Article- NJT Locomotives Idle as Mandated Project Takes Toll

New Jersey Transit pulled off the seemingly impossible by making a Dec. 31 deadline to install emergency-braking software ordered by Congress. But the race to finish peeled off staff from routine duties, delaying promised service improvements after months of commuter agony.

“A number of vehicles” are sidelined as a result of NJ Transit’s need to finish a multi-year project known as positive train control in less than 10 months, according to Nancy Snyder, a spokeswoman for the nation’s largest statewide mass-transportation provider.

The effort “required the use of NJ Transit maintenance staff to supplement contractor forces, creating this backlog in routine repairs, as well as federally required short- and long-term inspections and other work,” Snyder wrote in an email. “NJT employees are working overtime to reduce the backlog as quickly as possible.”

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