While it's nice to see more trains, NJ really doesn't seem to give a shit about developing around them.

The Riverline's been running for, what? 18 years now? It's still just a random train running through suburbia and you can barely get to anything from it because all the businesses are stacked against 130. There's Riverside's little downtown setup, and that's pretty much it between Trenton and Camden.

Burlington City, Palmyra, and Bordentown are all really nice. The area around Cinnamonson developed a lot over at he last 20 years too. I guess your not really looking

I think their point is that the riverline and Patco are just park and rides. They could build dense mixed use housing around the stations. A couple years ago Haddon Township built like 7 story apartment buildings like a 4 minute walk from the Westmont station. They sold out immediately going for like 2k for a one bedroom. Clearly demand.

Cinnaminson station is literally a breakfast joint and a self-storage unit.

That counts as "built up" to you?

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It's a mixture of Residential, Commercial and Industrial development...so a healthy mix. Bordentown, Burlington, Delanco, Riverside, Cinnamonson have seen a recent boom in Residential investments while South Trenton, Florence, Pennsuaken have seen Industrial investments pour in... Outdated zoning seems to the main reason why the redevelopment growth along the corridor is slower than say in Philly...this also applies to the PATCO.

It's Industrial on the Eastern Side of the tracks and residential along the River. The residential development is still being expanded... How much more do you want?

Wow looks pretty solid, ~15 stops and runs through Rowan. Crazy that $56 million would only buy 2-3 blocks of a subway line in Center City

Bear in mind that the $56 million quoted is NOT the construction cost. Just the design / engineering cost.

> $56 million would only buy 2-3 blocks of a subway line in Center City

The $56M is just to design the line here.

Dense housing with hundreds of apartments and restaurants, grocery stores, pedestrian paths, bike infrastructure and small businesses all lined up along it. That way more people will use the train and be able to walk to the train. Additionally those stations will see more reverse commuters and action outside of peak commuting time. Train stations should be hubs not just industrial sites and park and rides. There is a housing shortage in the country and looming climate disaster. Build more housing and get more people out of cars.

patco is even more frustrating bc there's absolutely no reason for a town like Collingwood to be wasting so much valuable real estate right next to it's cute downtown on a sprawling surface parking lot.

every single small town with a train station should be asking itself how it can be more like Media.

Serious question: have you ever ridden the river line? It primarily serves high density, pre-war devolpements, most of which are also low income. It Serves these communities extremely well too. Maybe encouraging hoards of new TOD is a good idea too, but this comment seems to suggest you think the communities which currently benefit are somehow not enough.

Not to pull a classic whataboutism, but do you think that the regional rail system is any better? Most of the lines which serve outside the city itself arent very built up (or at least built up to a similar degree as the riverline). Seems the distinction is that riverline communities are primarily low income, whereas regional rail serves higher income areas where it's not as built up.

>Serious question: have you ever ridden the river line?

For fucking years. It has two grocery stores. Trying to find things it actually connects to outside of Trenton and Camden is an exercise in frustration.

I'd say that regional rail is the same or even worse. Especially Patco serving rich neighborhoods with hundreds of parking spots. It's not about wealth but a lack of development surrounding all commuter rail. Media at least is building some mixed use development and incorporates the stations into the downtown fabric. This also goes for stations in Philly as well.

The town centers & city stations are like that but other stations have attracted Industrial development which to be fair those areas were always somewhat industrial. The RiverLINE pre-pandemic moved around 13,000 people a day which was largely Industrial warehouse and retail workers, with a small % being Rutgers Students and Commuters to Philly and NEC.

All the Redevelopment / transportation Projects for the RiverLINE Corridor

• A bike/walking path along the Delaware River, from Trenton to Camden, connecting all the large parks together in Mercer, Burlington and Camden Counties. Completed sections : Trenton to Bordentown, Bordentown to Roebling via the Crystal Lake Park, Riverside-Rancocoas Creek, Under Construction : Riverton to Riverside

• Camden , nothing solid is being proposed also goes for the PATCO stations

• The Pennsuaken Transit Center Redevelopment Stalled

• Riverton has seen a small apartment complex built across from the station

• Cinnaminson - Harbor Medium Density Development built with one more phase remaining

• Riverside has seen 2 recently built Apartment complexes near the Downtown with several large redevelopments near the station in the works

• Delanco has seen an Apartment complex built and recently completed phased medium density suburban development next to the train station

• Beverly has nothing in the works

• Burlington South is zoned Industrial, a few more companies have looked into setting up shop near the station

• Burlington Town Center has recently seen some redevelopment closer to the waterfront, with 4 more infill developments in the works in the Downtown core.

• Florence Park and Ride is zoned Industrial

• Roebling, the barren area near the station is too contaminated for a residential development I heard a park is in the works

• Fieldsboro station was never built, and the dense development was canned by the town which bought the property and is working with the county last I heard to make it into a park.

