How Leaves, Icicles and an Old Bridge Can Complicate Commutes

The Portal Bridge is an Amtrak responsibility and Amtrak or the feds should fund its repair or its replacement. The two North River Tunnels, owned by Amtrak, are sufficient for the Amtrak schedules even if single tracking is occasionally needed. Repair of these tunnels is an Amtrak responsibility. Amtrak must have priority in these tunnels and on the Portal Bridge. Excess capacity can be utilized by NJ Transit. Increasing capacity only serves NJ Transit. The NYS MTA has no role in this fight. The entire cost of increasing capacity should be borne by NJ Transit who will be the only beneficiary of capacity increase. New York State and Amtrak have no role or responsibility to pay for a NJ commuter rail project. The federal government may have a very limited role in assisting the financing of a NJ state project. The NJ state government has already worn out its good will with the Port Authority with its Skyway project which was a state project which the Port Authority was coerced into funding. NJ should fund NJ projects!

So what is the true cost of a ride on NYC area transit? If you just divide all the operating expenses by the number of rides is about $25 per trip. Is this sustainable?

By god when i worked for the commuter railroad we had a work train that in early september had tank cars with three big fan-shaped nozzles that sprayed the trees with adhesive so the leaves wouldn't drop. Worked like a charm.

I commute from NYC Port Authority to Wayne NJ...the bus has been on time leaving the PA never in the last 2 years. Trying to use bus connections 3 xs within NJ over the last 2 mos., the 748 broke down twice and then the 748 driver forgot to stop, he also couldn’t hear my request due to ear buds. I ended up having to walk about 2 miles to my destination. At 64 years old walking uphill for 2 miles with heavy bags to go teach a class is not my idea of fun. No wonder our roads are congested with cars.

The sad state of NJ TRANSIT is the culmination of neglect by Chris Christie and the GOP in Washington. For all eight years of Christie's reign, he gutted the state subsidies to NJ TRANSIT while filling its headquarters with overpaid political hacks, some of whom had ZERO experience, for their jobs (a trick also used by Christine Todd Whitman). State subsidies which neared $350M at the beginning of his term cratered at $35M in his last year, leaving NJ TRANSIT management no choice but to defer maintenance and operations needs, including replacing retiring train crews. At the same time, Amtrak -- on whose tracks and stations (NY Penn, etc.), NJ TRANSIT depends -- suffered fiscal and criminal neglect at the hands of the GOP Congress. As a result, the service is literally falling apart and lives have been lost in preventable derailments and crashes. I travel on Amtrak's NE Corridor train -- not Acela -- from NJ to DC a few times a year, and I noticed how much the train shakes on its tracks -- a sign of poor maintenance. I asked the conductor if money not spent was the cause for the often jarring and sometimes bumpy ride, and he nodded with a knowing and concerned look.

When I lived and worked in New Jersey, I would commute on the Morris and Essex line from Dover NJ to Newark NJ, and travel during the day on the NJ Transit Northeast Corridor line. Back in the 1980s, the old M&E was using self propelled train sets that dated from the early 1930s. Alternate cars had propulsion units, and in between were passenger rail cars that dated from the turn of the century. Many of the seats were original wicker, and sometimes the wicker would break and stick up, stabbing you through your pants. It was slow and primitive, and the train sets in use today are much better. Back then, on the Northeast Corridor, the NJ Transit used multiple unit Arrow train sets. These trains could fly along in fast sections, such as between New Brunswick and Princeton Junction, at speeds in the 105-110 mph range. In those days before GPS, I would time the train by the mile posts. I recently rode the line with its new double decker train sets. I was surprised that the train speed seemed capped at around 85 mph. The way things are going, in five to ten years I expect to see NJ Transit passengers riding on the roofs of the trains, as is common in Bangladesh and remote areas of India.

What isn't mentioned here, but was, I believe in a NYT article a year ago at least, is that NJ Transit was starved of operating funds by the Christie Administration. What was an operationally better system took a nose dive throughout that tenure of poor administration.

I would like to see all Federal money going to trains go to commuter rail and not intercity trains. Commuter rail is where they could get the most "bang for the buck".

