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Originally Posted by drumz0rz
Developers are building high rise condos and rentals as fast as the land becomes available and visionary projects are being pitched for every vacant parking lot and brown field near the water. Meanwhile the PATH continues to chug along barely keeping up service while raising the fares every few months and threatening less trains on the nights and weekends.
I actually had a chance to speak with the head of the Jersey City planning board and voiced my concern with the rapid expansion of downtown Jersey City and the capacity of the PATH. His only response was that the Port Authority have a knack for maintaining service just enough to meet demand, and that their signal modernization project should help greatly.
I think the ultimate issue with the PATH is the lack of Express service by virtue of single track through the system. If it were possible to run express trains from 33rd to Newport, or from Journal Square to WTC, you'd see population grow rapidly along all stops of the lines as the farther destinations could skip the middle stops and those stops typically relegated to squeezing into already over crowded trains would have ample room to grow. Of course, there is no way to realistically add Express to the PATH short of digging an entire new system, so perhaps the best next step would be digging a third tube between caisson 3 (NJ) and Christopher street allowing increased capacity across the river between HOB and JSQ lines.
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The only thing that I see in order for PATH to provide express service is if it greatly expanded in NY and NJ to Brooklyn, Queens, and into Elizabeth and Paterson. Other than that, the system is fine as it is. It's too small to have express service.
The real reason why PATH was built was to link the major train station on the NJ side (PRR, Reading, Erie Lackawanna, CRRNJ, etc.) to NYC in the early 20th century. That's the reason why PATH has terminals in Hoboken and Newark. This was the former PATH terminal in Lower Manhattan before it got razed to create the first WTC (Twin Towers):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_Terminal
Personally, I'd love to see the Newark light rail system being expanded into Irvington, Belleville, Nutley, and Elizabeth, as well as the HBLR. It would give Newark and JC it's own transportation system just like NYC has the subway.