# Article: We Found the Very Worst Commuter Train in America



## Thirdrail7 (Sep 27, 2019)

I know this is impossible to image but it turns out the NY times thinks a NJ Transit train is the very worst commuter train for reliability. 

I know you're shocked and appalled! 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/27/nyregion/njtransit-commuter-delays.html

*We Found the Very Worst Commuter Train in America*
Train 2606 has failed to show up for its morning run nearly 20 times this year, leaving riders in New Jersey fuming.

Here are a few brief, fair use quotes:



> Their train, North Jersey Coast Line 2606, which is supposed to depart at 7:06 a.m., had been canceled. Again.
> 
> This time — the 18th cancellation of the year — the official explanation was “equipment availability resulting from a mechanical issue.” But these aggrieved riders in Middletown did not seem to care. They had heard all the excuses the railroad had to offer. All that really mattered was that they were not getting to work on time. Again.
> 
> This is the plight of the hundreds of people who depend on what just may be the worst commuter train in America. The railroad they ride, New Jersey Transit, has been plagued for the last two years by a rash of cancellations.







> Gov. Philip D. Murphy has promised to fix the railroad since before he was elected in 2017. But in the first six months of 2019, New Jersey Transit canceled more than 1,300 trains — more than 50 a week — according to a New York Times analysis of the agency’s reports on social media.
> 
> The disruption has been spread across the railroad’s 12 lines, but it has not been spread evenly. The Times’s analysis found that six different trains were canceled at least 15 times from January through June.
> 
> ...



Wow! That's a high number of cancellations. Maybe they are attempting to operate too many trains to begin with.


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## Metra Electric Rider (Sep 29, 2019)

That's insane - if Metra tried that outside of a polar vortex or tornado damage there would be rioting on the streets in the burbs!


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## jis (Sep 29, 2019)

At least now they call them cancellations. For a while they tried the Orwellian approach and tried to call such cancellations, merging of the service with the next scheduled service, or some other idiocy like that.

It is truly sad to see NJTRO descending to this level of dysfunction, thanks to the dysfunction in Trenton spanning both sides of the aisle and a few truly incompetent Governors. Believe it or not, back in the days of Jeff Warsh and early part of Shirley Dilibero's regime NJTRO used to get best transit agency awards from APTA!

The way NJT is governed, the single person responsible for its state is the Governor of NJ, and Governor Christie sunk it so low that they are still trying to come upto Periscope Depth, in a manner of speaking. The Board is basically a rubber stamp outfit which is a den of incompetent lackies of the Governor and his party, when it even has members. Right now it does not have any beyond the ex-officio ones since the legislature has placed a block on endorsement of all new appointments.

But never mind, because the bylaws state that the required quorum for doing business is 2! Yes 2!, and the number of ex-officio members is, you guessed it, 2, all lovingly hand picked by the Governor. So the board really does not need to have the other 7 or 9 or whatever number of members that it is supposed to have, in order to transact business. Consequently, the Governor has no incentive to listen to any of the users of the system (except on those rare occasions when he sees his re-election chances reduced due to NJT matters), and no one outside of Governor's office has any leverage whatsoever against the random wishes and theories driven by which the Governor runs the outfit. If that is not a completely broken Soviet style setup, I don't know what is.

Inevitably it shows in the outcomes it produces, specially when the Transport Commissioner, one of the ex-offico members has minimal clue as to where NJTRO even offers service and what service.


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## Mystic River Dragon (Sep 30, 2019)

Do I get to say "See I told you so" now to everyone who thought I was exaggerating when I said how bad NJT is?


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