NJ Transit to have greater involvement, oversight in summer repairs at Penn Station

The Christie administration has reached a deal with Amtrak to give NJ Transit greater involvement and oversight during this summer's planned repairs at Pennsylvania Station, where recent derailments and delays have inflamed tensions between the agency and the governors of New Jersey and New York. 

Despite the agreement struck Monday night between NJ Transit and Amtrak, the scheduled eight weeks of track repairs at Penn Station will still mean delays and frustrations for commuters. Gov. Chris Christie said Tuesday that riders of the Morris and Essex lines direct to Midtown Manhattan will have to be diverted to Hoboken during the repairs, forcing them to transfer to the PATH train or a ferry across the Hudson River, causing "significant delays" to their commutes. 

In recognition of those commuters' troubles, Christie said fares on the Morris and Essex lines during repairs will be reduced by between 56 and 63 percent. A monthly pass from the Gladstone station in Morris County, for example, would drop from about $451 to $168, Christie said. 

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Amtrak has told the administration that other lines into Manhattan "will not suffer significant delays," Christie said. 

Amtrak, a federally-subsidized rail operator, has come under fire in recent months by Christie, a Republican, and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, for its performance as the landlord of Penn Station, the busiest rail terminal in North America. Within a month, two trains had derailed at the station and another broke down in a tunnel beneath the Hudson River.

Christie then started withholding monthly rental payments to Amtrak by NJ Transit and directed the state attorney general, Christopher Porrino, to explore legal options to recoup past payments. Cuomo, meanwhile, has written to President Donald Trump seeking relief from what he called "a summer of agony" and suggested that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey take over the station. 

Amid the pressure from Christie and Cuomo, Amtrak has moved from making weekend and overnight repairs at the station to an expedited schedule of repairs planned to last from July 7 through July 25 and Aug. 4 through Aug. 28. The agency announced Tuesday morning that it intends to use a private firm, HNTB Corporation, to assist with project management and technical services for the track repairs. Amtrak also plans to increase its maintenance workforce and station staff in what the agency's president and chief executive, Wick Moorman, called an “all hands on deck" effort "to do all we can to get this work done quickly and to minimize disruptions to passengers.”  

On Monday night, NJ Transit and Amtrak agreed to the summer repair schedule, but with several concessions from Amtrak that Christie said he had demanded. They include: 

• Amtrak must provide daily updates to NJ Transit of repairs so the agency can relay that information to commuters. 
• A new joint operations center to include Amtrak and NJ Transit "to ensure real-time response and awareness to service changes and Penn Station customer messaging," Christie said. 
• NJ Transit will have access to perform field reviews of the repair work. 

Christie said one crucial component of the agreement was NJ Transit's ability to review track repairs, a concession he had been seeking since the derailments. He has repeatedly portrayed Amtrak as being unreliable, untrustworthy and in need of oversight. That view was only strengthened Tuesday morning, about 12 hours after the two sides agreed on the repair schedule, when Amtrak abruptly closed one of the busiest lines into Penn Station without notifying the administration, he said. 

"We are essentially standing by their side, attached to their hip, to make sure that what they say they're doing they're actually doing," Christie said at a news conference to announce the agreement. "We're not trusting them at all. We're going back to the old (President Ronald) Reagan policy with Russia: Trust but verify." 

Christie said the fare reductions during the work period is "absolutely necessary" to give riders some relief and to compensate for what he called "Amtrak's failures." But that will come at a cost of about $15 million to the state, Christie said. 

"I'm not happy about any of this. But the fact of the matter is we either make these repairs now or we make them later. But the repairs need to be made," Christie said. 

Christie said he still believes that Penn Station should be taken over by a private entity, "given Amtrak's duplicity, dishonesty and their inability to keep its infrastructure in a state of good repair."