Title: 30 Issues in 30 Days: New Jersey Transit

[MUSIC]

David: It's The Brian Lehrer Show. I'm David Furst, in for Brian today. Good morning. Now we continue our series, 30 Issues in 30 Days, ahead of the upcoming elections for New York City mayor and New Jersey governor. Today, on the New Jersey side, is thing number 10, New Jersey Transit. We know this is a sore spot for commuters. These issues are so common, it was not hard to find examples on our own airwaves, the first as recently as this morning.

Michael Hill: Main/Bergen County Line trains to Hoboken running up to 50 minutes late, almost an hour. NJ Transit at Morris, Essex, and Gladstone trains still running 20 minutes behind. Delays on NJ Transit's Morris and Essex, Gladstone Branch, and Montclair-Boonton lines, and disruptions along Main Bergen County and Port Jervis lines through this Friday for track maintenance.

David: Just the tip of the iceberg there, WNYC's Michael Hill from just this morning. We will look at the existing infrastructure, both candidates' plans for improving your commute, both within and outside of the state, and how to fund it all now, with Larry Higgs, commuting and transportation reporter at NJ Advance Media. Larry, welcome back to WNYC.

Larry: Thanks. Thanks for having me. I tried to save a little of my voice from cheering last night at Yankee Stadium.

David: [laughs] Oh, you were at the game.

Larry: I was up in the nosebleeds. It was a beautiful thing.

David: I hear things went well for the Yankees.

Larry: Better than we expected.

David: [laughs] Congratulations, and we'll push your vocal cords a bit now. Before we dive into the specifics, can you give us a general overview of the state of transit in New Jersey right now? What's working, what's not working, and what's at stake, depending on who wins in November?

Larry: The thing is, Governor Murphy, on his way out the door, basically said, "I want to replace all the aging trains and buses, which NJ Transit has exercised contract options." Pretty much all of those are in the pipeline. That's the good news, because that takes out all the things that cause those delays that annoy commuters when a train breaks down, when a bus breaks down.

The bad news is, because these things are not sitting on a lot like used cars, they have to be custom-built, so it's going to take until 2031 until they're all in service and all the old equipment is basically retired. There's going to be a little more patience that needs to be exercised by NJ Transit commuters. They're trying to work on the little things that annoy commuters. Kris Kolluri, the current CEO, often says that he rides the Northeast Corridor, so he enacted three things he wanted done. He's getting rid of the glass that nobody can see through.

David: You're talking about the windows.

Larry: Oh, I rode a train to New Brunswick, and you literally could not see the station. You really had to count stops and use the app and depend on the announcements.

David: That is a view or a non-view I am very familiar with.

Larry: The other thing he's tried to do is, and this is a big pet peeve of commuters I've talked to, is improve the information that they get. One of the big pet peeves that they have is that it's not enough to tell me the train is delayed or service is suspended. Give me an idea. This is a major or minor incident, so I can make a decision to cut and run for another mode. The biggest complaint they have is by the time they come in and say, "It's a big problem. We're cross-honoring it's already a nightmare at Penn Station or the Port Authority Bus Terminal."

They want that information as soon as possible because the other side is not just getting there, but for those who have two working spouses, somebody's got to deal with the child care. I had a very interesting conversation with a group of women who missed their train by seconds. They basically have to pay $100 cash to get their kid out of child care when they're late. It's almost like a bounty. That's a big issue because they have to get on the phone, hope the other spouse could get there, get the kid out on time or go to the bank, get the money, and bail their kid out of child care. These are some of the invisible issues that affect commuters.

The other bigger thing is reliability of the infrastructure. Part of that is, it depends on whose tracks you're riding on. Amtrak controls the Northeast Corridor. They've said they've been making infrastructure improvements, and it seemed that this summer was not the summer of hell that it was in 2024, that they made some improvements. They even said that some of their inspections caught some problems that would have turned into a problem when you had the high temperature heat days. That's an ongoing work in progress.

NJ Transit, of course, they have their own problems. The one that was mentioned by Mike about the Morris and Essex lines, that was a derailment of a work train that tore up tracks and tore up ties. The trouble was the cars were filled with rails, so it wasn't a matter of just putting them back on the rails. You had to bring in a big crane. That's taken longer than they wanted it to take. These are the things that try commuters behind.

