NJ: NJ Transit and Amtrak come together to avoid a hellish summer of commuting

Seasoned commuters remember that the 2010s saw several “hell” summers brought on by the failure of old infrastructure on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor line and critical repair work by the agency to fix it.

Will 2024 be another summer of hell, following last month’s and last week’s infrastructure problems that caused New Jersey Transit train delays and cancellations? NJ Transit CEO Kevin Corbett has some answers, fresh from a face-to-face meeting with Stephen Gardner, his Amtrak counterpart, and senior executives.

Amtrak is the owner of the corridor line, which touches many of tenant NJ Transit’s rail lines to and from New York. And tenant boss Gov. Phil Murphy demanded a meeting following the travel collapse on the evening of May 23. Service on the nation’s busiest rail line was suspended after a signal line hit an electrical line that powers trains, knocking out electrical service and affecting about 150 NJ Transit trains that evening.

“We talked about various steps in terms of operations and communication,” Corbett said Tuesday after the NJ Transit board meeting.

The initial outcome was that NJ Transit and Amtrak agreed to create a joint incident response committee and improve communications protocols for faster and more accurate information sharing when infrastructure incidents occur , Corbett said.

This response includes ways to bring NJ Transit officials to the scene of an infrastructure problem to relay information to the agency so riders know more quickly what is happening and the agency can plan a alternative transportation where possible.

“We want to be on-site at the scene of an incident, so we can communicate it to customers and have as accurate information as possible,” Corbett said. “It’s about knowing when something happens, how quickly it happens and what steps are being taken to respond so that we know it quickly and want to communicate it.”

Reducing the time it takes to get that information from the site can give NJ Transit officials more time to prepare the agency’s response and mobilize resources, he said.

“A 10-15 minute delay is an aggravation, if it’s longer we need to… know so we can know when to reroute buses for bus bridging, for PATH to cross train tickets from honor, to prepare for the Port Authority Bus Terminal for an increase,” Corbett said “These are the things we need to move from one piece of information to the next more quickly.”

Gardner and the Amtrak team have “put a process in place…so it’s not a one-off response, and we’re waiting and pushing for them,” he said. “It’s best to have a process up front.”

A longer-term goal is to upgrade or replace the overhead catenary that powers electric trains, and to put the signal lines, now suspended above the catenary, underground, Corbett said after the board meeting. administration on Tuesday.

“The main cause of delays is Amtrak signal and catenary issues,” Corbett said. “We want these problems to be resolved in the coming years, while we are still carrying out large projects.”

Major projects include the $2 billion replacement of the Port North Bridge that carries the NEC over the Hackensack River in Kearny and construction of the $16 billion Gateway Hudson River Tunnels and the rehabilitation of the current tunnels will be accompanied by new catenary cables and signaling systems, Corbett said.

The remaining catenary and signal cables between New York and New Brunswick dating from the 1930s and 1940s, some of which were spliced and re-spliced to repair problems, need to be permanently replaced, he said.

“It could take 8 to 10 years…we can’t wait that long (for it to happen),” Corbett said.

The work is on the NEC’s massive “to-do list” in the $117 billion, 15-year Connect 2035 report, released by the Northeast Corridor Commission, Amtrak and other officials on July 14, 2021 Its goal is to rebuild or replace aging, delay-causing infrastructure on the Northeast Corridor line crossing eight states and shaving nearly 30 minutes off a train ride from New York to Boston.

Connect 35’s New Jersey High-Speed Rail Improvement Program includes improvements to power, signaling systems, track and overhead catenaries to expand high-speed operations from New Brunswick to Newark and reduce travel times for NJ Transit and Amtrak trains. C35 is the first iteration of a 15-year plan to eliminate the NEC’s backlog of Good Condition projects and improve the corridor to meet 2035 service and travel time goals.

However, that report does not contain a timeline for when work on that project will be completed and sits “in the background” of the plan, Corbett said.

There are plans to rehabilitate the Dock Bridge over the Passaic River between Newark and Harrison, used by Amtrak, NJ Transit and PATH trains.

“We support it but it’s not a major cause of delays,” Corbett said. “It is more important to speed up signaling and catenary works than to prioritize Dock.”

Other discussions included changing the rail timetable to increase the early morning window for NEC maintenance.

There is now a window between 1:30 a.m. and 4:30 a.m. to 5 a.m. when NJ Transit trains are not running, for repairs, Corbett said. By the time the power is turned off in the overhead lines and the work equipment is in place, the work time reduces to about 3 hours, he said.

“They have a theoretical plan; we want to have dates and details,” Corbett said. “That involves seeing if we can change our schedule, so we can accommodate them, that’s what we’re working on right now.”

Amtrak wants bigger windows to make larger repairs, Corbett said, but he also wants to know what that agency’s priorities are.

“It’s a great time for investment projects,” he said. “The Acela goes 150 mph between Trenton and New Brunswick, then has to slow down the rest of the way. Their riders will benefit from a world-class signal and catenary.

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Larry Higgs can be contacted at (email protected). Follow him on @CommutingLarry.