NEW YORK — Some 373 NJ Transit commuter trains were cancelled in June, a 52 percent increase over the same month a year earlier, even though New Jersey officials have been touting improvement by the commuter system.
CBS-2 TV in New York reported the numbers and asked Gov. Phil Murphy about them last week. “The June numbers we’re still trying to analyze,” Murphy said. “I have to say myself I don’t have a complete answer on the specifics of June, but on the aggregate the data is getting better.”
This came just weeks after a June 27 press conference by Murphy, NJ Transit President and CEO Kevin Corbett, and other officials in which the agency said it had seen a 47 percent decrease in train cancellations over the first three months of 2019 and outlined its improvement efforts. [See “New Jersey governor touts NJ Transit improvements,” Trains News Wire, June 28, 2019.]
The CBS-2 report cited NJ Transit’s ongoing engineer shortage as part of the issue, along with summer infrastructure work by Amtrak. It also included a list of outside issues cited by NJ Transit, including a day when power outages plagued the Northeast Corridor. [See “Power outages hit Amtrak, commuter operations on Northeast Corridor,” Trains News Wire, June 19, 2019.]