David: [chuckles] There are a lot of things that try commuters, for sure. If you'd like to join this conversation, we're speaking with Larry Higgs, commuting and transportation reporter at NJ Advance Media. We can take your calls on New Jersey Transit and about where the gubernatorial candidates, Mikie Sherrill and Jack Ciattarelli, stand on transit issues. If you take public transit in New Jersey, what is your primary concern with the system that you'd like your next governor to address? Call or text us 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. Larry, we hear a lot about New Jersey being a commuter state. Can you quantify that for us? How many people rely on public transportation daily in New Jersey?

Larry: It hovers around 10%. That slipped a little because of the pandemic, and there's been a slow return back to work. NJ Transit has really fared better than a lot of its peer systems, both in the region and across the country. They had a faster bounce back in the office. In fact, one of the things that they're saying that the most recent survey said that more people are being expected to be in the office, that you're seeing basically the dying out of total remote work. Very few people are doing that. You're also seeing a reduction in hybrid work, which is good for them, maybe not so good for commuters, but it brings up ridership. That helps them out with revenue.

The other side of that coin, though, is you put more people on the system. There's a strain on the system. In 2019, they were setting ridership records, and the system was really straining underneath that burden. Of course, this cuts back to buying new trains, buying new buses, renewing the infrastructure, trying to get ahead of that stuff before it breaks down under the load.

David: As we're talking about this during this election year in New Jersey, I want to play some clips from the recent debate between Mikie Sherrill and Jack Ciattarelli. There was one question focusing on transit that came up from a high schooler who commutes to New York City every day. He asked the candidates what their plan is to fix New Jersey Transit, systemic issues of overcrowding, delays, and outdated infrastructure. That was the question. Sherrill answers first.

Mikie Sherrill: In my first term, as Trump held infrastructure week every week and yet failed to fund the Gateway Tunnel project, I was called the tunnel-obsessed congresswoman. I'm proud to say we delivered on that on the most expensive infrastructure project in the nation, which is key to commuters here. Then when we were seeing summer of hell after summer of hell because the catenary wires were in the way, I demanded Amtrak keep up their rail system better because we utilize it in NJ Transit and got $300 million into Northeast Rail for catenary wires.

Now I'm on the Port Authority because they're not handling the wires underneath the tunnel well, and we're seeing fire after fire after fire. I am going to continue to focus on our rail systems, on systems of transit across this state, and make sure that we see updates and see better movement across our state.

David: Congresswoman Sherrill talked a lot about her efforts to get the Gateway Tunnel project funded. How significant of an accomplishment was this project? How was she involved? Does that tell us anything about perhaps how she would handle New Jersey Transit as governor?

Larry: The thing is, the Gateway Tunnel was, you might want to say it was a choral effort. It was the entire congressional delegation, not just from New Jersey, but also from New York, acting as one, speaking with one voice, saying that we want this thing funded. Where credit can be given is in the years where the Trump administration, during the first administration, tried to zero out funding for the Gateway project, and the congressional delegation fought to keep it back.

They even threatened to shut down the government if that funding was taken away. That was the big accomplishment to keep it going until they could get these big funding agreements. The other fight was to get the big funding agreement, the $6.8 billion full funding agreement that was agreed to by the Federal Transit Administration last July. That was a historical funding agreement. There is $11 billion in federal money from various sources funding this project. What that does is it cuts down what the states have to put in. She was part of that chorus.

David: Oh, sorry, go ahead.

Larry: No, that's okay. Now, as far as NJ Transit goes, the thing is she's talking very accurately about getting more money to New Jersey, and that's going to be for the big ticket capital items. What it's not going to be for is for operating. NJ Transit has a $3 billion with a B operating budget. That is a big lift, and that's going to be one of the biggest lifts for any governor, is basically how that is funded. There is a corporate transit fee that Phil Murphy put in effect. It was the old business tax that was repurposed. It expires in five years, so the next governor is going to have to decide whether to renew that.

Now, without that corporate transit fee, NJ Transit goes into a SEPTA-style death spiral, which means deep service cuts and reductions. Now, the wild card here is the business community does not like this tax because they just feel it's one more tax in a state that has a reputation of being business-unfriendly. In an appearance in South Jersey, Jack Ciattarelli said he wasn't a fan of the tax because he felt that South Jersey businesses weren't getting what they pay for. That's going to be a big issue for them.

David: I want to play another clip from the debate. We heard from Mikie Sherrill from the debate. Here is candidate Jack Ciattarelli's response to that same question at last month's debate about New Jersey Transit.

