> I realize ETANY is not affiliated with NJTransit

We are equally unaffiliated with all the railroads and transit agencies :)

We do have membership in NJ are very much as in the transit going-ons through the tri-state area. A big unifying idea is that the economic geography doesn't care about political boundaries, and so the transportation planning shouldn't either.

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> NJ Transit can barely seem to handle service w/o Through-Running, so any discussion of expanding service seems premature. Here are some highlights:

You do raise a good point that through-running does require some amount of competence --- simply have a more interconnected rail network (revenue service on both sides) inherently means there is more potential for failures to propagate throughout the network. But, we'd like to believe this is surmountable.

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1. First of all, NJT and the MTA have done it before! See "train to the game". See:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Haven_Line#Meadowlands_gam...
- https://www.njtransit.com/press-releases/take-train-game-met...

Of course, running some special event service is not the same as doing through running day-in and day-out, but it is something to build on.

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2. What's the alternative?

- If there is no new expansion and no through-running, than the billions spent on Gateway way be rather wasted. That would be a huge embarrassment to the agencies, and politicians that stuck their neck out for the funding, alike.

- If Penn Expansion is not pursued for bullshit reasons, but the kayfabe is dropped and its done for the honest reason that no one believes agency competency can be improved, that is also embarrassing. Would the station actually be funded at that point?

We therefore think even just changing the conversation to acknowledge that ops competency, and not station geometry, is the binding constraint, would be a major improvement.

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3. We have time

In line with the above counter-factuals, the rubber only hits the road (excuse me, steel hits the tracks :)) once Gateway is done. For better or worse, that is a long way off. This gives the agencies time to get ready.

- The money that would be been spent on station improvements can be spent on NJT "tech debt" instead --- all the behind the scenes infra that enables higher reliability.

- Congestion pricing should be raised, and hopefully the next crop of NJ politicians will be more open-minded and accept some money for NJT.

- Penn Station Access sending Metro North trains to Penn station makes for a good opportunity to "train" the agencies through-running, prior to Gateway being finished. And don't forget "train to the game".

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> Mind you -- this would be valuable. Folks who move to NJ necessarily cut themselves off CT jobs (esp hedge funds, etc.) So of course, having thru traffic from NJ all the way to CT would open up huge pools of job applicants and job opportunities.

Yes, it is a huge opportunity! Our main report (https://www.etany.org/modernizing-new-york-commuter-rail) talked quite a lot about that. I wish our politicians were less provincial about state boundaries, and better able to visualize just how impactful expanding commute sheds is.

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A final disclaimer: I am far less knowledgable on train things than the other ETA members, so take this all with a bit more grain of salt.