Top 14 things I've learned from New Jersey Transit

Excuse the non-sports list, but sometimes a man's just got to share, you know? Last night, my ride home took 2.5 hours (it should take 40 minutes), and required the Shooter Wife to drive an hour, rather than five minutes. But as always, when life gives me lemons, I make projectiles. With little bits of broken glass and rocks in them...

14) There is, in fact, a much worse mass transit system than Philly's SEPTA, NYC's MTA, DC's Metro, BART in the Bay Area and the River Styx Express in Hades

13) "Signal problems" can be announced to the passengers as the cause for any conceivable problem

12) If you buy a house near a station as part of a plan to sacrifice time for more money and space for your family while keeping your environmental damage down, you are a first-class chump who will be taken for all that he's worth

11) Raising the parking rates in a down economy is just good business

10) When someone commits suicide by train, you have to stop service for stations that are miles and miles away from the event, so that tens of thousands of strangers have the chance to reflect, for hours and hours, on just what has been lost

9) The best way to handle a cut in service is to raise prices by 25%

8) New trains will be less reliable in high heat than old trains as a "safety feature"

7) You can't expect the service to operate on time in difficult weather, such as any form of precipitation or temperature variance

6) Track ties that are supposed to last for 30 years will wear out in 10, and require delay-causing repairs

5) No matter what happens, it's all Amtrak's fault

4) If 95% of the overall trains are on time, it doesn't matter how many people actually get to where they are going on time, because the rush hour commuters can content themselves with knowing that the 2am local is extremely reliable

3) When a service interruption happens, shuttle bus service to cover the shortfall is plainly impossible, but telling you to take a taxi can happen

2) If it's not Amtrak's fault, it's the Port Authority or New York City's fault, since they haven't built more tunnels

1) If you do not like it, you have the very real option of lumping it, or placing it into an orifice that does not usually receive deliveries