Bayonne — Streetcar Loop

Rail Transit Online, April 2005

New Jersey Transit has given eight former Newark City Subway PCC trolleys to the city of Bayonne for a 2.5-mi. (4 km) internal circulator loop serving the new “Peninsula at Bayonne Harbor,” a 299-acre (121 hectares) mixed-use redevelopment site formally known as the Military Ocean Terminal of Bayonne .  The facility was a major supply depot for the transshipment of goods to the U.S. armed forces for nearly six decades before being closed more than five years ago.  However, city officials still have to find an estimated $35 million to install track, the traction power system and pay for rehabilitating the cars, which have already been moved to the Hudson Bergen light rail line’s Communipaw maintenance facility in Jersey City.  The line would run in mixed traffic with five or six stops and would link the redevelopment area to the LRT system’s 34th Street station via a pedestrian walkway over Route 440 ― a direct, cross-platform connection would be too costly.  A preliminary study suggested five- to 10-min. headways, depending on demand, with a maximum of six PCCs operating at peak periods carrying up to 3,000 passengers per hour.  Still to be determined is who would manage the line and where the operating subsidy would come from.  The PCCs, originally delivered to Twin Cities Rapid Transit Co., were purchased for the city subway in January 1954 and retired in August 2001.