NJ Transit and Amtrak meet to address upcoming summer travel concerns

The public transportation organizations have spent $12 million on service upgrades in order to address major service disruptions that were extremely prevalent last summer.

Joti Rekhi

Apr 15, 2025, 9:47 PM

Updated 7 hr ago

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Gov. Phil Murphy, Amtrak and NJ Transit shared progress on completed and scheduled upgrades meant to elevate the commuter experience ahead of the busy 2025 travel season at a summit held on Tuesday.
The public transportation organizations have spent $12 million on service upgrades in order to address major service disruptions that were extremely prevalent last summer.
That includes hardware and overhead wire replacements.
“There’s a consensus the heat and the component parts don’t get along terribly well, so being preemptive in anticipating that has been a big part of the partnership as opposed to only reacting to challenges,” said Gov. Murphy.
“There is no way that we could guarantee that we’re not going to have issues going forward, but we have done an incredible amount of work between the two entities,” said Anthony Coscia, Amtrak, chair of the Board of Directors.
Between now and June 1, the heavily traveled Northeast Corridor line will see scheduled outages due to upgrades.
The Raritan Line is already being serviced.
Work on the East River tunnel construction project, which connects NY Penn Station to Queens, continues as well.
“These repairs aren’t a luxury, they are necessity. Amtrak is doing it because the right thing to do if you don’t do it, you’re gonna have a potential catastrophic instance and choke off the entire system, Kris Kolluri, NJ Transit, president and CEO.
When asked if he thinks the current ongoing tariff situation would impact the planned work, the governor said it he’d be surprised if it doesn’t.