The train cars themselves are fine, that's not what keeps it slow and clunky. It has to do with service priorities and the terrible way the lines are set up. They focus too much on rush hour and not enough on the rest of the week. The 33rd st line is just all kinds of terrible, the platforms are too small for longer trains, tracks are ancient and they are too afraid to run trains more tightly on them. I mainly wish they would improve frequency outside of rush hour, and improve the whole interchange/stub situation at Hoboken that is just so damn clunky and slow.

But it's a been a long ass time and several consolidations of systems later. Heck even the subway was built as multiple different systems originally. Sure the MTA has it's flaws but if they integrated the systems it would definitely a better experience. Getting to the East side or Brooklyn from JC is wayyyyy more difficult than it needs to be. It's similar to how stupid it is that nj transit and LIRR use the same rolling stock and tracks but we don't have any line to go through penn to long island. We are one region we don't need everyone to have their own separate fiefdoms.

Lol between that and double paying for subways to get anywhere in NYC, makes JC wayyyy less attractive. There's no good reason that it isn't just integrated into the subway and serving people on weekends....