The south side of Jersey City is taking it on the chin – again – as NJ Transit has announced a nine-month suspension of light rail service at the three stations on the West Side Avenue spur.
From June of this year to March 2020, the 5,000 passengers who daily use the West Side Avenue, Martin Luther King Drive and Garfield Avenue stations will take shuttle buses from those stops to the Liberty State Park station, where they'll wait for a train to their usual destinations.
Riders will surely need to add precious extra time to their commutes to get to jobs and classes on time. And then they get to do it all in reverse on the way home, getting to the front door later than they would today.
The suspension is needed, officials say, so the Jersey City Municipal Utilities Authority can repair a deteriorating sewer pipe that runs underneath the tracks.
Residents no doubt feel put upon.
The Bergen-Lafayette and Greenville neighborhoods are just now coming out of the unfair property tax burden they shouldered during the long, long, long wait for a revaluation. The vaunted CitiBike program has removed nearly all of its bike-share stations south of Communipaw Avenue. And on March 2, the No. 4 bus from Greenville to Downtown's Newport mall will be the latest bus line to be discontinued.
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The south side of the city has seen a steady decline in bus service for decades. And while the light rail hasn't made up for all the lost bus routes – try getting to Journal Square from Garfield Avenue if you're a senior -- when it comes to public transportation, it has been a rare bright spot for Bergen-Lafayette and Greenville residents.
Commenters on The Jersey Journal's Facebook page are rightly worried about the suspension's "huge inconvenience,'' as one poster said, and about the toll it will particularly take on students, seniors and working-class families.
Asked to comment, city spokeswoman Kimberly Wallace-Scalcione emphasized the need for the work because of potential hazards to the public should the sewer line fail. The work, she said, is starting later than MUA engineers would have liked to allow NJ Transit to finalize timing and provide sufficient notice of the shutdown to riders.
NJT will host two public hearings on the plan, both on Thursday, March 7. Residents and others affected – New Jersey City University and the city Board of Education are both serviced by the West Side Avenue station – need to voice their opinions and concerns.
The hearings will be from 2 to 4 p.m. and 6 to 8 p.m. in Multipurpose Room B of the Gilligan Student Union Building on the NJCU campus.
Beyond dealing with the suspension, the city administration and NJT need to take a close look at what public transportation options exist in Bergen-Lafayette and Greenville and how they can be improved.
Submit letters to the editor and guest columns to jjletters@jjournal.com.
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