Governor Murphy of New Jersey has made this week (ending on the 2nd) a fare holiday on NJ Transit as a sorrythank you to NJT riders. Every NJ Transit mode is free, and after missing most of the free week due to having COVID, I wanted to get out and make use of it.

I had been planning to go down to Philly for Labor Day Weekend before I moved, but ended up scrapping the plan because I wasn’t sure how busy I would be with school and because Amtrak got expensive. After two consecutive days of testing negative, I decided that I would let dead plans live again and head down to Philly after all. My suite mate—who is from Philly—also tested negative around the same time, so we headed down together,

Getting out of Gotham was pretty routine. Our weekend L train was of course packed to crush load, and the 3 wasn’t running and the 2 was delayed, so we took the 1 train up to Penn Station, where I failed to get us to the right subway entrance, so we had to cross 7th avenue at 33rd street, where the 7th av bike lane disappears, so I almost got hit trying to jaywalk (my fault). We headed down into Penn Station and with 12 minutes to board our train decided that we should grab some food, since we didn’t eat breakfast.

We got in line at Raising Canes, and got out with 2 minutes to board. We got to the platform with 0 minutes to departure but the train was busy that conductors were telling people boarding from the NJT zone escalators to walk up the platform toward the front end of the all multilevel train because the rear cars were crush loaded, so we got all the way to the second car before they ushered us on. Turns out when you make a social good free, more people use the social good.

We walked through the second car which was standing room only to the first car, where we finally found two seats. Unfortunately the front car had the fogged up windows that are typical on NJT multilevels, so we couldn’t see anything. Then we were on our way.

As we crossed the portal bridge, we began to slow down, but with foggy windows I couldn’t appreciate the construction on the new portal bridge. We slowed to crawl outside Secaucus Junction, probably because we fell out of our scheduled slot on the corridor.

By the time we got to New Brunswick, we were 30 minutes late, with each stop on our local train taking a lot longer due to how busy the train was. All the platforms in the New York direction were packed too!

At New Brunswick, my friend Jeremy Zorek hopped on our train, and rode with us for a stop on an errand. Free transit makes things so convenient and induces so many choice trips that would otherwise be taken by car, or not taken.

The whole way down, every Amtrak train that passed us was visibly full, and super long. The Northeast Corridor is a workhorse on Labor Day weekend.

Our train cleared out a lot of New Brunswick and Princeton Junction, which is pretty typical, and we pulled into Trenton, NJ the final stop on NJT’s Northeast Corridor service, a couple minutes early, on track 3. Our SEPTA Regional Rail Trenton Line train was waiting for us on track 4, so it was an easy cross platform transfer. SEPTA sat for about 10 minutes until its scheduled departure, and it took us about an hour to make it to 30th St, where I said goodbye to my suite mate—after trying to get some photos of the Avelia Liberti sitting in the 30th St yard—and got off to meet my friend!

The City of Brotherly Love #

I waited in the 30th St waiting area for a fit, and edited some photos on my iPad. Since I have a USB C iPad Air, I can sync directly from my camera to the iPad, and use Lightroom or Apple Photos to edit photos on the go, which is a really nice workflow.

30th St beautiful as always.

Then I hopped on to the L and met my friend in Center City. We walked around, got Halal cart food, coffee, and people watched and caught up in Rittenhouse Square for a bit, a bit of a tradition for us. Then she took me to explore the Schuykill River trail, which was recently expanded.

Then we headed over the river to explore the “backrooms of Amtrak”—as my friend Rose put it—under the decking at 30th St station. It was super cool, and we got to see a yard move of a Metroliner cab car behind a ACS64 and the Avelias sitting around.

Sleeping Avelias!

This sign is so cool

The area is full of no trespassing signs, but the road itself is public, as far as I can tell. If you go here, please please please be respectful, don’t use flash when taking pictures, and _stay on the road_. If you stray off the road, you’re asking to get hit and killed by a train or arrested. Don’t do it, and if you’re asked to leave, leave.

These are all that’s left of the Metroliners, the precursor to the Acela. They’ve been turned into cab car versions of Amfleets.

Being able to be this close to the trains is really, really cool, and a little bit scary. It feels like it shouldn’t be legal. Be responsible and respectful.

After exploring, we headed over to a friend of Rose, in a beautiful part of town.

We headed out from there, both Rose and I on our way home. We got to 30th Street, where I used the nice Amtrak bathroom before boarding my 9:30 SEPTA Regional Rail Trenton train. I made it to Trenton with about 20 minutes before my free NJT NEC Local, at 10:57pm.’

Trenton was really really busy, free transit is awesome!