NJ Transit Derails Atlantic County
Opinion by Nick Pitman
NJ Transit is selling South Jersey up a river, point blank, full stop. I’ve been shouting from the rooftop that the whole suspension of the Atlantic City Line was a sham since August. I’ve been a lifelong rail fan with close connections to employees all over the system in every role imaginable. I know what’s going on behind the scenes and it’s not what they are trying to present to the public. They claimed the line was suspended due to PTC installation. That’s a flat out lie. No rail line in the state or therefore country had the same fate. The truth is they needed the engineers and equipment in North Jersey. The work on the line was completed in November. We were promised trains would be running in January but that clearly never happened. We were told dates in the future that never happened either and now we’re told “maybe” in June. Ridiculous.
NJ Transit is a horribly run transit agency. The fiscal irresponsibly is incredible. Engineers were re-assigned to North Jersey lines, but conductors who worked those assignments were KEPT on the line to direct passengers onto busses. We are six months into the process and you can’t possibly tell me that there are still passengers that don’t know the train isn’t running. These conductors are in some cases, making over 100k a year. They are also being paid incredible amounts of overtime to sit at stations all day. Some assignments are paid for fueling trains on the hind end of the job. Two hours a day on top of their pay. Why is that? They are fueling imaginary trains.
NJ Transit also leased 7 locomotives from Septa at a tune of $350k. These locomotives are sitting in a yard collecting rust when they could be pressed into service to help alleviate some of the equipment issues. We need to come together as a community and demand restoration of service now and tell NJ Transit to cut to the chase and stop feeding us lies.
NorEaster Nick Pittman
Chief Forecaster
SNJ Today Channel 4 News
P: 609.579.4263
