Can't Get There from Here

The big local story of the day has been the horrific commuter train crash in Hoboken which killed a young mother and injured scores of people. Predictably, the lack of a passive train control system, which might have prevented the crash, has been held up by regulation-averse assholes citing the cost of upgrades to the system.

Here in the real world, besides the death of a thirty-something year-old woman and the injuring of over one hundred others, this incident has thrown a monkey wrench into the commutes of thousands of residents of the New York Metro Area. At times like these even Jerseyites are comrades, even though they have terrible taste in governors.

I'm fortunate in having multiple transit options for getting where I want to be, should I be carless at any particular time. I live within walking distance of a couple of stations on the Metro-North Harlem Line, and the ends of the 2 Train and the 4 Train should I have to get into New York City for any reason. To get to work, I can take a combination of a bus and a Metro-North Hudson Line train, or a combination of two local Bee-Line Buses. If I didn't work nights, one of the local bike trails would be a pretty good option as well. I'm lucky to have redundancy of transportation. It has been many years since I've had to cross a major body of water to get to work, and I can't imagine how bad the commute from Jersey to New York and vice-versa must have been today.

I am a firm believer in infrastructure improvement, especially when it comes to safety concerns. The life lost, the lives adversely affected, and the millions of dollars in lost productivity due to transit problems point out the idiocy of the argument that installing additional safety features on our trains is 'too expensive'.