Stadler GTW on New Jersey Transit's River LINE

The New Jersey Transit Corporation (NJ Transit) operates bus, light rail, and commuter rail services for the population of New Jersey. For the purposes of this post, we’ll be looking at the River LINE, one of three light rail systems operated by NJ Transit. This is part of an ongoing series to explore Stadler rolling stock deployments in the United States, and New Jersey Transit was the first, in the US, to purchase from Stadler in the early 2000s.

The River LINE connects the waterfront in Camden to the state capital, Trenton, running alongside the Delaware River. Along the way, the line connects many residential areas on its 54km (34 miles) route¹ such as Palmyra, Cinnaminson, and Beverly.

At the Trenton Transit Center, the River LINE provides transfer opportunities with Amtrak out of the state along the Northeast Corridor, New Jersey Transit buses within the area, and SEPTA Rail services to Philadelphia. At the other end in Camden, a few stops short of the terminus station Entertainment Center, Walter Rand Transportation Center provides transfer opportunities with the PATCO Speedline² and several buses. Overall, it is a classic interurban rail design.

New Jersey Transit operates 20 Stadler GTW Diesel Multiple Units (DMUs) on the 21-stop route. The first of the GTW train sets arrived in August 2002 and were the first to operate in the United States. The deliveries continued until the end of 2003. After sufficient testing, the River LINE opened for passenger service on 15 March 2004.

The GTW 2/6 is divided into three sections, with a driver’s cab on each end to switch directions easily. The middle section contains the diesel-electric engine but still has open gangways, allowing passengers to walk the full length of the train. Each train can accommodate up to 184 passengers (90 seated and 94 standing) and can be operated with two trainsets coupled together to increase capacity. A single trainset measures 31 metres (102 feet, 6 inches) in length and 3 meters (9 feet, 10 inches) wide. They are also equipped with side mirrors, indicators, and both running and railroad lights.

The light Stadler GTWs are great as they are capable of street running through neighbourhoods and alongside road vehicles through some segments of the line. It works as a good trade-off between smaller trams (streetcars) not built to travel the distance between the two cities and heavier locomotive-hauled carriages.

End-to-end, the journey takes just short of 70 minutes. During peak hours, a train departs every 15 minutes, and every 30 minutes otherwise. The line is shared with CSX and Norfolk Southern, which run freight trains overnight. The Stadler GTWs do not meet United States Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) crash-worthiness standards and are therefore not permitted to run alongside other train traffic. As a result, NJ Transit only operates passenger service from 6 am to 10 pm every day.

Some renovations were done to this line to prepare it for passenger service, but using existing infrastructure helped keep the costs to a minimum. Tom from Trains Are Awesome already covered this topic, including how it could be applied to other American cities to build passenger interurban rail services, in more detail.

New Jersey also paved the way for more Diesel light rail vehicle adoption in other cities in the United States which we’ll cover in the next installment of the series with CapMetro in Austin, Texas.