After a week of virtual silence in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, the Port Authority finally released some partially good news for beleaguered New Jersey commuters: the PATH train returns to service tomorrow! But before you make a beeline for Hoboken bars or shred your ferry tickets, know that only "partial service" has been restored.
The restoration brings service to six stations: Journal Square, Grove Street, and Newport on the New Jersey side, and 14th, 23rd, and 33rd on the NYC side. There's a clever answer for why each of the remaining seven stations aren't in service: "damaged critical substation equipment" prevents service beyond Journal Square to Harrison and Newark; "an unprecedented amount of flooding" keeps Exchange Place, WTC, and Hoboken offline; and as for Christopher and 9th in the West Village? They were "not designed to handle the large crowd capacity that currently rides PATH today," which makes us wonder how they're open the rest of the year.
While the PATH normally runs 24/7, the restored service will only operate from 5AM to 10PM - no reason was given for the limitation, only "encouragement" that riders investigate NJ Transit if they need to travel at those hours. Lest you think the Port Authority had returned to any degree of transparency, no dates were given as to when the regular schedule would resume or when the remaining stations would open.
If you're the sort of PATH regular who had a 7-day or 30-day unlimited pass, you are able to receive a prorated credit for the service outage. But nothing in this world is easy: you'll need to either call the SmartLink Customer Service Center (1-800-234-7284, option 4), or email them your personal information.
