New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy has announced a “fare waiver” for rail travelers on the NJ Transit network from August 26 to September 2. The decision to offer customers free rail rides for a week follows a series of service disruptions over the spring and summer, as well as a 15 percent fare increase that went into effect on July 1.
The fare waiver coincides with the move-in period for returning students, which begins August 31. Students arriving from New York, Newark Airport or Trenton will not have to pay for train tickets for their journey along the Northeast Corridor and Dinky.
In an August 15 statement, Governor Murphy said the gesture was intended as a thank you for customers’ continued “loyalty and support” in the face of significant delays and closures.
Despite the fare reduction, some passengers fear that the broader problems – increased fares and historically unreliable service – will remain unresolved.
“I think this is a great thing. I think it’s great to give more people access to public transportation,” Dash Pai (class of ’26) told The Daily Princetonian. “But I don’t know if this one-time fare reduction will make much difference in the long run.”
Pai has used NJ Transit several times for trips to and from campus. He also used it frequently while working on campus this summer and experienced the peak of delays himself.
“One time I was visiting my friends in town and wanted to take the 9:30 or 10:00 p.m. train back to Princeton… and it ended up being an hour and a half late.”
Matthew Zhang (senior class of ’26) appreciates that the initiative “helps college students by providing free rides” since “the ride from Newark (airport) to Princeton can be quite expensive for a lot of people,” but agrees that the fare waiver “is a Band-Aid, so to speak.”
Disruptions caused by the railroad’s aging fleet and overhead catenary system are more common in the summer and winter months. Extreme temperatures cause electrical wires to sag or break, which can cause them to become entangled in train cars and cause power outages. These problems have been around for so long that seasoned riders plan their schedules around such outages, often adding several hours to daily commutes during rush hours.
This summer, NJ Transit reported an on-time performance rate of 83.2 percent for June, the lowest on-time performance rate since November 2018. This year, the on-time performance rate peaked in March at 93.3 percent, but is still below the OTP goal of 94.7 percent.
June also saw 656 train cancellations, the highest number of cancellations since August 2020. 416 of these cancellations were due to issues related to “failures of Amtrak equipment, signals or overhead wires, track conditions, debris or planned maintenance.”
Because NJ Transit and Amtrak trains share the portion of the Amtrak Northeast Corridor between New York City and Trenton, officials from both companies launched an investigation to determine the causes of increased delays this summer. The investigations by both organizations were inconclusive.
Despite the deficiencies in NJ Transit’s service, Governor Murphy said in his statement that NJ Transit and Amtrak had taken “significant short-term actions” to improve service, including “increased inspections of equipment on the platforms,” which he said had resulted in “a noticeable decrease in infrastructure-related incidents.”
Megan Cameron is news editor at The Prince.
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