Oh, it's already been seen with trains. Only about 83% of scheduled River Line trains actually ran and Alstom (the heir to the weird DBOM contract) refused to do anything about it, so NJT booted them as of last month in favor of operating it themselves.
There's plenty of capacity on the line for the 7tpd as planned in the '90s-'00s to fit in, especially if the second track is reinstalled. Freight capacity on the line is limited by infrastructure beyond it on either end, and adding transit to an area without it in NJ is always a good thing.
NJT generally does underpasses if at least one end of the underpass is above grade, or a bridge if the underpass would entirely be below grade. This is because existing fully below-grade underpasses tend to flood in abnormally rainy weather, most notably at Princeton Junction.
The real issue with that is that many 3900's already are part of equipment rotations with 3100-series locals, which are middle-zone local services that deadhead to/from Morrisville for various reasons instead of turning at Jersey Avenue like 3700's.
Amtrak tried exactly what you are suggesting and found that it just wasn't worth it. The benefits for the handful of riders that actually rode through between the Capitol Limited and Texas Eagle were not worth the hassle for staff and everyone else riding the combined train between other points.
This was tried decades ago and dropped for logistics reasons. It's not viable to have transcon services due to both the need to service the trains after a few days and the potential for even worse cascading delays with how many connections get broken should a transcon run late on its first leg.
In NYC railfan communities there is a pretty hard line drawn. "Foamers" are your average overzealous enthusiasts that are content to experience things as accessible to the public. "Conquestors" on the other hand are those who steal keys, take equipment for joyrides, and mess with rollsigns/lighting.
Line 9 in general has CBAs as a chronic issue. All of the infrastructure and track slots required for extension to Incheon Airport already exists, but ordering even a few dual-voltage trainsets to run the service fails CBA, despite Line 9 needing more rolling stock for other extensions anyways.
All stations on Line 9 phase 3 were built with (short) island platforms to save money, instead of side platforms; ditto for Nonhyeon station on the Shinbundang line. As Seoul likes using a single tunnel for most segments, extending these particular platforms would require moving tracks.
Early demand was not high enough to warrant ordering full-length trainsets from the start, and for a time crowding was successfully dealt with by running more trains instead. This was no longer a viable solution come the late 2010s, but the value-engineered projects were too far advanced to change.
Stations on the most recent extensions of Line 9 and the Shinbundang Line are too short to fit full-length trains, despite the rest of the respective lines being built for them. This has only served to make crowding worse, but fixing this fails CBA catastrophically due to earlier provision cuts.
The entire eastern extension of Line 7 is to be single track to pass the CBA. This is already expected to cause so many operational issues that Seoul Metro is refusing to allow through service from the second phase of it to the rest of the line. Any fixes to mitigate this cause the CBA to fail.
Mandatory CBA has resulted in extremely disjointed transit planning in Korea; several line extensions have been cut down to single-track to pass, and the Daegyong Line has fewer stops than the local train it is supposed to replace since just adding high platforms at some stops caused it to fail CBA.
This is pretty normal in multi-operator areas on the East Coast. Every bus flagpole in NYC is of the same design regardless of who stops there. In NJ, every signed bus stop statewide regardless of operator has identical signage listing what stops there no matter where it is or what it's mounted on.
Service this time around is shut down in part due to a Do Not Travel order from the state in effect starting at 9 PM. Public transit vehicles themselves are exempt, but many riders drive to access transit and nobody is supposed to be out after 9 if at all possible.
This was originally done for the 2002 World Cup, so Japanese fans who couldn't read Hangul could ask staff for directions to stations and be clearly understood. About a decade later they rolled it out to rail stations nationwide.
The 167/177 are already horribly overcrowded with no solution in sight; riders would flock to rail. There's even more benefit for riders north of the NJT service area; the West Shore Line would likely be at least 5-10 minutes faster than Rockland Coaches 20 to the same towns, even with the transfer.
Not really, as the Pascack Valley Line corridor shows. 167T and 177X service is roughly comparable in travel time to 165R and 165P service, respectively; the latter two are faster to Midtown than the PVL, yet the PVL still has strong ridership during peak hours. Off-peak, rail would easily win both.
Neither Ontario nor Michigan were interested in funding a bridge in the late 1920s, so automakers and other businesses in the Detroit-Windsor area funded and built one themselves. This was less of an issue in the past because the two bridge companies (while private) were publicly traded.
None of what the BLET said makes any sense from a legal standpoint, beyond CBA terms. Amtrak does not have an exclusive right to operate intercity service nationwide; they only have a unique right to track access anywhere on the US rail network to run service that others do not.
NJT's systemwide electrification plans from the '90s were ready for construction, but were killed by an enormous lobbying effort by the NJ Sierra Club and other allied environmental groups, who still view improved transit service anywhere in the state as encouraging sprawl irrespective of density.
There is no bus capacity freed by a Boulevard Subway project useable here. A Boulevard Subway frees up local bus capacity in Hudson County (which is needed there), not the suburban motorcoaches used on longer services from PABT.
There is no space to add additional bus service in this area. Washington Avenue/Teaneck Road is clogged with nearly bumper-to-bumper traffic during peak travel hours, and alternative corridors to both the east and west are no-go zones for NJT due to Rockland Coaches controlling those routes.
A Hudson County Subway does nothing for riders in Bergen or Rockland. The areas along the West Shore are comfortably dense and building up further, why must we force them to keep using overloaded lower-order transit modes when there is clear demand for rail service?
The walkshed of Park Ridge's station is almost entirely mixed-use commercial or garden apartment blocks.
The reason that this route keeps getting pushed is that it's home to one of the busiest bus corridors in the state. The 166 is NJT's busiest route, with the 167/177 not far behind, plus the 186. Further north, the 9A/T is the last of Rockland Coaches' routes still running a healthy daily schedule.
They do not. The old SLE equipment was moved to the Hartford Line so the leased MBTA equipment then used on it could be returned, which has been done already. ConnDOT has new coaches on order but they won't arrive for a good while yet.
This is a massive problem, because (a) jitneys are usually completely inaccessible to disabled riders in violation of the ADA unlike NJT buses, and (b) jitneys are accountable to nobody because they are legally unregulated, unlike NJT and regulated private carriers that have route obligations.
The private sector ran the state's service into the ground here. 171 service has been cut over the past 20 years from about every 15' to hourly, because jitneys often run right in front of them in order to poach riders that actually want the NJT bus (which is actually illegal).
One single inbound RVL train during the AM rush hour, which is more or less an in-service equipment move; there is no other service. More RVL and some NJCL service formerly also ran to Hoboken, but ridership was far too low relative to the capacity problems outbound trains caused on the NEC.
