page_title: Great Notch station
section_title: Closure
hierarchical_section_title: Great Notch station / Closure
caption_attribution_description: English: The to-be-closed Great Notch New Jersey Transit station in Great Notch, New Jersey, a portion of Little Falls facing towards Hackettstown.
context_page_description: Great Notch station was a small New Jersey Transit facility in the Great Notch section of Little Falls, New Jersey. The station was served seven times a day, three inbound morning trains to Hoboken Terminal and four outbound evening trains from Hoboken by the Montclair-Boonton Line from Monday to Friday. Located at the intersection of Notch Road and Long Hill Road, it was the second of three stations in Little Falls, the other two being Montclair State University and Little Falls, and was the first on the line to be strictly served by diesel trains. However, most trains bypassed this station and continued on to Little Falls and Montclair State University. The station was served by a single track with an unused side track. The last trains stopped at the station on January 15, 2010, at 7:41pm.
  Train service at Great Notch originated in 1873, as part of the Montclair Railway. Service to Caldwell began in 1891, when the Caldwell Railway opened, serving Great Notch, Overbrook Hospital, Verona, and Caldwell. The station at Great Notch was first constructed in 1905 as a double station building for the Erie Railroad.
context_section_description: When Montclair State University station opened in 2004   and the Wayne Route 23 Transit Center's train platform opened in 2008, this made Great Notch one of three stations in Little Falls, and it did not nearly have the ridership either of the other two stations had. The opening of Montclair State University Station helped to pull away commuters from Great Notch due to its location very near it. The small parking lot facing the station had very little room for cars and a parking lot on the opposite side of the single tracked station was isolated from it by fencing. Further exacerbating the problem was that the small lot abutting Notch Road was not marked specifically for train passengers only. Great Notch had (and still has) a bus stop on the corner of Notch and Long Hill Roads that serves buses headed for Port Authority Bus Terminal, and commuters using the bus would park in the train station's parking lot (and still do, as it was never blocked off) and catch the bus up the street.
  In January 2008, without knowledge of the township council, New Jersey Transit announced further and drastic service cuts at Great Notch. The only train to serve outbound customers was a train leaving for Hoboken Terminal in the morning, and two trains from Hoboken would serve the station at night.
  The future of the 103-year-old station was placed into further jeopardy on August 12, 2008, when New Jersey Transit announced to the community of Little Falls that they would possibly close the station as early as October 2008. A few days after the announcement, rebuttal by the community began to appear, with a public hearing was announced for September 3 to work on plans for Great Notch. The service with only one inbound train (to Hoboken) and two outbound trains (from Hoboken) was canceled on April 1, 2009. On that day, New Jersey Transit announced it would add two more trains in each direction on April 16 as a "one-year trial" for station ridership. The town hoped to get the then 67-person a day average to 100 people using the station by April 1, 2010, when the trial was set to expire. The mayor of Little Falls, Michael DeFrancisci, urged people to use the station more. However, by December 2009, ridership had declined to 9 per day.
  On December 18, 2009, New Jersey Transit contacted Little Falls and said that the station would close in January 2010, three months before the year-long trial period to build ridership was set to end. The transit authority cited continued low ridership, as on average nine passengers a day boarded the train at Great Notch. On December 21, 2009, New Jersey Transit announced the closure stating that the "anemic" ridership had remained at Great Notch, with only an average of 9 boardings a day, compared to 203 at the local Little Falls station and 597 at the Montclair State University Station. The last train to depart Great Notch was the 6:51pm train from Hoboken Terminal on January 15 leaving Great Notch at 7:41pm, as weekend trains do not run on this portion of the Montclair-Boonton Line.
caption: The station looking towards Hackettstown prior to closure
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