Crazy idea: New train station is open to the weather

The only doors at the new NJ Transit train station on Anderson Street in Hackensack are on two closets inside. On Sunday, a woman who said it is her job to clean stations didn't have a key to the closet with cleaning supplies.

The station is open facing Anderson Street and facing the tracks, above.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

When NJ Transit announced that it would replace the Anderson Street train station in Hackensack, it didn't mention that the $571,000 building wouldn't have any doors to protect commuters from the weather.

The station opened late last week, and on Sunday, it was evident that during heavy rain on Saturday, one of its windows has already sprung a leak.

The station is on the Pascack Valley Line that runs between Spring Valley, N.Y., and Hoboken.

The new station is said to have the same 46-foot-by-20-foot waiting room as the original under a pitched shingle roof, according to a March 2013 report in The Record of Woodland Park.

The original station dated to 1869, and when it was destroyed in a fire, it was said to be the second oldest train station in New Jersey after the Main Street station in Ramsey.

But the beautifully restored Ramsey Station has doors, and a Starbucks nearby. The small NJ Transit station in Clifton also has a door, a long bench and heat.

The other NJ Transit station in Hackensack, at Essex Street, is a park-and-ride, and doesn't have a waiting room. The city also once had a third rail station on Central Avenue.

The new station may have wide openings and no doors to prevent the homeless from moving in, said employees of the Straphanger Saloon, the bar next door.

One man, who identified himself as a part owner, said he's been startled by homeless men sleeping behind a nearby dumpster at 3 in the morning, when he is throwing out the garbage.

Hackensack has a large homeless population, drawn by three meals a day served free at the county shelter on South River Street.

Puddles of water inside the station, near the ticket machine, from Saturday's soaking rains. The water appeared to leak through the window and over the inside sill.

Two overhead heaters provide a little comfort. The station opened late last week.

Compared to the two bus shelters provided to commuters who use the Anderson Street station, the new building is a vast improvement.

The last station burned down about five years ago.

But if next winter is as bitter as the one we just experienced, waiting for a train will be uncomfortable, to say the least.

As traffic congestion gets worse every day, it remains to be seen if the new station will be enough to get commuters to leave their cars at home and take mass transit.

And if the workers at the Straphanger Saloon are correct, does it make sense that the design of the station and the comfort of commuters have been sacrificed because of a fear that the homeless will take over the place?

Commuters can take shelter from rain and snow under the pitched roof.

Reviewer praises boss' old restaurant

Hackensack's Anderson Street rail station in the old days.

In The Record today, Staff Writer Elisa Ung's 3-star review of Village Green Restaurant in Ridgewood doesn't mention that her boss, Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill, owned the place from 1989 to 2000.

Sherrill started the business with her husband at the time, a chef, and called it Village Green Cafe and Caterers. 

As usual in her reviews, Ung throws around the word "quality," but rarely backs it up.

She doesn't tell readers whether the third owner/chef's "buttery slow-baked salmon" is artificially colored farmed fish or wild-caught.

Mystery meat she sampled includes "stringy" foie gras, veal short ribs and filet mignon.

$76 dinner for one

Is this restaurant review the first that doesn't include prices for individual dishes in the body of the story? Only a range is given in the data box.

"Prices are among Ridgewood's highest," Ung allows, comfortable in the knowledge that the paper paid for all of the gorging she did, including one five-course dinner that cost $76.

She sets a great example during the obesity epidemic, calling puff pastry "smothered" in Chambord cream a "striking" dish.

It certainly is -- guaranteed to strike anyone who tries it right in the heart.

Weekly scoops daily

NJ Transit says it will build a new Anderson Street train station in Hackensack, according to the weekly Hackensack Chronicle.

The station was destroyed by a fire in 2009, the paper said.

Less than a block from the interim station -- a glorified bus shelter -- a new multi-story residential building is nearing completion. 

Rebuilding of the station was announced at the April 18 City Council meeting.

 

Making readers work for the news

Image via Wikipedia

The Record of Woodland Park today devotes not that much more of the front page to Governor Christie's momentous budget proposals than it did to the inconsequential landing of a small plane on Route 80. 

And like that gee-whiz report on Feb. 1, there's something major missing in today's package of stories.

You'll have to plow through lots of densely packed text on Page 1 and A-6 and A-7, the continuation pages, to make any sense of Christie's plan. 

Where is the graphic comparing the proposed 2012 budget to the current one? (The story on the plane that used Route 80 as a landing strip didn't name the town where it set down.) 

Such an easy-to-read budget chart belongs on A-1, but Editor Francis Scandale filled that space with a silly sports story instead. Readers have to work hard to determine whether this is more of the Republican governor's financial sleight-of-hand.

And why does Scandale and the other editors seize on Christie's phrase "new normal" as the main headline, unless they want to resemble his public relations journal. A far better head would have been:

More cuts ahead

The paper also seems to accept the governor's proposal for $200 million in tax cuts for wealthy business owners -- without citing any evidence such incentives create jobs or seeking such data from the Christie administration.

An upbeat editorial on the budget plan is on A-10.

Out of mothballs

The major story on the front of Local is about the historic Anderson Street railroad station in Hackensack that was destroyed in a fire. This is the first story about the station's possible replacement since it burned down more than two years ago.