The Devil Is a Railroad Car

Every so often, I post things here mostly as a record, in case I wonder about them later. This is one of those occasions, so be warned.

Before Sandy, last year's major East Coast hurricane (not to be confused with Irene, the year before last's major East Coast hurricane), my train schedule looked like this:

Morning:
depart Lincoln Park 7:03, arrive Hoboken 7:55 (52 minutes)
Evening:
depart Hoboken 4:27, arrive Lincoln Park 5:20 (53 minutes)

And the world was bright and gay and happy.

After things settled down, more or less, after the storm, this is what I got:

Morning:
depart Lincoln Park 6:56, arrive Hoboken 8:05 (69 minutes)
Evening:
depart Hoboken 4:26, arrive Lincoln Park 5:25 (59 minutes)

There's finally a new official train schedule -- everything else since the storm has been PDFs printed off the website, not the usual printed booklet -- starting on Monday, with the following itinerary:

Morning:
depart Lincoln Park 6:51, arrive Hoboken 7:55 (64 minutes)
Evening:
depart Hoboken 4:30, arrive Lincoln Park 5:33 (63 minutes)

The time actually on the train is roughly a wash -- 127 minutes instead of 128 -- though that's still twenty minutes longer than it was six months ago. But the total length of day keeps growing, with a train now twelve minutes earlier in the morning and thirteen minutes later in the evening.

On the bright side, I do get an extra ten minutes a day to spend in the office, and three minutes more than I used to have back in the good 'ol days.

Update, Mid-March 2014:

The times have kept slipping, though the actual on-train time is shortening a bit. But the morning train moves a few minutes earlier each new schedule, and this is what it looks like now:

Morning:
depart Lincoln Park 6:45, arrive Hoboken 7:40 (55 minutes)
Evening:
depart Hoboken 4:30, arrive Lincoln Park 5:32 (62 minutes)

The next later train in the morning has not budged earlier, of course -- if it moved up as much as my train did, it would now be in pretty much exactly the same time as my pre-Sandy train -- nor has the afternoon train.

And so now I can get into the office about quarter of 8, most days, which is good for some things, he said brightly.