Nj Transit

NJ Transit and SEPTA will sell tickets to all of each other's stations, as part of a joint ticketing operation announced yesterday. Tickets to SEPTA and NJ Transit destinations are now available at NJ Transit vending machines, at rail ticket windows at the Trenton station, and at SEPTA ticket windows at Suburban and Market East stations. (SEPTA padlocked the last of its ticket-vending machines in January 2007, citing their inability to accept newly designed U.S. currency.) Fares will not be affected.

An agreement was reached yesterday to keep NJ Transit commuter trains rolling in the event of a threatened Amtrak strike tomorrow. The deal, reached yesterday between NJ Transit, Amtrak and the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees, will allow NJ Transit to continue to operate commuter trains on the Northeast Corridor Line, the Raritan Valley Line and the North Jersey Coast Line. Without the agreement, 65,000 riders would have had to find alternate transportation. "This is a short-term plan," said Jeff Macklin, spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Transportation.

NEWARK, N.J. - NJ Transit on Monday revealed a newly designed ticket, part of an effort to combat the counterfeiting that officials say is costing the agency as much as $3 million a year. More than 200 people, a small percentage of them employees but mostly riders, were arrested for ticket fraud in the last 18 months, NJ Transit Police Chief Christopher Trucillo said. "These are not victimless crimes," Trucillo said. "These criminal acts financially penalize the hundreds of thousands of NJ Transit customers who lawfully utilize our system every weekday.

NJ Transit's first rider survey since Hurricane Sandy shows improved customer satisfaction with the agency. The overall customer satisfaction rating in the survey released Tuesday was 6.4 out of 10. The figures were 6.0 just before the storm and 5.2 in 2011, when the commuter scorecard was first implemented. - AP  

A train headed from Philadelphia to Atlantic City struck an unoccupied vehicle Tuesday evening in Berlin, N.J., an NJ Transit spokeswoman said. The accident occurred at the Washington Avenue crossing around 6:30 p.m., said Courtney Carroll. No one was injured on the train, which was carrying 130 passengers. A preliminary report said the car got stuck on the track and at least one occupant was able to get out before the train hit, Carroll said. The No. 4635 train left Philadelphia at 5:48 p.m. The passengers were to be transferred to buses.

The emphasis was on safety yesterday as third and fourth graders at Camden's Cooper's Poynt Elementary School learned the do's and dont's of riding buses and trains from New Jersey Transit representatives. Students toured a bus, received coloring books and saw slides about public transportation.

An out-of-control NJ Transit truck plowed through two street lights, two trees and two garbage cans in a heavily trafficked area near Camden City Hall yesterday, but did not hit any pedestrians or other vehicles. Paramedics and city firefighters worked to extract a middle-aged NJ Transit driver from his vehicle, which came to a stop at the fence of a parking lot at Broadway and Market Street about 10 a.m. The man was alone in the vehicle and appeared to be conscious when he was put on a stretcher and taken to Cooper University Hospital.

The Burlington County Human Services building in Westampton Township will not be cut off to public transportation as county officials had feared, the New Jersey Transit Board of Directors decided this week. Bus Route 458, which includes the Human Services building on Woodlane Road and Route 541, scheduled to be completed late next year, had been slated for elimination. Two other South Jersey bus routes were also saved by the transit board on Wednesday when it voted to approve fare increases on some bus and train routes in North Jersey.

Trenton's Transportation Center reopened for rail service this morning, allowing Amtrak to start running again between Philadelphia and New York for the first time since Hurricane Irene flooded the tracks there over the weekend. SEPTA's Trenton Line trains, however, are only operating between Center City and Levittown because the tracks they use to get in and out of New Jersey's capital city are possibly damaged or still flooded, said agency spokesman Andrew Busch. Amtrak said it has resumed most service between Philadelphia and New York, including all Acela trains between Washington and Boston.

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. - Bicycle riders from across the state have called on NJ Transit to change its policy covering bikes on trains, which the cyclists say leaves most of them stranded at stations. The policy - which allows bikers to take their wheels onto trains only at stations with high-level platforms - is particularly distressing to bikers in Bergen and Passaic Counties because most stations have low-level platforms, said Andrew Besold, one of 150 biking enthusiasts who participated in the New Jersey Bike and Walk Summit held Saturday at the Voorhees Transportation Center at Rutgers University.

