Gov. Christie Must Fire NJ Transit Officials For Failing To Follow Rail Plan Before Sandy

Governor Chris Christie has given his blessing and backing to NJ Transit officials in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, which devastated NJ Transit's rail fleet. 343 railcars and locomotives were flooded and damaged. A portion of the fleet remains out of service due to flood damage.

The costs are in the hundreds of millions, and yet NJ Transit officials have skated by despite incontrovertible

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Yet Another NJ Transit Trespasser Fatality

Well, it's been a crappy morning all the way around. NJ Transit had yet another trespasser incident with a pedestrian killed by an oncoming train just outside the Radburn Train Station. That left the morning commute for folks on my usual train line screwed. Today's incident was about a 1/4 mile from the nearest proper crossing.

This one appears to have been a suicide.

That's after another such

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A Bad 24 Hours For NJ Transit

Overnight, NJ Transit had a service disruption on the Main/Bergen line when a pedestrian committed suicide by standing in front of an oncoming train in Saddle Brook, New Jersey. That didn't affect nearly as many people as the major disruption that occurred this afternoon when a tanker truck was struck by an oncoming NJ Transit train in Garfield, just a few miles from where the suicide had

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Gov. Christie Must Fire NJ Transit Officials Over Gross Incompetence Before Hurricane Sandy

I am once again reiterating my call on New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to fire NJ Transit officials, starting with Executive Director Jim Weinstein.

Weinstein appeared before the State Legislature once again and admitted that the agency not only stored rail equipment in Kearny and Hoboken before Hurricane Sandy, but purposefully moved still more equipment into both low-lying areas before

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Gateway Project Gets A Boost

The Gateway Tunnel project, which is being sought by Amtrak as a way to vastly improve high speed rail along the Northeast Corridor by doubling capacity into New York Penn Station under the Hudson River as well as provide New Jersey Transit with increased capacity, got a boost when Amtrak and the federal government signed off on a deal to fund the first phase of the project.

The first 800 foot

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The Senate Will Finally Vote on $50.5 Billion Sandy Aid Package

91 days.

That's how many days since Hurricane Sandy slammed ashore along the New Jersey and New York coast and caused billions upon billions of dollars in damage and crippled the region for weeks on end.

Sandy washed ashore at the end of October, which means that there are many who are without heat and power still - in the depths of winter at a time when Congress couldn't get its act together.

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Another Report Shows NJ Transit Ignored Flooding Risks

NJ Transit continues to show that it ignored reports and warnings that its facilities in Hoboken and Kearny were in flood zones and equipment and materials stored there could be subject to flooding.

A report studying climate change and its effect on NJ Transit highlighted that both Kearny and Hoboken were in flood zones.The $45,990 study included a map that shows the Kearny and Hoboken rail

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The Case Against NJ Transit's James Weinstein

Jim Weinstein is the executive director of NJ Transit and his latest round of hearings with members of Congress and the New Jersey legislature raise questions about how the agency was run before, during, and after Hurricane Sandy made landfall.

The main focus has been on how and why the agency failed to move more than 300 railcars out of flood zones in Kearny and Hoboken. That's a more than

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Media, Weather Experts Confirm NJ Transit Failed To Heed Flood Warnings

The Star Ledger conducted its own investigation into how NJ Transit managed to flood a third of its rail fleet (more than 300 rail cars and locomotives) by staging them in their Kearny and Hoboken yards.

Despite protestations by NJ Transit chief Jim Weinstein claiming that he didn't have warnings indicating that both locations would flood, The Ledger and other weather experts said that they

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Yet Another Reason Not To Trust NJ Transit

I've long written that NJ Transit could not be trusted to carry out capital projects such as the now-killed ARC Tunnel project and that it couldn't manage its current operating budget or priorities properly.

Now comes word that NJ Transit recklessly disregarded reports from the weather services that it positioned one third of its rail fleet in areas that were expected to flood.

That's no way to

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NJ Transit and Port Authority Fail Commuters During Crisis Yet Again

The disaster response by NJ Transit and PATH is beyond deplorable. It's atrocious and defies common sense. The agency seems to think that it's done a good job in providing information to its customers, and yet there is a daily crush of thousands of commuters attempting to get home by way of one of the three rail lines servicing New Jersey other than the Atlantic City Line or the bus service that

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Making Hash of the Commute

I'm so glad I'm not commuting into NYC this morning.

NJ Transit is an absolute mess. They claimed that they had service restored on a couple of lines, but here's what that meant.

For Main/Port Jervis, it was 7 trains inbound in the morning, and 3 would get to New York City after what's normally considered rush hour (10-11am). No reverse commute trains. In the PM, you'd have the same situation -

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NJ Transit's Busing Problem

I've regularly focused on NJ Transit's woeful rail on-time performance because I'm a regular rail commuter, but their bus operations aren't much better. In fact, 10% of all buses are leaving the Port Authority Bus Terminal (PABT) in Midtown Manhattan late.

And by late, we're referring to a bus that leaves more than 6 minutes after its scheduled time. That's a pretty generous situation to begin

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NJ Transit Releases Latest Customer Survey Results

Before we get to the details, let's get to how NJ Transit released the results. For those who have participated in the past, you get emails acknowledging when the new results have been tabulated. Here's what the email said:Dear NJ TRANSIT Customer,

Thank you for participating in our quarterly Customer Satisfaction Survey. You were one of 15,710 respondents providing feedback to help us focus our

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Failing to Spend on Infrastructure Main Driver of NJ Transit Rail Delays

This is something I've been harping on for years. NJ Transit has failed to maintain its infrastructure, but Amtrak's deficiencies are driving the delays on those NJ Transit trains that use the Northeast Corridor.

That includes the functionally obsolete Portal Bridge between Newark and Secaucus. 75 events involving the Portal Bridge led to delays across NJ Transit.

Signal problems are another

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American Dream Developers Propose Significant Mass Transit Improvements

American Dream is the new name for the former Xanadu project in the Meadowlands across from the new MetLife Stadium where the World Champion New York Giants share the field with the New York Jets. American Dream is now run by the same developers, Triple Five Worldwide, who operate the massive Mall of America and were brought in to rescue the bankrupt developers who pushed the hideous Xanadu

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The Star Ledger Doesn't Get It On ARC/Gateway Tunnel

The Star Ledger's editorial page doesn't get it when it comes to talking about the ARC tunnel and its successor, the Gateway Project.

It laments the billions that Gov. Chris Christie supposedly left on the table by killing the project because overruns would have been a multibillion dollar hit on New Jersey taxpayers. Plans for a new rail tunnel between New Jersey and Manhattan took a nasty PR

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NJ Transit Customer Survey Results Show Modest Improvement

NJ Transit released its latest customer survey results for 3Q 2012, and it shows significant improvement, with the bulk coming from rail commuters. Rail commuters have been among the most likely to score the agency poorly, particularly during disruptions.

Part of the reason that NJ Transit scores in the latest quarter are improved is that there were fewer major rail disruptions around the time

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Phase One of NY Penn Station Upgrade Begins This Summer

It's been a long time coming, but the Moynihan train station construction project's first phase will be getting underway this summer. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announced Tuesday the $270 million first phase of the project that includes expanded concourses and extra entryways on the western end of the station. The adjacent James Farley post office will also become a new

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The Record's Math Problem

Today's Bergen Record has a report on the cancellation of the ARC tunnel and a contract that was signed in anticipation of the ARC project that would purchase 35 of the diesel-electric locomotives (DMUs) from Bombardier. The article claims that the contract costs $408 million.

That's just flat out wrong. The engines, about double the cost of a diesel locomotive, are another example of the costs

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