DepartureVision Real-time map

Since late May, the Lackawanna Coalition has been gathering raw data on NJ Transit’s on-time performance, using a hidden feature of the DepartureVision site that shows a real-time map of train’s locations. There are two cautions that we must give up front. First, that there are several data quality issues that mean that our sample, while a substantial 70% of all scheduled train stops, is incomplete. We have excluded missing station stops from analysis completely except when a Transit Alert indicates that a given train did not make all stops due to a cancellation or service disruption. The second caution is that our data does not contradict NJ Transit’s official On-Time Performance statistics as they are measured – though as we hope you’ll see, there are factors that make it an incomplete description of typical rider experience.

About the Data

The raw data we gathered comes from two sources: the DepatureVision real time train map, and Transit Alerts. The most important thing to understand about the real-time map data is that, while updated frequently, a train’s location isn’t necessarily transmitted at the exact time it makes a station stop. We take the closest point available as a train’s actual departure time (assuming it falls within a .4 mile radius of the station stop). There are also parts of the line that have communication limitations, which means that we receive less accurate times for these stops. Notably the entire Princeton Branch and nearly half of the Atlantic City Line have no locations reported, and we have completely excluded both from our analysis. Finally, the data on endpoint terminals tends to be less accurate than intermediate stops, whether because of communication issues or other reasons. Finally, our own data gathering tool experienced some downtime repeatedly during the month.

Location data only tells us how well the train ran if it ran, so we supplement this data with Transit Alerts in order to find cancellations and service disruptions. This data is only as good as the people writing alerts, and only available during hours when the “alert desk” is manned. This means that a nontrivial number of cancelled or disrupted runs are probably excluded from analysis, which would certainly count against NJ Transit if reported.

Read more: On Time Performance Report - June 2014

NJ Transit Executive Director Veronique "Ronnie" Hakim opened by stating that she considers herself the company’s rider advocate, and recognized the dedication of transit advocates such as the Coalition in promoting the interests in passengers. She highlighted that in her own past experience as a bus commuter and parent, every morning meant going through a “risk assessment” of how much parenting time she could fit in and still make the bus. To that end, NJ Transit is working toward the goal of putting the most timely and accurate information available in the hands of riders.  She also brought up the issue of on-time performance statistics, acknowledging that the single number was often unrepresentative of riders’ experiences, and added that Rail Operations management is working on delivering station by station numbers.

Hakim expressed the view that NJ Transit needed to improve (and is actively working on improving) its relationship with partners such as the Port Authority, NY Waterway, and Amtrak. On the Port Authority front she mentioned an effort to eliminate a part of the holding pattern that buses that don’t have space available at PABT go into, which causes them to go a substantial distance away from the terminal before doubling back through city traffic. She also mentioned trying to build a taskforce of all the players whose decisions affect the flow of buses (such as the NYPD).

On the subject of Trans-Hudson mobility, she stated that all options are on the table, and that NJ Transit is doing what it can to help Amtrak with planning Gateway and the MTA with considering a possible extension of the 7 subway line to Secaucus. She also noted that she has been making an effort to get NY Waterway – a trans-Hudson link that is running at under 25% of its capacity – to promote itself in order to take a greater share of the riders crossing the “[Hudson] Ocean” (echoing a joke one of our members had made earlier).

Her comments on New York improvements were threefold: first, NJ Transit is actively participating in the Northeast Corridor Raceway project of improvements that Amtrak is making between Trenton and New Brunswick. She acknowledged that NJ Transit’s main interests were further north (i.e. the part of the line that all New York bound trains merge into), but felt that investment here could still benefit from a reduced number of late trains – both NJ Transit and Amtrak – that cause substantial delays when they get to New York. She also stated that NJ Transit had a vested interest in ensuring that the process was being expedited as much as possible given the disruption its construction is causing at Princeton Junction and Hamilton. Second, she highlighted an effort to get more timely track assignment information from Amtrak’s New York Penn dispatcher. Third, NJ Transit now has 6 customer service employees on the 7^th avenue concourse (the NJ Transit part of the station) whose duties include ensuring the escalators are operating in the right direction.

I think I speak for the entire Coalition in expressing our hope that the efforts at improving NJ Transit service for all its riders continue, and that transit management continues to engage us actively as representatives for and of their stakeholders, the riding public.

NOTE: Service was restored as of 4:30 PM

Service on the Morris & Essex Rail Line is disrupted west of Madison, due to a storm that damaged the railroad's power wires in the area last night. There is no service today, and NJT sources do not know when service will be restored. Customers who board trains at Convent Station, Morristown, Morris Plains, Mount Tabor, Denville or Dover have no service.

There are also no substitute buses running in the affected area - a notable change from Friday night, where limited substitute buses were run during the evening peak. There is limited local bus service in Morris County on Saturdays, and none on Sundays. So riders west of Madison are essentially stranded today, and will be completely stranded tomorrow, if service is not restored by then.