SEPTA supports nearly 26,000 jobs, contributes $3.21 billion in economic output, and generates $62.5 million in state tax revenue, according to a study released Monday. The study, commissioned by SEPTA, comes as the financially strapped transit authority seeks a fare increase and lobbies state officials for more funding. SEPTA provides more bang for the buck than other transit agencies in Pennsylvania and gets less than its share of state funding based on ridership, the study found.

NJ Transit's first rider survey since Hurricane Sandy shows improved customer satisfaction with the agency. The overall customer satisfaction rating in the survey released Tuesday was 6.4 out of 10. The figures were 6.0 just before the storm and 5.2 in 2011, when the commuter scorecard was first implemented. - AP  

DESPITE its program of informational "safety blitzes" at stations where rail trespassing is frequent, SEPTA rail deaths are up so far this year from six in the first quarter of 2012 to eight in 2013. Overall, they have climbed from 10 (two confirmed suicides) in 2010 to 14 (six suicides) in 2011 to 15 (two suicides) in 2012. New Jersey Transit, on the other hand, has seen a dramatic decline in accidental rail deaths, from 14 in 2010 to nine in 2011 to one in 2012 and one so far in 2013.

TRENTON - Top New Jersey transportation officials on Wednesday recounted a challenging fiscal year to Senate lawmakers, tallying more than $2 billion in Hurricane Sandy-related expenses, seeing the state's snow-removal budget busted by frequent winter storms, and continuing to rely on borrowing to fund road and bridge repairs. But rail and bus riders will be spared fare increases for the fourth straight year, they said. Transportation Commissioner Jim Simpson and executives at NJ Transit and the Motor Vehicle Commission appeared before the Senate Budget Committee, as the panel began its review of Gov. Christie's proposed $32.9 billion budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1. Lawmakers must act on the proposal before the current fiscal year ends.

NJ Transit and PATH are among four agencies devastated by Hurricane Sandy that will share in more than $1 billion in new federal disaster aid that Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced Friday. NJ Transit, PATH, New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and the New York City Department of Transportation will get the bulk of the $1.4 billion. NJ Transit will receive $86 million to cover repairs, as well as the cost of providing bus and ferry service. The agency has received $231 million to date.

Back in 2010, Gov. Christie shocked transportation experts when he canceled construction of a new rail tunnel to Manhattan, one of the nation's busiest routes. The project would have doubled capacity, relieving the terrible rush-hour delays that force NJ Transit and Amtrak trains to queue up to snake through two century-old, single-track tunnels. But Christie argued that the state couldn't afford its part of the tab, $3 billion to $5 billion, for relieving the rail congestion. Price wasn't an issue earlier this month when South Jersey officials boisterously celebrated the start of another project aimed at reducing congestion.

Consider the unappreciated trash truck that ambles along the streets of the city day after day. It probably can't get any uglier, but it may get a little flashier under City Council President Darrell L. Clarke's creative plan to turn city property into revenue by selling advertising space. Other cities and local transit agencies have used public property, including garbage trucks and other vehicles, to drum up advertising revenue. SEPTA is expected to make about $14 million this year from advertising for Tropicana orange juice, Baileys Irish Cream, Honda, AT&T, and others.

A Mount Ephraim man with a suspended license was arrested Monday in the hit-and-run death of a 67-year-old woman as she crossed the Black Horse Pike in Haddon Township with a shopping cart Sunday evening. Timothy Polijczuk, 50, owner of a crab stand in Camden, was charged with leaving the scene of a fatal accident, causing death while driving with a suspended license, and operating a vehicle with a suspended license. As he was being taken from the Haddon Township police station for processing in Camden, he told an NBC10 reporter that he did not know he had struck someone.

Motorists and public transit users have little to fear from impending federal budget cuts. Most of the federal money for highways and mass transit operations comes from the Highway Trust Fund, which is exempt from the looming sequester, the mechanism that could require $85 billion in federal spending cuts this year. However, some rail or bus expansion projects could be delayed by cuts to the Federal Transit Administration's "New Starts" program. A 7.8 percent cut would mean about $150 million from a budget of $1.9 billion a year.