Yahoo Finance Amtrak, NJ Transit Pledge Cooperation to Fix Major Disruptions
(Bloomberg) -- Amtrak and New Jersey Transit officials are working together to investigate and resolve infrastructure problems on both systems that caused recent meltdowns leaving commuters stranded for hours.
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Both systems will examine the root causes of the major service disruptions to improve service for riders, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy told reporters Thursday during a press conference with Stephen Gardner, Amtrak’s chief executive officer, and Kevin Corbett, NJ Transit’s president and chief executive officer.
“The service has been unacceptable. That is a unanimous opinion,” Murphy said, gesturing to himself and around the room. “We will commit everything we can — especially maximum effort, transparency, real time solutions — to do everything we can to address this going forward. And we will accept no standard less than outstanding customer satisfaction.”
The Northeast Corridor, which runs from Boston to Washington, DC, is the most congested rail segment in the country and service disruptions ripple throughout the transit system. About 500,000 passengers travel through Manhattan’s Penn Station every day on more than 1,000 Amtrak, NJ Transit and Long Island Rail Road trains. Those running under the Hudson River from New Jersey have to pass through a single, century-old tunnel connecting the two states, creating a chokepoint. That junction creates problems for both NJ Transit and Amtrak, leading to finger-pointing between the two agencies.
Amtrak and NJ Transit plan to inspect and better maintain the electric traction system that powers trains — including the catenary, a network of overhead power wires — along with signals and switches, according to an Amtrak press release detailing the work. NJ Transit will investigate its pantograph system that connects to the catenary.
“We discovered an issue in the interface between Amtrak trains and between Amtrak’s infrastructure and New Jersey Transit trains that have caused these issues to re-occur,” Tony Coscia, Amtrak’s chairman, told reporters during the press conference. “And we are moving heaven and earth to determine the precise cause of that and to address it.”
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