Paterson station

Paterson is a New Jersey Transit commuter railway station located on an elevated viaduct above Market Street in downtown Paterson, New Jersey. The railway through the station is double tracked, for north and south traffic on the NJT Main Line.

For other uses, see Paterson railway station.
Paterson
Looking at Paterson's Market Street station from street level.
General information
Coordinates40.9146°N 74.1673°W / 40.9146; -74.1673
Owned byNew Jersey Transit
Platforms1 island platform
Tracks2
ConnectionsNJT Bus: 161, 703, 707, 712, 744, 746, 748
Construction
Parking124 spaces
AccessibleYes
Other information
Station code2303 (Erie Railroad)[1]
Fare zone6[2]
History
OpenedMay 28, 1832[3]
Rebuilt1924–30; August 10, 1950;[4] 2001
Key dates
October 19, 1848Paterson and Ramapo Railroad opened[5][6]
Passengers
2018632 (average weekday)[7]
Services
Preceding station NJ Transit Following station
Hawthorne
toward Suffern
 Main Line Clifton
toward Hoboken
Former services
Preceding station NJ Transit Following station
Hawthorne
toward Suffern
 Main Line
until October 27, 1986
 South Paterson
toward Hoboken
Preceding station Erie Railroad Following station
Ridgewood
toward Chicago
 Main Line Passaic
toward Jersey City
River Street
toward Ridgewood
 Main Line local stops Lake View
toward Jersey City
Terminus Newark Branch South Paterson
toward Jersey City

History
The former Paterson station of the Erie Railroad on November 30, 1913, prior to the track elevation

Paterson station has always only served one railroad line: the Main Line of the Erie Railroad, along with its successors, the main lines of the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad (EL), Conrail legacy EL division (operated under NJDOT), and finally the present-day New Jersey Transit Main Line. However, the Main Line itself has changed substantially over the years, leading to significant changes in usage, destinations, and connections.

Originally a single track at grade, the elevated station was built between 1924 and 1930 when the Erie Railroad eliminated street level crossings on its Main Line in Paterson. The Erie Main Line ran from Jersey City to Chicago via Binghamton and Jamestown, New York, Akron and Marion, Ohio, with major branches to Buffalo and Cleveland.

Major long-distance passenger and freight trains passed through this section of track, and many of those passenger trains stopped at Paterson. The Erie Limited and the Lake Cities served passengers heading toward Chicago. The station received eastbound passengers from the Atlantic Express.[8] This situation was stable from the inception of the station until the early 1960s, when the Erie Railroad was in major financial difficulties.

Due to the financial issues, the Erie merged with the Lackawanna in 1960, to form the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad, or EL. The EL immediately looked to reduce costs by eliminating redundant lines and consolidating passenger train routes. The Erie Limited and the Lake Cities were rerouted away from Paterson and instead over the Lackawanna main line through northwest New Jersey and the Poconos. The #21 train made a stop en route to Binghamton, where passengers could switch to the Phoebe Snow after a layover. The discontinuing of the Atlantic Express (1965) marked the end of direct long-distance passenger service through Paterson.[9] The #21/22 Hoboken-Binghamton trains continued another year to connect to the Phoebe Snow in Binghamton.[10][11]

Serendipitously, four government agencies had been developing plans that, to succeed, required changes or destruction to sections of the Erie Main Line:

  • The city of Passaic wish to remove the Main Line grade trackage from the city's primary business district. There was no viable rerouting available pre-merger, and so negotiations never went through.
  • Further east along the line, the state of New Jersey wished to extend State Route 21, but the Main Line was in the way, including its bridge over the Passaic River. Once more, the Erie had no viable options for rerouting the Main Line
  • In Paterson itself, the state and Federal governments wished to use the Lackawanna Boonton Branch right of way at Garret Mountain to build what would become Interstate 80. This would have required difficult rerouting of that line for the Lackawanna Railroad.

With the 1960 EL merger, the legacy Lackawanna lines were now available to create a new Main Line, and the legacy Erie lines were available to create new routes for the Boonton line. Acceding to the above government requests became possible, with the triple benefit of removing government pressure, eliminating redundancy in the lines and schedules, and reducing costs for maintenance, capital, and taxes with the abandonment or sale of rights of way. The Route 21 and downtown Passaic plans required severing the entire Passaic portion of the Main Line, and stranded adjacent sections in Clifton, and Paterson and beyond. Included in this stranded section was the Paterson station.