• Bordentown, nothing is planned

• Trenton Stations have nothing planned around them

I completely agree with you there. I think the issue is way more than the riverline, though.

I lived in Bristol borough. Walked everywhere in town and could do almost anything I needed to day-to-day, except grocery shopping. There was one, which is quite bad, especially with regards to fresh produce/healthy food. And it price gouged like crazy. A massive barrier to bristol's ability to be a good car place to live totally car free.

More broadly, the United States has a specific major shortcoming regarding grocery stores. Domination of the big box style grocery store has completely strangled any human-not-car scale grocery stores compatitiveness. Even in the city grocery stores often still have massive setbacks and surface parking. There are a huge numbers of complex reasons for this, not the least of which is the market. You can't just greenfield a grocery store which inconveniences car drivers when they can go 5minutes down the road to a "better" one. So populate the area first with dense housing, but then there is no grocery store...etc etc.

It goes way deeper than the riverline, and it's extremely hard to find a compelling alternative stateside.

>I think the issue is way more than the riverline, though.

My frustration about the lack of development is aimed at the people, not the government. NJT did their part to build it...and the people just aren't there for it despite how good it could be. It's why I'm not getting my hopes up for the Camden-Gloucester line.

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Yeah you'd have to build basically New foundations for every building that it passes or at least reinforce them as most are historic and made of masonry and then there's probably 8 to 10 utilities in the ground that would all have to be relocated and then you're relocating to to where? a different street you're now digging up...

It's a park and ride because it's a train station. Now say thank you for all the New Jersey drivers that aren't in Philadelphia right now because of that parking lot.

*only if you're rich.

No people like this just think everything should end up looking like New York because they didn't grow up in an apartment building and probably don't have children and probably grew up with a front yard and don't know how bad it is to have to share a yard with 100 people as a kid

My God man a parking lot is for park and ride so there's less commuters driving in the Philadelphia what do you want exactly do you want parking lots or more cars in Philadelphia and don't say everyone should just take the train because where are they going to get to the train if they don't live next to the train?? I guess your responses everyone should live in a tower.

Awesome that means less cars in Philadelphia hopefully.

Glad this is still going through - the head of NJ's legislature was a big booster of this, and in 2021 he lost his seat to a republican who spent like $100 or something absurd. There were fears that north NJ dems who were not enthused with the project might join with the GOP to kill it

Though I really wish the US would adopt international standards. Design-build is a bad system that just makes our infrastructure more expensive and hollows out the state capacity of transit agencies and governments. Internationally the state DOT would design the plans, then bid for companies who wanted to build it. Here we pay to outsource designs, pay to outsource evaluation of those designs, then take bids to build it

DRPA did a study on transit oriented development over there and determined that a parking garage with first floor retail (in lieu of the surface parking) would be viable given demand. I'm sure Collingswood will get there first -- their mayor is pro-transit and transit oriented development.

Media has a great little main street but is still dominated by suburban stroads.. It is also dead by the courthouse. I think Collingswood is a better target.

Parking garages with first floor retail beat surface lots EVERY time. There is little retail vacancy in the Haddons, so there's demand.

Yep. And design is usually a small percentage of actual construction. E.g. on a lot of federal contracts for construction, design price cannot exceed 6% of the total construction price. So ballpark, a $56M design roughly works out to a little south of $1B for construction.

if you look at the area that Google maps claims are part of Media proper, it really isn't that bad. Collingwood is great though and needs to get rid of their patco parking lot

for the exurbs thats ok, but Collingwood is a proper dense, small town. for like, the new Wawa station that makes a lot more sense.

Which is still half the price of SEPTA's KOP rail project. 🤦

State can't pay the same as the Private industry so you get Not the best engineers and designers building your Bridges. One of the trades you mentioned are all very specific and what do you do with them if they're not working

You know what doesn't cost as much as a giant parking garage, a parking lot.

Other places globally manage to do it, why don't we learn from what they do

Because in the US, the government doing things is socialism.

It's more than that, its way to connect people to medical centers, schools, and small business too

Build it, please don't listen to the Nimbys in NJ.

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I don't know what else to say other than you're making it blatantly obvious that you know very little about urban planning. Not trying to be mean.

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Not only do I know urban planning I used to work for SEPTA building train stations and not actually doing the labor I mean doing the paperwork so I know exactly how much things cost and how much it costs to build a garage over just a parking lot. It's actually pretty scary that people watch YouTube videos from guys that never even went to school for this and now think that their urban planning experts. Like not just bikes that guy's a hack as is Inga saffron. Saying you hate cars and everything needs to be high density doesn't make you an urban planner

So then please inform me, how much taxes does a surface level parking lot bring in as compared to a garage with retail or housing above it?

Well since the investment is near zero it's going to be profit.