NJ Transit faced the second worst “summer of hell” of Gov. Phil Murphy’s tenure this year, with its more than 1,800 train cancellations driven mostly by mechanical issues, Amtrak, and a rising number of unpreventable stoppages, according to agency performance data.
The 1,820 cancellations NJ Transit reported between June 1 and Aug. 31 outnumber those in the same three-month period of every year of Murphy’s time in office except the summer of 2020, when damage from a tropical storm entirely stopped trains on multiple NJ Transit rail lines, in some cases for days.
NJ Transit spokesman Jim Smith acknowledged Amtrak as a major source of cancellations and noted factors outside the agency’s control — like weather and utility problems — had helped drive summer disruptions, but pointed to Gov. Chris Christie’s administration to explain rising mechanical failures.
“In terms of our rail equipment, we can’t speak to decisions made during the previous administration,” Smith said.
The agency reported 527 trains were canceled this summer because of Amtrak issues, the single largest source of cancellations. NJ Transit leases tracks and related infrastructure from the quasi-public corporation for some of its rail lines, including the northeast corridor, the busiest commuter rail line in the nation.
Amtrak has repeatedly drawn rebukes from New Jersey officials this summer over signal issues and failures in overhead catenary wires from which NJ Transit trains draw power.
Those wires can sag when stretched by extreme heat and contract when exposed to severe winter weather, and either extreme can cause disruptions. Newer technology that allows operators to remotely adjust their tautness could make the system more resilient, but that technology hasn’t been broadly adopted on the network’s busiest line, said Alex Ambrose, a policy analyst for New Jersey Policy Perspective.
“The Northeast Corridor has the oldest infrastructure in New Jersey and, I believe, some of the oldest infrastructure in the nation, and because of the disinvestment both at the state and federal level, we really haven’t seen the infrastructure improvements that we need to be a 21st century rail company,” she said.
An overwhelming share of this summer’s Amtrak-related cancellations, 415, came in June amid a weekslong heatwave. The agency has applied for grants to fund signal and catenary upgrades and other infrastructure projects to address aging infrastructure and boosted inspections in response to the disruptions.
Weather and other unpreventable issues stopped 484 trains over the three-month period.
Mechanical issues are a growing source of NJ Transit cancellations, accounting for 462 canceled trains this summer, more than any other three-month summer stretch of Murphy’s tenure.
NJ Transit is in the process of replacing its aging train fleet and has ordered 174 new trains, the first of which are due to arrive for testing later this year, the agency said in July.
“If not for the pandemic, and the resulting manufacturer’s production delays and supply chain issues, many of those cars would likely be in passenger service today,” Smith said Monday, adding, “These cars will have a substantial, positive impact on mechanical reliability.”
Disruptions due to crew availability, the primary source of cancellations during Murphy’s first three years in office, have all but disappeared. Ten trains were canceled because of staffing issues this summer, compared to 572 in 2018.
On-time performance for NJ Transit’s trains fell close to record lows under Murphy in June. Only 83.2% of NJ Transit trains arrived within six minute of their scheduled time that month. With delays and other disruptions caused by Amtrak excluded, 92.3% of trains arrived on time in June.
The overall performance figure for June is the lowest reported since November 2018, when severe winter weather snarled roads and railways throughout the state. That month, 82.2% of the agency’s trains arrived within six minutes of schedule.
NJ Transit has met its monthly on-time performance goal — 94.7% of trains arriving within six minutes of their scheduled time — in only nine months since Murphy took office, and most of those instances came in the earliest months of the pandemic when transit and business restrictions were in full effect.
In July, 87.8% of NJ Transit trains arrived on time, and in August, the figure was 87.1%.
Workforce shortages were the most significant driver of cancellations in the first years of Murphy’s administration, but they have seldom forced trains to stop running since 2020 following efforts to bolster the agency’s ranks of locomotive engineers.
Except when an unauthorized sick-out by NJ Transit locomotive engineers in June 2022 over Juneteenth holiday work forced the cancellation of more than 250 trains, crew issues have only rarely caused more than 10 cancellations in a summer month, and they have often caused zero.
“NJ Transit ramped up hiring and training to historic levels to successfully fill the ranks of locomotive engineers during the Murphy administration, virtually eliminating this as a source of cancellations,” Smith said
But a long-running labor dispute could cause a resurgence in workforce cancellations next year.
The agency’s locomotive engineers have been working under an expired contract since 2019 and were released from mediation in late June. President Joe Biden in July convened an emergency board to oversee another round of negotiations and earlier this month the board, in a nonbinding recommendation, sided with NJ Transit.
If unresolved, the contract dispute could boil over into disruptive strikes in March.
“Not being able to use New Jersey Transit, we already know what that looks like because of the disruptions this summer,” Ambrose said. “Now imagine that at a systemwide level. Our economy would entirely collapse.”
— by Nikita Biryukov, New Jersey Monitor, September 17, 2024
