Overnight ice resulted in a rough morning commute on LIRR

Well, after yesterday's storm, the LIRR had a slightly rougher time this morning providing the promised full weekday schedule. 

If you've been outside yet today, you'll know it's FREEZING outside (it's in the upper teens), and as you know, when you had a cold night, it's not uncommon, especially on the LIRR, for the switches to freeze, which happened overnight. A couple switches, all of those being at important locations, and as a result, caused delays and even a couple of cancellations throughout the entire morning rush hour:

• There was switch trouble near Mineola which caused delays on the Oyster Bay Branch that resulted in 35-40 minute delays, and to make matters worse, train 505 (the first dual mode out of Oyster Bay) broke down in Oyster Bay which resulted in congestion. They even had to have train 508 (the 6:43a from Jamaica to Oyster Bay) go all the way to Hicksville to make a reverse-move and get around that broken switch. This also later resulted in the entire Main Line getting put in a chokehold as everything got backed up causing an average of 10 minute delays during the height of the morning rush hour.
• There was switch trouble at both Stewart Manor and Elmont-UBS Arena which resulted in train 709, the 7:04am from Hempstead to Atlantic Terminal having to make a reverse-move.

In the end though, you cannot blame the LIRR for this as this is all weather-related. Afterall this was the first real snow of the season and I think it's impressive enough that they were able to run pretty much a full suite of trains for the Monday morning rush hour already, considering when you look at NJTransit, they annulled basically 25% of the rush hour fleet. And really the delays weren't terrible, when you look at it, as only a small handful of trains ran more than 20 minutes late with the worst of the delays being train 508 which arrived Oyster Bay 43 minutes late.

NJ Transit announced a holiday week of fares!

   NJ Transit is giving away an early holiday present: a full 7-day week free of fares!

    Gov. Phil Murphy wants to thank NJT riders for their patience after enduring yet another "summer of hell". A week of free rides from August 26th through September 2. Not only will this be on the trains, but this will also apply on Busses, Light Rail and any other form of transportation! Unfortunately though, if you already bought a monthly ticket, you'll only receive a 25% discount on there September Monthly Pass through the app, at ticket machines or ticket windows. 

 This gift is being called a "thank you" to the thousands of loyal NJT customers, for holding on through this not so great summer.

Gov. Murphy said this: "Understanding that our commuters have faced many disruptions this summer, we are providing a one week holiday for NJT riders". He also stated that the company is working diligently with Amtrak to find the root cause then solve these problems, and that he thanks the many "New Jerseyans" who rely on public transit to get around.

As I'm from New York, I rarely take New Jersey Transit but I think that this is a perfect solution for the moment. They might not be able to solve these problems as of right now, but I'm thankful that there at least using an innovative approach. It must have been very difficult to make this decision as their throwing tons of money away but I think this will hopefully be a very nice relief to NJT riders and hopefully end the summer on a slightly better note.

Reimbursement for NJ Commuters is on the Horizon!

    On Monday, New Jersey Transit announced that some relief would be on the way for commuters who depend on New Jersey's Commuter Rail, New Jersey Transit, through a plan that would compensate the riders that experienced long & hot delays this summer due to Amtrak issues. The last couple of months for New Jersey Transit have been pretty "hellish" as delayed Amtrak & NJT trains have caused long delays esspecially during rush hours causing stranded passengers and huge backups. These disrupctions have plagued NJ Transit trains, often times leaving people stranded in hot train stations. 

     Finally though, New Jersey Congressman Gotthemier is proposing a passenger bill-of-rights that would force Amtrak to reimburse commuters for their train tickets if there are unreasonable delays or cancellations. He claimed that Amtrak would be on the hook since they own the Northeast Corridor which is the NJ Transit Line with the most delays this summer. 

     Amtrak released a statement on this:

    

     "Amtrak is working hard to improve the reliability of the Northeast Corridor after nearly five decades of chronic underfunding by both the federal government and our commuter partners. We and NJ TRANSIT, like, Congressman Gottheimer, want on-time service that meet customer expectations and we are working diligently, together, to identify root causes and make improvements to the many old assets we rely on every day to support roughly 450 daily trains in New Jersey. Assertions that Amtrak infrastructure alone is the cause of the delays experienced this summer by Amtrak and NJ TRANSIT riders aren't supported by the facts, and we certainly don't take a "run to failure" approach, although funding constraints have long forced us to extend the use of aging assets rather than replace them. Now finally, the funding recently provided by the transformational Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, made possible in part by work of Congressman Gottheimer, has enabled Amtrak to begin to rectify this and launch the company's largest-ever capital investment program, which has more investment planned in New Jersey than any other state, reflecting the criticality of these tracks to whole the Northeast Corridor. While we deeply appreciate the $6 billion in supplemental federal funds to replace Amtrak's old assets and enhance accessibility on the NEC, most of these funds are committed already to other vital projects and are a downpayment on the tens of billions needed from Congress, and our commuter partners, in the future to modernize the Northeast Corridor from Washington DC to Boston over the coming decade. We, and our partners, are already actively working to maximize all the potential funding sources available under the BIL to improve service now and in the future. We look forward to discussing all the actions Amtrak, and our partner NJ TRANSIT, are taking today to improve the railroad with Rep. Gottheimer and getting his continued help to secure the funding required to improve the customer experience going forward." 

    

     While I'd agree that it's certainly not fully Amtrak's fault in any way, I do think they should take at least partial-responsibility for it since they own the corridor and some of there trains caused these delays for NJ Transit Commuters. Luckily, a lot of people are taking the next couple of weeks (selectivity) off for summer vacations, but hopefully coming back into the fall & winter monthes, The Northeast Corridor will hopefully have less issues due to it cooling down. I'm also hoping that next summer will be a lot better with this problem at least partly solved.