The article is a bit clickbaity, but all of the proposals actually do seem relatively feasible since the right of ways still exist for the majority of the distance.

When you stop and consider that Newark, JC and Paterson are each county seats and the 3 largest cities in New Jersey, all with government and corporate offices, hospitals, universities, and attractions in each to draw travelers, I think it does make sense to connect all of them via light rail even despite the redundancy in areas because of the additional transfer/network possibilities it creates (it would provide an opportunity to transfer between the Main Line, Bergen County Line, and Pascack Valley Line as well as the Northern Branch HBLR extension before the junction station in Secaucus) - this would basically be NJ's rough equivalent to NYC's proposed Interborough Express subway line between the Bronx and Staten Island, which is good considering how much of our trains are so focused on shuttling people to and from NYC.

And given the population density of this part of the state, I think there would be the ridership to justify it, especially since some of these rights of way also go either directly through downtowns or main streets of towns like Nutley, Belleville or Maywood, as well as right by major offices and institutions like the On3 Campus (home to corporate labs and Seton Hall's Medical School), Hackensack University Medical Center, the Kearny Point office complex, Paterson Great Falls NHP, and others these projects would have a good amount of high profile destinations at various points along each line, and likely entice developers to build more higher density housing and mixed use properties near the stations.