Jack Ciattarelli: When I'm successful in transforming New Jersey, the hope would be that no one has to go out of state to get anything other than see a Broadway play. What I want to do here in New Jersey is something other states have done. We've got mass transit systems. It's not just trains. The Atlantic City Expressway is a mass transit system with tolls. Parkway and Turnpike are mass transit systems with tolls. New Jersey Transit is a transit system with revenue through fares.

Let's put them all under one roof called the Garden State Transportation Authority. Let's get rid of all these different authorities with all these different management structures. Let's put all in one roof, better management, better accountability, one management structure, and we'll give it a dedicated revenue stream called the New Jersey State Budget. That's where we'll provide the funding. I think that'll be a much better job of managing our mass transit system. Let me also say this with regard to mass transit: we need to reevaluate every single train line and every single bus line to make sure there's adequate ridership to justify that route so we can dedicate all the resources we have to the most traveled routes.

David: Larry, he's proposing something dramatic here, right? Consolidating all of these authorities under one roof. Is this a new idea, and what would that look like in practice?

Larry: It's sort of a new idea because really the DOT, specifically the Commissioner of Transportation, basically is the head of all of those agencies boards. The Transportation Commissioner is the chairman of the Turnpike Authority Board, the South Jersey Transportation Authority, which runs the AC Expressway and NJ Transit. What we're talking about here is a possibility of reducing some of the inside costs, the management costs, administrative costs, getting economies of scale of maybe having those some people do the same function for each agency instead of each agency replicating those. The devil is really going to be in the details on how that shakes out.

NJ Transit is a very big organization. It has 12,000 plus employees. That is more than the DOT and the two toll agencies put together. How that looks in reality, that's going to be very interesting because it's going to be a new creature, and it depends on how nimble a creature is it going to be to deal with things. Is it going to have one giant board that deals with all the agency's business in one shot? Are they still going to have separate boards? How is this going to work?

David: Ciattarelli mentioned evaluating each train line and bus line for ridership. Could that mean service cuts? Is that a fair question to ask based on that to answer? What would that look like for commuters?

Larry: This is the interesting thing. NJ Transit is sort of, and I say sort of, in the process of doing that with bus lines right now. They have three bus design redevelopment projects going on in Newark, Hudson County, in South Jersey, and-- I forget where the other one is. The thing is, right now, they're very slow rolling those things out. They rolled out Newark. It had a lot of pushback because what it would have done would have taken direct bus service and required people to transfer.

When you transfer in a bus, it's not like the New York subway, where you've got five minutes and the next train is there. You can wait an hour sometimes, depending on the time of day. To say to a bus rider, to a commuter, and basically, two-thirds of the commuters in New Jersey ride the bus, you're not going to have a direct bus ride. You're going to have to transfer. You have to stand out in the weather somewhere. They did not like that, so they sent that back to the drawing board.

Now, one of the things those redesigns are trying to do is to take some of these bus routes that date back to the era of trolley cars and fit them with where the population centers are and where the jobs are. That would kind of go along with what Ciattarelli is talking about, basically getting the service to where the people are. The thing is, and especially in South Jersey, which is a little more rural, the bus is the only thing that's out there for some people.

You have a lot of distribution centers and warehouses that are building out there, and the big issue is how do you get those employees to those jobs if they don't have cars, especially if they're low or minimum-wage workers? Car ownership in New Jersey is very expensive. Insurance is very expensive. There's going to be that push and pull, and the thing is, it's nice to talk about it in practice.

The reality is, when you start taking away bus service, you're going to have the local legislators coming in and opposing that vehemently because the constituents are going to be saying, "Hey, they're taking away my ride." Now, something that could be looked at, and he hasn't said whether this is part of that look, is the use of microtransit. We have it here in Jersey City. It's called Via. It's kind of like a hybrid, a sort of Uberish on-demand minivan system that's meant to fill in the gaps where NJ Transit isn't. That's a possibility.

David: All the specifics would be, obviously, yet to come. I'm David Furst, filling in for Brian Lehrer today. We're speaking with Larry Higgs, commuting and transportation reporter at NJ Advanced Media, about the problems plaguing New Jersey Transit and how the candidates for governor are talking about them. We would love to take some of your calls. Let's take some of your calls right now. 212-433-9692, that's 212-433-WNYC. Linda in East Windsor, welcome to The Brian Lehrer Show.

Linda: Good morning. I appreciate the discussion of these big changes to New Jersey Transit and the other transportation systems, but New Jersey Transit can't get enough engineers to drive their trains. Recently, over the last summer, in and out of New York from Princeton Junction, five minutes before the train is supposed to arrive at the station, they announced the train is canceled due to engineer unavailability. It's not on the website, no alerts, no nothing. They can't get that right.

