Submitted by malina118 t3_zmztjj in jerseycity
Well, that was unexpected. A few police vehicles with lights crept up behind traffic on Route 1-9 and were escorting a whole PATH car on one of the biggest Oversize Load trucks I've seen on the road.
Any idea why it's being transported like this instead of, I dunno, the rails?
Yup.
Also PA is supposed to start refurbishing existing cars. Don’t know if they started that yet or not. But at some point in the near future all existing cars are supposed to cycle out for a while to get refurbished.
You are 100% correct. PATH sends cars to the Kawasaki factory in Yonkers for an overhaul. They are trucked back and forth, there is no other option.
Interesting! Thanks for the info on this, it makes sense. I've just never seen something like this before nor heard of it happening either. So very unexpected!
PATH also started receiving new cars from Japan this year, they were delivered by ship to Port Newark and trucked up to Harrison.
This is probably it. Yonkers handles the final assembly. PATH is probably accepting the new cars to have longer trains on NWK-WTC.
I've seen them moving cars on the little 3E local section in Secaucus right before 1-9.
A photo of this would be gold
It would be and I'm mad none of mine turned out! I kinda hoped that maybe someone else had had some success. Trust me, I tried getting my camera up as soon as we realized what it was but at that point it had passed us! The rain, darkness, and so many police lights caused way too much glare.
Edit: Actually, one of my videos shows it if you look closely! Let me see if I can crop or enhance it a bit.
“Enhance.”
PATH’s $1B improvement plan, set to deliver longer trains, new cars, tap and go fare payment
Updated: Mar. 21, 2022, 7:16 a.m.|Published: Mar. 20, 2022, 4:30 p.m.
By Larry Higgs | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
Before the pandemic turned commuting upside down, PATH embarked on a $1 billion improvement program in June 2019. This year, riders will start to see the results, starting with longer platforms to ease overcrowding by allowing use of longer nine-car trains..
The end of 2022 will see the arrival of the first of 72 brand new railcars and in 2023, the rest of those cars will be delivered. PATH will embark on a pilot after that to test a new tap-and-go fare system to pay by chip embedded credit or debit card or smartphone.
To get it done, PATH general manager Clarelle DeGraffe turned to Damian McShane, PATH assistant director of capital improvements, who worked with her on rebuilding the World Trade Center site before coming to the railroad.
“Today, the nine car program is alive, it is well and it is advancing. We’re looking to see limited nine-car train operation by the end of this year, by end of December,” said DeGraffe. “A lot of work had gone in to preparing for that and Damian has led the team in that effort.”
Can they get rid of the awful late night and weekend schedule? The Saturday trains I take are substantially more crowded than any weekday train I take.
PATH: Best we can do is longer trains at a reduced schedule
Nice! Thank you for sharing that. Guess this was one of those 72 new cars. It did look in pristine condition from what we could tell in the rain with all of the lights. Maybe we'll catch sight of more. Interesting they'd choose around rush hour for the transit time instead of a less busy time on that road.
The PATH is really unpredictable. Even in the middle of Route 1-9, rails can appear out of nowhere, and a 600-ft fully loaded PA5, heading east out of the low-lying lands of the Great Swamp NWR, will be right on your ass the next moment.
I was doing laundry in my basement, and I tripped over a metal bar that wasn't there the moment before. I looked down: "Rail? WTF?" and then I saw 3rd rail underneath and heard “This is the train to….World Trade Center. The next stop is…Exchange Place.”
Deafening closing-door tones. I dumped my wife's pants, unfolded, and dove behind the water heater. It was an 8-car PATH, headed east towards the tunnel to the WTC Station. Majestic as hell: 55 mph, 51 feet (16 m) long by 9.2 feet (2.8 m) wide, a smaller loading gauge compared to similar vehicles in the US, due to the restricted structure gauge through the tunnels under the Hudson River. Whole house shook!