The Lackawanna Coalition is deeply concerned that New Jersey Transit failed to dedicate a few buses to providing mobility for the riders at the six westernmost stations on the M&E Line. Management makes such provisions during a planned service outage, particularly when a line is placed out of service for track work. We do not understand why management could not do the same during the current service outage, especially since it began last night, and there are plenty of buses available on a week-end.

Hakim shakes hands with our Chair, David Peter Alan

The Lackawanna Coalition Transit Advocacy Organization will host an evening of frank conversation with NJ Transit Executive Director Veronique “Ronnie” Hakim on Monday, June 23^rd at 7 PM at 375 Millburn Ave (Town Hall) in Millburn, NJ. This event is open to all, and NJ Transit riders with issues are strongly encouraged to come out and to make your voice heard.

The Lackawanna Coalition is an organization of riders fighting for riders of New Jersey Transit’s Morris & Essex and Montclair-Boonton rail lines, as well as connecting transit. Ms. Hakim has been NJ Transit’s executive director since her appointment this winter, and has made an effort to engage stakeholder groups such as the Coalition in her tenure. She was previously headed the NJ Turnpike Authority and spent more than 23 years with the New York MTA, rising to the rank of Vice President and General Council.   

For the first time in decades, there is public transportation to Chester, a historic town in western Morris County. The "I Love Chester Express" shuttle van connects with week-end trains that arrive in Gladstone at 10:08 and 11:08, on both Saturday and Sunday mornings through the end of October. The destination of Alstede Farms, which offers a farm store, "pick your own" from their orchards and activities for kids.

General Manager Kurt Alstede is providing the shuttle, in co-operation with the Historic Chester Business Association and the "Streets of Chester" Mall. The van runs between the farm, Main Street and the mall through the afternoon, and leaves the farm in time for visitors to catch the trains departing Gladstone at 5:52 and 6:52.

Between Alstede Farms, the historic Cooper Gristmill and Main Street, a first-time visitor to Chester can keep busy for the afternoon. The mill is open only on Saturdays during June; Sunday tours start in July. The farm and many stores are open both days.

Coalition chair David Peter Alan, Technical Director Joe Clift, and member Pat Winship attended this month’s NJ Transit’s Customer Service Committee meeting, in order to provide our input and make a note of what the committee is doing in response to issues reported by customers. Mrs. Winship’s statement was focused on issues that we had seen and which had been reported to our Twitter account, @Lackawanna_Rail – in particular, incidents of unsafe closing of doors on a customer at South Orange, repeated reports of an insufficient number of car doors opened at New York Penn Station forcing passengers to walk up the platform unnecessarily, and the general problem of untimely and uneven communication of service issues. The first of these received direct attention from several managers, and given the serious danger of a passenger becoming caught in the doors we sincerely hope it never happens again.

The meeting itself is an opportunity for Customer Service leadership to meet with Rail and Bus Operations managers to discuss issues that have been receiving a significant amount of complaint attention. A significant number of the complaints on the rail side were related to overcrowding, which comports with what the Coalition has been hearing from customers. Northeast Corridor train 3813 and North Jersey Coast Line train 2304 were specifically cited for frequent overcrowding complaints, with the latter train having reportedly having been short 1 car for two days in the last month. Other train issues mentioned included Raritan Valley train 5710, which had encountered frequent 5-10 minute delays, and the conductor of Morris & Essex train 6647, whose conductor had refused several passengers’ requests to honor their e-tickets during an outage of the MyTix phone-ticketing app. There was also a inquiry about the cleanliness of train restrooms based on numerous complaints.

On the bus side, Port Authority Bus Terminal continues to be a problem spot, with major overcrowding and delays. An effort has been made to reallocate buses that had been assigned to later runs to replace late-arriving busses on an as-needed basis, which has provided a little relief. NJ Transit Board member Myron “Mike” Shevell suggested that the police cars parked on 41^st street could be moved to free up space for buses, though everyone clearly understood that this was unlikely. He also pointed out that NJ Transit is moving 70% of PABT’s busses through only 40% of its gates.

The Customer Service committee meeting was one of two that was opened to the public in a trial program two months ago. The Lackwanna Coalition strongly endorses making this permanent, and opening the remaining committees to public input.

We were very surprised to hear that Jim Simpson is leaving the New Jersey Department of Transportation and New Jersey Transit soon. He was beginning to make some constructive changes, and we had hoped that he would stay long enough to help Veronique "Ronnie" Hakim, the new Executive Director, implement more. 

He distinguished himself from many of his predecessors by arriving in New Jersey, knowing about transit. That placed him in a position to take an active role in NJT Board meetings, asking questions and giving informed opinions on transit-related issues. We commended him for this at the time, and we hope that the next commissioner will take a similar active role. Simpson also came to a Lackawanna Coalition meeting and engaged in a frank discussion with our members. No other Transportation Commissioner had done that since Lou Gambaccini, who had helped start NJT in 1979. We would remember Jim Simpson for those things, if nothing else.

