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Looking for Riders In All The Wrong Places

What would happen if you built a light-rail line and hardly any passengers showed up?

What would happen if you built a light-rail line and hardly any passengers showed up? New Jersey may find out this fall when service begins between Trenton and Camden, implementing a $1.1 billion project that the New York Times called possibly the state's "biggest transportation fiasco since the Hindenberg burst into flames."

Ridership estimates for the 34-mile line, which were never very high, have dropped: Fewer than 3,000 people are expected to ride the South Jersey rail line each day. That would make this one of the smallest bangs for the buck, in terms of ridership, of any mass transit project in the country.

Some of the South Jersey line's fiercest critics are the very people who are now in charge of running it. New Jersey Transit chief George Warrington, who started his job after construction was well underway, has referred to it as a "transportation project that doesn't solve a transportation problem." Trains will zip through some uncongested and rural areas. While the line will connect with Amtrak trains in Trenton, it fails to hook up with such major employment centers as the statehouse in Trenton.

Where critics see a boondoggle, however, South Jersey's light-rail supporters see a bold experiment in economic development. Trains will stop in the heart of several depressed towns along the Delaware River, and the hope is that developers will build new offices, shops and homes near the stops. One light-rail supporter, state Senator Diane Allen, says that it's about time South Jersey got a piece of the state's transit investment. "The light rail," she says, "is breathing life into this whole corridor."

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