(erielack) NJT Dispatchers Outgrow Hoboken Nerve Center

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Dispatchers outgrow transit nerve center: Train dispatchers max out nerve 
center in Hoboken
By LARRY HIGGS Staff Writer  

Published in the Courier News on May 27, 2001  
http://www.c-n.com/news/c-n/story/0,2111,399216,00.html

HOBOKEN -- Dispatcher Ray Skotek punches a button, and miles away on the 
Raritan Valley Line a train changes tracks in Raritan Borough.  

He never sees the train, except as a blinking cluster of red rectangles on a 
huge electronic board in front of him.  

Skotek's silent hands and those of six other dispatchers at NJ Transit's 
command center in the Hoboken terminal are felt by riders when the train 
changes tracks or stops and goes at signals. Their fate and the safety of 
railroad workers are literally at these dispatchers' fingertips as they change 
signals and railroad track switches.  

This is the railroad's nerve center, but NJ Transit has outgrown it.  

The Hoboken command center was built in 1987 and is being replaced by a Rail 
Operations Center at the Meadowlands Maintenance Center in Kearny.  

"We have maxed it out with the new projects coming online," said Bill McIntyre, 
NJ Transit's director of system operations. "We have to add more controls."  

The Hoboken command center will be taxed when the new Secaucus TransferStation 
opens next year and when MidTown Direct service begins on the Montclair 
Connection, which links the Montclair and Boonton lines.  

The $60 million command center, already known as "the rock" by dispatchers, 
will accommodate those lines and future passenger service on the Middlesex-
Ocean-Monmouth and West Trenton lines and the Lackawanna cutoff, said Jeff 
Warsh, NJ Transit executive director.  

"We built the new facility to include the new projects, and it can be 
expanded," Warsh said. "It is cavernous."  

Dispatchers have been in Hoboken working in a long, darkened room, sitting in 
front of an 87-foot-long wall, filled with electronic boards representing each 
of NJ Transit's rail lines, except the Northeast Corridor. That line is owned 
by Amtrak.  

Electronic boards in the Rail Operations Center and colors displayed on them 
will tell an observer which trains are on time and which are running late, 
McIntyre said. That technology is being developed and tested for this project 
in conjunction with NJ Transit.  

"If a train is running five minutes late, its color will be pink. If it's 10 to 
15 minutes late, it will turn yellow," he said. "Now we rely on memory." The 
key factor is a dispatcher's memory of a particular train's schedule, where it 
should be and when. Dispatchers are in constant radio communication with 
engineers and conductors, McIntyre said.  

"They have to know everyone's job. They are our Navy Seals."  

A good day, when the trains are running on time, is called a "timetable day," 
McIntyre said.  

"I'll come in and say, `Good morning,' and if Ray says we're on the timetable, 
it makes me smile."  

On a recent day at the command center, things were calm as a red light on the 
Raritan Valley Line's board told Skotek that train No. 5419 was arriving in 
Plainfield at 10:32 a.m.  

Because work crews are building high-level platforms at Plainfield, and other 
crews are renovating the Dunellen station, Skotek had to protect them by 
setting signals and detouring trains to tracks around them.  

The morning and afternoon rush, when more trains are running, is hectic.  

"Rush hour gets harried, especially if there's a problem," McIntyre said.  

If one train is off schedule, the ripple effect can be felt up and down the 
rail line. Some trains have to be held at stations or shifted to compensate for 
an out-of-sync train.  

The Rail Operations Center is scheduled to go into full swing in February. The 
Raritan Valley Line will be the first involving dispatching from the new 
center, McIntyre said.  

Skotek, who lives in Rahway, won't be here to see the change. After 18 years as 
a dispatcher and 40 years as a railroader, he's retiring to do different work, 
building houses for Habitat for Humanity and other work for civic groups.  

"I won't be fishing," he said.  

Replacing him won't be an easy task. Employees training to be dispatchers spend 
eight months training and observing veteran dispatchers before they're allowed 
to work solo.  

"We consider a dispatcher seasoned in five years," McIntyre said. "That's when 
we think they have seen enough of everything. There's always something new."  
- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Regards,
- -Charlie-
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