We will also remember him for a long speech he made at the NJT Board meeting in March, when he outlined a number of policies that he believed should be implemented. The Lackawanna Coalition has also advocated for many of these policies, including the restoration of discounted "off-peak" fares on trains running outside peak-commuting hours, a fleet plan, and more efficient use of equipment and other resources.

We had expected that Simpson and Hakim would continue to work together, and in consultation with us and other representatives of the transit-riding public, to implement the improvements he suggested. Even though Jim Simpson will be leaving NJDOT and NJT, we continue to call on NJT's Board and management to implement the good ideas that he articulated and recommended.

DAVID PETER ALAN 
Chair

James S. Simpson, New Jersey's Transportation Commissioner, will leave his post on June 6th. This was reported by Karen Rouse of the (Bergen County) Record, and published earlier tonight on the paper's web site, www.northjersey.com.

Simpson was appointed to head the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJ-DOT) by Gov. Chris Christie when he took office in 2010. By law, the Commissioner of Transportation also serves as the Chair of the Board of Directors of New Jersey Transit (NJT). He is one of the few commissioners who came to the post with a background in transit administration. He sat on the Board of Directors of New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and headed the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) in the Bush Administration.

Simpson distinguished himself from his predecessors by taking a more active role at NJT Board meetings, asking questions of senior NJT managers, and occasionally criticizing an agenda item of which he was skeptical. He also made a few changes in Board practices at the request of Coalition members and other advocates.

Two months ago, Simpson outlined a number of policy changes that he recommended; many of which the Lackawanna Coalition supports, as well. Executive Director Veronique "Ronnie" Hakim, who was recommended by Simpson for the job and began her tenure in March, will now lead NJT into the future, but she will have to do it without Simpson.

The NJT Board will meet this Thursday, May 15th at 6:00 for its first meeting on an evening schedule, as Simpson had directed. Its next meeting is scheduled for June 6th, Simpson's last day in office.

Read the original story here.

DepartureVision

Disclaimer: the contents of this article are based solely on an outsider’s analysis of how DepartureVision works. We will happily correct this story should better information come to light.

DepartureVision – along with its half-brothers MyBusNow and MyLightRailNow – is one of the most useful tools added to the NJ Transit website and mobile site in recent memory. It provides real-time train information in the form of a departure board, including a countdown timer if the train is en route and operating normally. It does have some limitations, however, and we believe the tool is much more useful if you understand them.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

The first thing to keep in mind is that the system is only as good as the data it’s receiving. The system appears to have three sources of data: the day’s preprogrammed schedule, each train’s GPS unit and information from the operations center. Each of these data sources is a point of failure, and any of them can prevent DepartureVision from giving accurate information. If the system doesn’t have enough information to track a train in real time, it falls back to being a glorified schedule-board (more on that later).

Its most serious weakness is that there are certain things the system can’t determine automatically: whether a train has been canceled, for example, or what specific train a particular set of equipment is running on. It is reliant on a human entering that data completely and accurately. As a result, cancelations may not show up in the early morning or late at night, when the people handling that aren’t on duty. Occasionally cancelations at other times of day may be missed by staff and not reported, something we sincerely hope is a rare occurrence. Likewise, if the equipment that will become your train isn’t available at its departure time for some reason, the system probably won’t know that until either the equipment eventually arrives or a different train-set is assigned to your train – basically, until someone with a pulse tells the system that cab car 7023 will be running as train 6628.   

A second source of trouble is the hardware on the trains themselves – if the train isn’t transmitting its location back to base for some reason, DepartureVision has no way of knowing where it is. The third issue is that the system assumes there won’t be a major deviation from schedule. For example, if an inner-zone local (say to Summit) is canceled and combined with an outer zone express (eg. to Dover), DepartureVision won’t know that the train is making extra stops, and the train won’t appear on the screens for those stations.

Read more: Rider Guide: DepartureVision: A Great Tool – If You Know When to Trust It

In a story that expands on what we had determined from the last NJ Transit Customer Service Committee meeting, Larry Higgs reported today that the embattled agency saw a sharp decline in customer satisfaction in its latest Scorecard survey. Overall satisfaction fell from 59% to 52% (5.2 out of 10), the lowest number the agency has seen in several years. A key driver in this change was a significant drop in on-time performance, which fell dramatically in the wake of an unusually harsh winter. NJT Executive Director Ronnie Hakim had this to say about the poor showing: “It tells me they’re frustrated. The challenge is how we react to that.” She also noted that "We can’t solve it all in the short term, but we can use the data." While the article goes on to note minor operational changes made on the bus side to improve on-time performance, no significant improvements on the rail side were noted.

The Lackawana Coalition notes that, while unscientific, the Scorecard survey results are indicative of the problems our riders are facing on a daily basis. We also feel that NJ Transit's decision to cherry pick the rosier parts of the survey results in their publicity campaigns -- particularly the GoingFor10 campaign on Twitter -- resulted in a backlash that contributed to the poor showing and harmed the agency's credibility. We encourage our readers to participate in the next Scorecard survey, which is located here.

You may view the original story here.