They can't wash the windows so that the passengers can see what station they are pulling into, and it's not announced by the engineers. I've had that many times this summer, where I'm telling somebody who's taken the train to the airport and they're not from this country. I go, "No, your station's coming up because it's not announced by the engineers."

David: We're back to those windows again, too. Linda, this is a great question about the engineer unavailability. Larry, there was an engineer strike back in May. Talk about that. Have those issues been resolved, or will labor disputes continue for the next governor?

Larry: It's interesting. Linda, I was on the platform in New Brunswick and had the same thing happen. The train just suddenly got canceled. The reason that's happening, and especially why it happened this summer, is there's a dispute right now between the engineers' union and NJ Transit over engineers who call out at the last minute. It would be like you deciding it's a beautiful day, I'm going to call in sick. From what NJ Transit is saying, this happens within an hour of them supposed to show up, and it happens at the last minute, and they have to scramble for a replacement.

The trouble is, there aren't a lot of engineers sitting around on the bench, so to speak, to go drive that train because those engineers have been used up already for people who legitimately put in for vacation or sick time or other time off months, maybe weeks in advance, the way they're supposed to. This is something that they're trying to work out. Apparently, it's a summertime thing and nobody can explain why. The union has their own explanation. They try to blame it on extra service for MetLife Stadium events. NJ Transit says that's not necessarily the case, and they're questioning why this is happening. The union is saying it's slacking off because it's September and everybody's back to school.

For the longer range, NJ Transit CEO says in the next contract, which will happen after he's gone and the next governor is in office, he's basically leaving a guide for the next governor to try to negotiate away these work rules that they contend harm commuters so that if you call in at the last minute, you're going to be disciplined in some fashion. It's not going to be permitted, and they want to try to discourage that. Again, it's something that's going to wait till 2027 when the next contract is up. Unfortunately, it's not going to help you now, but it's hopefully a solution coming down the pike for you. Likewise, they're doing that train by train.

David: Let's take another call. Tim in Mount Tabor, welcome to The Brian Lehrer Show. You have a question?

Tim: Yes. I have a comment, which is that environmentalist that Jack Ciattarelli's idea, the Atlantic City Expressway, a highway is mass transit, it's ludicrous. That's not mass transit. It takes 10 times the land for cars as opposed to rail, and rail, if it's electric, it's already zero emission. The problem is, we're already planning on spending $10 billion on expanding the New Jersey Turnpike into Jersey City, and we could be repurposing the line that used to go to Jersey City from Montclair, where Mikie Sherrill lives, to be light rail plus a trail. Instead, they want to make it only a bike trail, and this is happening all over the state.

David: Larry, are these issues that you're familiar with? You want to jump in there?

Larry: Yes, some of them. This is one of the push and pulls because what Tim is talking about accurately is that the people driving on the highway, generally, it's one person in one car. It's not necessarily mass transit per se, where you're moving a lot of people in one bus or thousands of people in one train. There's also the commensurate environmental issues. When there's gridlock, you've cars that are stopping, and they're spewing out emissions. Even with lower-emission vehicles, it's still something that's being pumped out into the air. It's a very different interpretation of mass transit. Let's just put it like that.

Expanding the system that goes back to what Mikie Sherrill was saying about getting money from Washington. Money from Washington pays for that kind of expansion, but it's a very heavy lift. If you want an example, take a look at Hudson-Bergen Light Rail, where the people in Bergen County have been waiting 25 years for the Bergen part of that to be done. Now, the problem is it's going to cost $2 billion. It's under an environmental review.

The Federal Transportation Administration sent it back for another environmental review because they said the information from the earlier review is out of date. You have to do it over again. The thing is, this is something that's being built on an existing freight rail line. That part of it, it's still going to be a rail line. The environmental impact is going to be parking lot stations, that sort of thing. Once that gets built, we go back to the operating budget and the cost to operate that adds to that budget, increases that budget, and that's totally on state funds.

David: I want to try to get to another call here, but I also wanted to ask you one more thing about that corporate transit fee. That just really catchy name there. It's hard to focus in on what is this thing and how important is it, but bring us back to that. How much of New Jersey Transit is funded by this corporate transit fee? How does it work, and what does it cover?

