Kean gets ‘One Seat Ride Act’ through House committee

The “One Seat Ride Act,” a bill authored by Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield) to analyze the impacts of eliminating transfers on commuter rail lines and switching to one-seat rides, passed the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee today.

A hugely bipartisan 56-3 majority approved the bill, which was the first bill the freshman Kean introduced in Congress. All four New Jerseyans on the committee – Kean and Reps. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis), Donald Payne Jr. (D-Newark), and Rob Menendez (D-Jersey City) – voted in favor; the only three no votes came from very conservative Republicans.

The bill, which is co-sponsored by Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing), directs the Department of Transportation to conduct a study on the costs and benefits of implementing one-seat rides. It also more specifically instructs the department to study the Raritan Valley Line, an NJ Transit line in Kean’s and Watson Coleman’s districts that typically requires passengers to transfer at Newark Penn Station before reaching New York City.

“Anyone living in this part of New Jersey, or along the Raritan Valley Line, can describe to you the difficulties of commuting to and from New York City,” Kean said in today’s committee hearing. “During peak commute hours, Raritan Valley Line passengers have very little time to make their way, alongside thousands of other rushed passengers, through Newark Penn Station. As you can imagine, this experience is stressful and not what a commuter needs to start or end their workday.”

Kean’s fight for one-seat rides from his district didn’t just start when he was elected to Congress. Back in 2020, Gov. Phil Murphy signed a bill sponsored by then-State Sen. Kean that required NJ Transit to study capacity issues on the Raritan Valley Line.

The main reason for the current system is the lack of capacity in the train tunnels leading to and from New York; creating one-seat rides on the Raritan Valley Line would require either reducing service elsewhere or creating more tunnel capacity, which in the long term the Gateway Project aims to do. Given those issues, Payne successfully added an amendment to the bill that would expand the DOT’s analysis to cover potential adverse impacts on the entire NJ Transit system. 

But two other amendments – one from Payne to incorporate the Gateway Project into the analysis, and another from Menendez to affirm that the study’s eventual findings should not be used to decrease rail service or increase congestion elsewhere – were rejected.

“My commuters, and Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman’s commuters, need access to one-seat ride before the completion of all of those projects,” Kean said.