Lawmakers outraged over recent NJ Transit delays
TRENTON, N.J. (PIX11) — In the wake of another nightmarish week for New Jersey Transit rail riders, state lawmakers are sounding off.
“New Jersey Transit has gone off the rails this week, pun intended,” said Republican Assemblyman Chrsitopher DePhillips, who sits on the Assembly Transportation Committee. “The first thing we should do is force New Jersey Transit to rescind the 15 percent far hikes that are going into effect in July.”
Democratic Assemblyman Clinton Calabrese, who chairs the Assembly Transportation Committee, says while he knows no rider wants to pay more, money will need to be spent to fix things up. After evening commute nightmares like Thursday’s, he says Amtrak and the federal government need more investment.
“A lot of what happens along the rail line, especially what you saw [Thursday], it’s the fault of a lack of investment on behalf of Amtrak, and that’s due to just a lack of government funding itself,” said Calabrese.
“It is outrageous that this has not been fixed,” said Republican State Senator Declan O’Scanlon. “Why are we not threatening to withhold our payments to Amtrak? They’re not keeping up their end of the bargain here.”
The Governor’s Office referred our questions to NJ Transit. On Friday afternoon, NJ Transit CEO Kevin Corbett released a statement:
“We are as frustrated as our customers, and the frequency and impact these issues are having on our customers’ quality of life is clearly unacceptable. Regarding today’s incident specifically, we’ve had rail maintenance supervisors positioned at Newark Penn Station to inspect trains in light of the recent incidents. The train involved was inspected thoroughly before leaving Newark, including the pantograph, and no defects were found.
“While we continue to work with Amtrak to identify the root cause of the recent spate of incidents affecting the Northeast Corridor (NEC), which include a range of issues. For instance, Amtrak reported that yesterday’s incident was caused by one of their circuit breakers impacting power between Philadelphia and New Haven. What we can say is that we operate approximately 700 trains every weekday along hundreds of miles of track on 11 rail lines with the same equipment and these incidents are mainly occurring on just this one stretch of track on the NEC between Newark and New York. We continue to offer Amtrak our assistance to resolve the issue.”
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