Every day, radio producer Brandon Tagoe takes an early morning train from Elizabeth, New Jersey, to Penn Station in Manhattan.
The short ride would be more than enough time to get to his “dream job” in New York City by 5:15 a.m. But Tagoe, 28, said a string of recent glitches and delays at NJ Transit have made him routinely late and less trustworthy with his boss.
“I had to be warned,” Tagoe lamented, standing at Penn Station last week. “I had meetings with my boss about the importance of punctuality, and they threatened me with retaliation if it continued.”
“Delays are happening all the time,” he said of the delays, “but nothing is being done about it.”
NJT has frustrated passengers for years, but a series of delays, slowdowns and outright cancellations in June, combined with aging trains, outdated infrastructure and, ironically, a 15% fare increase that takes effect Monday, have infuriated commuters making the grueling trip from the Garden State to Manhattan with little hope of improving.
“They definitely can do better,” Kanesha Hayes, a 39-year-old sanitation worker, told The Washington Post at the height of the delays last week. “I pay $200 a month, and I’ve been told the rates are going to go up, but the service is still terrible.”
“I can’t be late all the time,” she continued. “I’ve had papers written up for being late. My job is all about arriving on time, so I don’t want to lose my job.”
Talia Crawford, advocacy and organizing manager for the New York-based Tri-State Transportation Campaign, said many of the issues stem from years of underfunding and budget neglect. A staggering $2.9 billion 2023.
“New Jersey Transit has been running a budget deficit for the last decade, nearly a billion dollars in the red,” she said last week.
But pumping more money into the agency’s coffers is difficult because it competes for the same budget as other state-funded departments in New Jersey.
“Transit is competing with education, hospitals and other public facilities,” Crawford said. “I don’t think transit has gotten as much support as it does right now because we know how important public transportation is and how many people actually use it.”
The consequences of chronic underfunding have been on full display in recent weeks, as already frustrated commuters have had to endure a series of nightmarish delays caused by problems with Amtrak’s overhead lines, electrical and mechanical issues on New Jersey State Railroad trains, a wildfire in the Meadowlands and a faulty breaker that cut power between Newark and Midtown stations.
In a statement last week, NJT President and CEO Kevin Corbett said the company has heard passenger complaints.
“We are as frustrated as our customers, and the frequency of these issues and their impact on our customers’ quality of life are clearly unacceptable,” Corbett wrote, adding that officials were working with Amtrak to determine “the root cause of this recent series of incidents impacting the Northeast Corridor.”
“What I can tell you is that we operate around 700 trains on 11 lines, hundreds of miles of track, using the same equipment every weekday, and these accidents are primarily occurring on one section of track. [Northeast Corridor] “It’s between Newark and New York,” he said.
Amtrak, which owns the infrastructure and charges NJT about $200 million a year to run trains to and from New York, also acknowledged problems on the line.
June 21 Letter to CustomersAmtrak President Roger Harris apologized to “everyone inconvenienced” by the problems and said the issues appeared to be “specific to the facility and region.”
“We have established a joint team with NJT to determine the cause of the damage and implement remedial measures,” he wrote. “Whatever the cause of the delay, our customers deserve better service and we are committed to providing it to them.”
Despite the cascading problems, some help is on the way.
A New Jersey Transit spokesman said the agency will soon receive 138 brand new, multi-decker cars that are much more reliable than the cars in its aging fleet, some of which could begin service by the end of the year.
And last weekend, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed a state budget that includes a 2.5% tax increase on the state’s largest corporations, with the revenue from the increase going directly to closing New Jersey Railroad’s nearly $1 billion budget shortfall. According to Politico.
“You saw the drama in New York City, New York, where the MTA was basically trying to turn to a third party to solve the financial difficulties of their transportation system,” the governor said, referring to New York City’s failed congestion pricing program.
“We’ve all decided that we want to solve the problem internally, but sometimes that’s not without pain.”
And the $16 billion Hudson Tunnel project would build a new two-track rail tunnel between Bergen Palisades and Manhattan. According to the project website.
The existing North River Tunnel, which opened in 1910 and currently carries about 450 trains each weekday, will also be renovated.
That could ease the lasting pain from former Gov. Chris Christie’s 2010 decision to scrap the $8.7 billion ARC plan that would have built two new rail lines between New York and New Jersey.
Last summer, Murphy He told NBC’s Chuck Todd He called his predecessor’s move “the biggest policy mistake in New Jersey in the last 50 years.”
Of course, commuters won’t have to wait long for the new rail line, the Hudson Tunnel, to be completed. It won’t open until 2035The North River passage will not be restored until 2038.
Crawford, the transportation advocate, said New Jersey’s corporate tax increase, expected to bring in about $800 million a year in revenue, would help NJT stay afloat but wouldn’t solve the problem.
“This is just getting them out of a bind,” she said. “It doesn’t address any of the service issues or improvements that NJ Transit needs. It doesn’t add any service.”
Still, she says this is the first time the state is investing in public transportation as an essential public service — and it must continue.
“Funding needs to be prioritised going forward so passengers can see the changes they really need and want,” she said.
Meanwhile, Amtrak and NJT officials jointly announced last week that they would step up inspection and maintenance efforts on “a variety of infrastructure and rolling stock systems” in response to the recent series of service disruptions.
“This will be a comprehensive effort focusing on both Amtrak’s infrastructure, including the electric traction system that provides power to the trains, the catenary (the system of overhead power lines that are part of the electric traction system), signals and switches, and NJ Transit’s equipment, including the pantograph system that connects to the catenary and provides power to the trains.” The two agencies said in a joint statement.
Passengers, meanwhile, have little trust in the authorities and even less hope that things will improve.
“There are a lot of issues that need to be addressed to improve service,” said Dalbert Artiles, a laboratory technician who rides NJT from Penn Station in Manhattan to his job in New Brunswick.
“It’s not going to get better anytime soon,” he continued. “I expect it’s going to get worse, and I’m worried.”
