengers, applauded the idea of a link at Delair and said he sees potential growth in either direction on the Atlantic City Line.
Nigro would prefer a union of the lines to a transfer.
Indeed, his organization favored the institution of regular, commuter rail over light rail to facilitate its linkage with PATCO and other lines.
To boost commuting to Philadelphia, Nigro said, NJ Transit should be looking for ways to get the Atlantic City train to continue from 30th Street Station into Suburban Station (near City Hall), as well as increasing the number of trains that run during rush hours.
At present there are 14 trains daily each way on the Atlantic City Line, including two into Philadelphia during the morning rush hours, and two out in the afternoon.
Both Wright and Nigro pointed to the downside of forcing people to get off one train and onto another, but suggested that any melding of the two lines into seamless service was unlikely to be attempted any time soon.
Both also suggested that a better way to increase ridership on the light rail line would be to extend the line another mile in Trenton to the State House.
"It looks like that is going to cost about $100 million, though, Nigro noted.
Adding a station, while not cheap, should run closer to $5 million to $10 million, several experts guessed.
NJ Transit said it had no estimates yet.
In Delair, reaction to the idea of a station off Derousse Avenue not far from River Road was generally muted.
"It kind of makes sense to me," said Bob Dowhy, a Camden Fire Department captain who lives just blocks from the intersection. "But do I want it? Would I ride it? I don't think so."
Dowhy said residents in his neighborhood are more concerned about the noise of the train horns and the fact that the only exit from their neighborhood is now gated when the trains cross than they are excited about the possibility of riding the line.
Bill Bauerle, who was cutting the lawn of Trinity Episcopal Church on River Road one day last week, said, "I don't have a reason to use the line" now and said adding service to Atlantic City wouldn't provide one either.
Across the street from Trinity (and about two blocks from the light rail line), Annette Diaz welcomed the idea of an interchange.
"Of course, I'll use it," the owner of Casa Blancas, a thrift and gift shop, said. "I can go to Atlantic City and party and not have to drive."
Warrington called the interchange an "easy connection" conceptually.
"My gut is it's something that should be done someday. . . . Intuitively it makes sense."
Rutgers' Dunn said he was sympathetic to Warrington's plight, saddled with a troubled line and trying to bring it riders.
But he is troubled, the professor says, by what seems to be vagueness when it comes to evaluating the utility of mass transit projects.
"There doesn't seem to be any criteria, any firm numbers, by which they can say, `yes, this is a good investment.' "
Reach Richard Pearsall at (856) 486-2465 or rpearsall@courierpostonline.com
