Further adventures in mass transit

On Exchange Place in Jersey City, near the PATH station, is a powerful memorial to thousands of Poles who died of starvation in Siberia in 1939, and to the more than 15,000 Polish soldiers, intellectuals and others massacred in 1940 by invading Soviet troops in Katyn, Poland.

The down escalator at the Exchange Place station.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey took over the Trans-Hudson lines in 1962, but the bi-state agency apparently has never expanded its reach, despite increasing traffic congestion in the region, thus denying drivers an escape from increasingly higher tolls.

Commuters who use the stairs on the right to reach the street at PATH's World Trade Center stop in Manhattan don't need a gym membership.

The Port Authority is using toll revenue to help build the new World Trade Center, whose completion is behind schedule and millions of dollars over budget.

The luggage racks on the upper level of double-decker rail cars used by the Long Island Rail Road, above, and NJ Transit are too low,  and even daily commuters hit their heads hard on them. When I stood up, my baseball cap brushed the ceiling of the car.

You won't find much mass-transit news in The Record:

The Road Warrior is fixated on potholes, tinted windshields and other driving trivia, and the other transportation reporter continues to file hundreds of column inches on Superstorm Sandy damage to rail cars and locomotives.

You'd think the Borgs have conspired with North Jersey car dealers, including those lining Hackesnack's Tin Alley, to keep news of packed trains and buses, and choking traffic congestion, out of the paper.

The payoff: Hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising revenue from automobile dealers.

The message to readers is clear: Get in your car at every opportunity, and floor it.