Fact is, there is no way to discern which path a PATH train will take, so you really have to be watchful. If only there were some way of knowing the routes trains travel; maybe some sort of marks on the ground, like iron bars running along the paths trains take. You could look for trains when you encounter the iron bars on the ground, and avoid these sorts of collisions. But such a measure would be extremely expensive. And how would one enforce a rule keeping the trains on those trails?
A big hole in homeland security is subway engineer screening and hijacking prevention. There is nothing to stop a rogue engineer, or an ISIS terrorist, from driving a PATH train into the Pentagon, the White House or the Statue of Liberty, and our government has done fuck-all to prevent it.
The perfect copy pasta for this experience!
During rush hour, this is how they reposition trains and cars between Harrison and WTC.
Rush hour seems like a less than ideal time to do something like this, especially on 1-9.
Every few months they take each PATH train car out for some exercise and some ice cream. Its good for morale
Aww, that's so wonderful of them to do and a great enrichment activity! One step closer to having free-range PATH cars!
This the new way to expand path train services to passengers. Utilizing trucks cuts down on maintenance of tracks and saves on electricity.
I now vaguely remember hearing about that! Hopefully it'll make a difference although I'm still confused as to why rush hour was their pick for doing something like this.
🤣🤣🤣
A whole PATH train can runs hundreds, possibly even over 1,000 ft in length. Do you mean a train car?
Yes, a single car. It's been a stupidly long day/week/month/year. I'm lucky I know it's the day before Thanksgiving!
It's due to track maintenance, the trains take an alternate route (you get on the train and a truck comes and picks you up and drives your whole car to its destination)
Niiiice. Kinda would have preferred a curbside zeppelin service but I'll take what I can get in this economy.
sounds like it’s probably delivery of new cars.
I got caught behind that caravan too! I wondered also if maybe it was a delivery for the MTA because they also buy from Kawasaki, who as others have mentioned, finishes manufacturing train cars in Yonkers.
We were ahead of it initially but they were catching up as people pulled to the side to let them pass (as you're supposed to with flashing lights). We also pulled to the right side as they got closer but they changed from overtaking to 'flushing' cars ahead of them even though they had room to get through. Everyone was confused and it mucked up traffic for a bit. Eventually they decided again that it was time to pass vehicles again which is when we finally realized what they were escorting on the Oversized Load truck. Hope you didn't get stuck behind it for too long. We pulled off to go to H-mart but were with it for a while, since Journal Square-ish. Drawing a blank as to what that end of 1-9 is called for some reason.
I was still well behind it and got off around Journal Square so it didn’t trap me for long. At first I saw the lights and thought there had been an accident but then I saw them moving and the train car in the distance.
The rail yard is near cornelison and baldwin
I got a quick preview of that and will have to listen to it later when I can but really surprised to be loving what I did hear! Thanks for sharing!
Get a to a show sometime, great local band and way better live
I was just thinking you could substitute Path Train, on the 1&9!
Happens like every week if you ever go to Harrison, NJ.
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For real they should have just checked Reddit first
For what, exactly? I searched 'PATH' on Reddit and browsed back a few months but didn't see any post titles that seemed relevant for this. I could have overlooked something but I did at least try before posting here.
I was just kidding silly
How do you think they get to the rails?
I never thought deeply on it but I would have expected the PATH railyard would be connected to allow cargo trains to deliver the cars or components for assembly there. I've seen open bed trains transporting other train cars on regular rails so it kinda leads one to think it might be the same case here. Also, when was the last time you saw a PATH car being transported via a road?
Path train? Maybe a year or so. I’ve seen a NYC subway car more recently. Most factories will not have freight rails directly connected to them. The middleman for them from production to being ready to take you to work or out on the town ( and the final leg for most freight in the US) will involve a road and a truck.
Well, this was a first for me so I was curious, hence the post. Other commenters have been very informative about it and this post got me the answers I sought.
Cool
p4177y t1_j0e6b4i wrote
Random guess, but it may be being delivered to PATH from the factory. I think there's actually a Kawasaki factory in Yonkers of all places that manufactures them. So it kind of makes sense that it'd be delivered by road from Yonkers given the dearth of rail connections that would allow freight on that stretch of the Hudson.