Much is written about the state of the railroads but NJ Transit buses are in just as bad shape. Besides buses that do not show up because of "operational" or "mechanical" issues, many of the buses that I ride to/from Manhattan have broken seats and lights. Moreover, many of the drivers they have seemed to be poorly trained. I had one driver that needed assistance getting to the Vince Lombardi Park 'n Ride. Also, if you write an e-mail of complaint using the NJT site, a reply that was once received in a day now takes at least 3 weeks, if you do receive a reply.

The federal government has no problem paying over a billion dollars for a fighter jet or handing out money to other countries to be our friends.so they really have no excuse not to pay for at least a new bridge without New York or New Jersey chipping in

The issue is that we have caught our transit people lying to us often enough we don't know if the reason they use to explain the latest delay is real or just an excuse for poor performance. I ride the commuter rail in the Boston area and you can feel the effects of "slippery rail" as the train tries to accelerate or stop. So while it is an oft used reason, it is a real condition. But just like cold and snow, falling leaves are a predictable and known hazard. Why can't brushes or similiar be installed on trains to sweep the leaves from the rails as the trains pass by? The real problem is that transit systems don't place a value on their customer's time or consequences of delays. They issue their standard apology "We apologize for the inconvenience" and they are absolved of responsibility. The burden for planning for the transit systems failures are placed on the paying passengers, not on management. Passengers accomodate the system, the system doesn't accomodate passengers.

These are the same government officials that want to run the health care system? NJ Transit-NJ MTA-NYC-NYS Just to look at a few. They allegedly have been running the transit system for decades and still can't figure it out!

When a shortage of engineers is given as a reason why trains are being "annulled" one is drawn to wonder what kind of mismanagement must exist for this absurd excuse to actually be true. I'd love to see the NY Times write an in-depth article about the internal management structure of NJ Transit. How many departments do they have? How do (or don't) these departments coordinate with each other? And who is their top executive? That person's name should be very well known.

While we are parsing announcements, also notice that NJ Transits verbal announcements say "we apologize for any inconvenience" as if there might not be an inconvenience when the trains are 30 minutes late. Akin to "mistakes were made..." Taking ownership of the issue would require use of "we apologize for the inconvenience"

Maybe our Republicans should have spent money on infrastructure instead of a gift to the Rich!

As a person grew up in NJ, I wonder how this effected the election. It is hard to vote for a guy who won’t help fix the tunnel, bridge and upgrade mass transit it is fixated on building an expensive wall instead.

"....a plan to replace the bridge with a higher, fixed span. But that project is estimated to cost $1.5 billion and the sponsors are hoping the federal government will cover about half of that amount." Not bad. Except the cost to replace the Wilson Bridge here in Washington came in at $2.4 billion. But for that price the citizens of Virginia, Maryland, and D.C. got a new bridge that was over a mile long, and a completely redone interstate. And no tolls. Rest assured by the time the unions become involved, the "no-show" jobs are put in place, and the steel tariffs are accounted for, the cost will be double the estimate. Oh, and of course the good people of New York and New Jersey still need new tunnels under the Hudson River. So figure on a figure closer to $20 billion. And since most of the citizens hate Traitor Trump, I'm sure he'll respond in kind.

Great article! Enjoyed understanding the reasons behind these days.

The real problem is that a vital link to the economy of the region has been allowed to deteriorate to the point where it is almost inoperable. For years the regional plan association has warned people that transit is critical to the region staying healthy, but no one listens. Suburban types who work in the burbs, and face daunting commutes because of heavy traffic on the roads, complain that spending money on transit "isn't fair" or 'subsidizes the rich" who work in NYC, but they also don't look at for example in 2008 how real estate in our region didn't plummet the way it did in places like Tampa, and that it has now recovered, large part of that is because of NYC and the jobs it holds. Chris Christie showed this kind of mentality, when people were upset he killed the tunnel project, he said "well, jobs should move to NJ", not understanding that jobs exist in NYC because they can tap the talent pool of several states. Republicans especially hate mass transit and promote "the freedom of the car", yet they also want billions and billions of dollars spent in "sprawl cities" like Houston and Atlanta and Phoenix, that depend on the car, widening roads and building new ones in an attempt to fix traffic snarls, which never works, but reject spending billions to fix critical mass transit isuses.