To fix this problem, a connection from the Boonton Branch was built. This allowed the Main Line to realign on a parallel route, with minimal construction, running trains from Hoboken (instead of Jersey City) through the Boonton Branch stations that had previously provided minor competition to the Erie stations. Once these trains reached Paterson, they used the new connection to continue on the original Main Line tracks, including service to Paterson Station. The connection was single-tracked for many years, but double-tracked in 2002. The remainder of the Boonton Branch, also severed at I-80, was realigned to continue on the old Erie Greenwood Lake Branch.

The EL went bankrupt in the early 1970s. Conrail took over its operations, but the Main Line did not fit Conrail's plans, since the realignments were much less efficient than the original Main Line and Boonton Branch for straight freight traffic. The severing of various freight lines and the new connections required to create a contiguous east–west line through New Jersey to Pennsylvania was circuitous and involved fairly steep ruling grades. As a result, Conrail wished to abandon all freight operations on the former E-L lines. The State of New Jersey agreed to take over the "E-L" commuter lines from Conrail. The Main Line saw little to no freight traffic after this transfer. Some maps still list the trackage as Conrail or Erie-Lackawanna.

Station layout

The Paterson station consists of a high-level island platform spanning from Market Street to Ward Street in downtown Paterson. Handicapped passengers must access the station via an elevator located on Ward Street.

The station is located in an area of Paterson near Center City Mall, the Passaic County Courthouse and county government offices, and the Paterson campus of Passaic County Community College where several city and county roads intersect with Market and Ward Streets.

P
Platform level		 Track 1 ←      Main Line toward Ridgewood, Waldwick or Suffern (Hawthorne)
←      Port Jervis Line does not stop here
Island platform, doors will open on the left
Track 2 ←      Port Jervis Line does not stop here →
←      Main Line toward Hoboken (Clifton) →
G Street level Station entrance/exit, ticket machines, parking

The station now only serves commuter traffic, with no full service/long-distance passenger traffic. It has direct service to Hoboken over the current Main Line, over the legacy Boonton Branch connection mentioned above. Heading north, service goes to Port Jervis and Suffern, a joint service of New Jersey Transit and Metro-North Railroad.

Previously, service ran through to the Erie Pavonia Terminal in Jersey City, and to locations in New York state, Northwestern Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Chicago via the Main Line and various branches. This included both commuter and conventional passenger trains.

In addition, for a brief period after the Main/Boonton realignment, additional service along the Newark Branch was available from Paterson, through Clifton, Nutley, Belleville, northern Newark, and then going east through Kearny. EL abandoned that branch in 1966.

See also

References
  1. "List of Station Names and Numbers". Jersey City, New Jersey: Erie Railroad. May 1, 1916. Retrieved November 23, 2010.
  2. "Main and Bergen County Line Timetables" (PDF). Newark, New Jersey: New Jersey Transit Rail Operations. November 7, 2010. Archived from the original (PDF) on January 24, 2002. Retrieved November 27, 2010.
  3. "Transportation, Once Slow and Painful, Has Changed With Country's Growth". The Paterson Evening News. July 15, 1950. pp. 7–16, 7-18. Retrieved April 9, 2019 – via Newspapers.com. open access
  4. "It's All Yours, Paterson!". The Paterson Evening News. August 9, 1950. p. 12. Retrieved April 7, 2019 – via Newspapers.com. open access
  5. "Common Council". The New York Herald. October 17, 1848. p. 1. Retrieved June 20, 2020 – via Newspapers.com. open access
  6. "Ramapo and Paterson and Paterson and Hudson River Railroads". The Evening Post. New York, New York. December 7, 1848. p. 4. Retrieved June 20, 2020 – via Newspapers.com. open access
  7. Kiefer, Eric. "Here Are New Jersey Transit's Most, Least-Used Train Stations". patch.com. Retrieved September 15, 2022.
  8. Erie Railroad timetable, April 27, 1958, Tables, 1, 2, 3
  9. 'Official Guide of the Railways,' December 1964, Erie Lackawanna section, pp. 247-50.
  10. 'Official Guide of the Railways,' July 1965, Erie Lackawanna section, pp. 225, 227.
  11. 'Official Guide of the Railways,' December 1966, Erie Lackawanna section, pp. 201-5.
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