Larry: What it does is it's a tax on the largest corporations, so you're leaving out your small businesses, your mom-and-pops. These are national or multinational corporations that are being taxed. It's the same tax that was the business tax that was supposed to sunset. What it does is it pays roughly about $770 million towards NJ Transit's operating budget. Now, that was the estimated cost of what the financial cliff would have been if NJ Transit didn't have it. Without it, we talk about what they call the death spiral, where they have to cut services and make reductions.

Now, the thing about that is it's not constitutionally dedicated, so there's a little bit of discretion for the next governor. If the next governor runs into budget problems, tax revenues don't materialize at the same rate that they have been, the governor could go in and decide, "I want to use some of those funds for other purposes in the budget," for education, for whatever. That's going to be money that's going to come away from NJ Transit.

A governor could also decide, "I'm going to cut it in half, or maybe I don't want NJ Transit to get any of it. I need to put it somewhere else." This is where some of the policy people and transit advocates are saying we need to be constitutionally dedicated, the same thing they do with the Transportation Trust Fund, the money from your gas taxes. It goes in a lockbox. It can be only used for transportation purposes.

Now, the problem with if you don't have the corporate transit fee, that means the money has to come from some other place, and this is the big push and pull in New Jersey's budget because New Jersey cannot print money like the federal government does. It's got to be a balanced budget. If you take away the corporate transit fee, that $700-plus million has to come from some other place in the budget. The question is, whose budget do you cut? Education, state police, environment, you name it.

David: A big issue for the next governor to be dealing with?

Larry: They're going to have to deal with it in five years when it expires-

David: Five years, okay.

Larry: -if they decide to renew it. You have a little bit of a grace period.

David: All right. Let's try to get to another caller. David in Orange, New Jersey, welcome.

David: Great. Thank you for taking my call. Thank you, Larry, for addressing all of these issues that we all share. I live in Orange, New Jersey. I take the Highland Avenue station stop every day to New York City for work. I just wanted to respond a couple of things to shoulder the responsibility of fixing the New Jersey Transit system on our governors is a mistake. We know it's a very complex system. If there was a magic wand for them to fix it, they would have already done it.

I would also say to penalize our conductors and our engineers for taking a sick day last minute, when maybe they might not have a stomach ache, but they need a mental health day, I think, is a mistake. I think what these members of the team do to provide a service every day is heroic, and we appreciate their service. I also want to say that the Highland Avenue station is in a complete state of disrepair, with ridership increasing. I think Ciattarelli, all he has to do is take a train anywhere to see how much public transportation is needed and why do fees keep going up when a simple derailment on the Gladstone line, which happened over a week ago, continues to pretty much derail commuters' experience going into New York City?

David: A lot of questions there. I want to get Larry have a chance to respond. I hope you've been taking notes, Larry.

Larry: [laughs] The thing is, with the engineers, what NJ Transit is saying is that these people are not giving a reason. It's not somebody who calls up and says, "I'm sick. I woke up--" whatever reason. What they're characterizing it as is an unexcused absence. The thing is, there are federal regulations that state that when an engineer works so many consecutive days, they must have a relief day, a day off. If they work an overnight shift, they can't jump back right into work. They have to have so many hours of rest, and that's for safety reasons.

It is probably one of the toughest jobs in transit. It takes two years to train an engineer, which is why it took so long for the ranks to be refilled from 2018 to now, because you had people that washed out of the training. You have to memorize. It would be like when you drive your car on the parkway, engineers are expected to know the physical characteristics. They have to memorize where the speed limit changes, where the hills are, where the stations are. It's a very, very complex job. You have to be familiar with a giant book of rules that's the size of a big Tom Clancy novel hardcover.

David: [laughs]

Larry: They have to continually qualify. They can't just go out and run the train. They have to qualify on different lines. That also cuts into that bench of substitutes. They can't come up to Larry Higgs and say. "You run on the Newark branch, we need you on the Hoboken branch." If I'm not qualified to run on the Hoboken division, I can't run a train there. Again, that's for safety.

David: They could come up to Larry Higgs and say that, but I don't know that it's going to work out very well. I got to say we're getting a lot of questions about those windows that you mentioned earlier, Larry. Someone's saying, "I feel the windows on New Jersey Transit. It used to be much cleaner. I can rarely take in those sweet Jersey views these days." That touched a nerve. We're going to have to leave it there. Our guest was Larry Higgs, commuting and transport reporter at New Jersey Advance Media. Larry, thanks again for sharing your expertise.

Larry: Oh, it's a pleasure. Thanks for having me on.

Copyright © 2025 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.