New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has so far avoided jail time for BridgeGate, the scandal that recently saw two of his top staff convicted for a scheme to snarl George Washington Bridge traffic at Fort Lee, NJ in an act of political revenge. You’d think the man would not want to get involved in any way with another commuting nightmare.
Guess again.
Twice in recent days, rail traffic into New York City’s Penn Station was snarled by derailments in the same area of the extremely complex trackage with multiple crossovers in a tight space that is pretty much as it was laid out when the original Penn Station was built. Investigations have determined the problems can be traced to aging ties under the rails that had already been slated for work. Maintenance is complicated by the fact that the system is operating at capacity — there’s little down time to allow for work without interrupting service.
It was a relatively minor mishap — several cars on a slow-moving New Jersey Transit train jumped the tracks on Monday morning at Pennsylvania Station in New York.
But by the next day, it had cascaded into a transportation crisis, snarling travel up and down the East Coast, upending the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, and vividly illustrating the fragile state of infrastructure in the nation’s busiest transit corridor.
The derailment happened at a notorious choke point inside North America’s busiest train station — a crowded and gloomy labyrinth that was never meant to handle a daily flow of 600,000 passengers and 1,300 trains. When something goes wrong on the tracks, it can cripple the three railroads that rely on the station.
This is part of the critical infrastructure that needs to be rebuilt and upgraded in this country; the proposed Gateway Project would address longstanding issues in the region, not least of which is the deteriorating condition of the rail tunnels under the Hudson River that are a vital link in the Northeast Corridor.
Christie had already distinguished himself in rail transportation matters when he unilaterally withdrew New Jersey from a plan to build another new rail tunnel to NYC, the ARC project. While construction had begun and funds were budgeted, Christie backed out citing specious concerns over potential cost overruns and limited NJ state finances. Christie’s management of the state budget seems to have been driven more by political concerns than good public policy. The ARC project was canceled; if it had kept to schedule, it would have been completed by 2018.
The area of trackage involved in the derailments is under the control of Amtrak, and New Jersey Transit pays Amtrak for operating expenses and capital improvements in exchange for use of the tracks for NJT trains operating into Penn Station. Governor Christie has decided to make a bad situation worse by informing Amtrak that New Jersey is going to withhold millions in payments and seek to recover more from the cash-strapped railroad.
Gov. Chris Christie directed New Jersey Transit late Wednesday to halt all payments to Amtrak because of a train derailment on Monday and subsequent delays that have ensnarled Garden State commuters this week, according to two letters obtained by The New York Times.
In a letter to Anthony R. Coscia, the chairman of the Amtrak board, the governor said that he had directed New Jersey Transit “to cease making any payments to Amtrak” until there had been a “thorough and independent examination of the tracks, signals, switches and other equipment maintained by Amtrak” on the Northeast Corridor and verification that the equipment was “in a state-of-good-repair.”
The Christie solution for delayed maintenance and under-funding is — take away even more money. Genius! Christie’s criticisms of Amtrak are all the more outrageous in light of his own stewardship of New Jersey Transit. The once-proud rail system has been in serious decline for the past seven years.
Today, New Jersey Transit is in crisis. Its aging tracks and trains need billions of dollars in improvements. Delays and fares are rising along with ridership, with passenger cars packed to the breaking point. The century-old tunnel that carries its trains to New York is crumbling. And the agency has gone nearly a year without a permanent leader.
“It was an excellent railroad and running quite well until the last seven years, and it has been in constant decline,” said Martin E. Robins, a former deputy executive director of the agency.
Under the administration of Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, the state subsidy for the agency has plunged by more than 90 percent. Gaping holes in the agency’s past two budgets were filled by fare increases and service reductions or other cuts. Plans for a new tunnel under the Hudson River — one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects in the country — were torpedoed by Mr. Christie, who pushed for some of the money to be diverted to road-building projects.
The rest of the NJT story is even darker. In the worst cases, people are not merely delayed and inconvenienced. They die. Necessary investment in public infrastructure has collided with anti-government, anti-spending mania in the service of tax cuts, and the chickens are coming home to roost. At one point Christie was a leading candidate for the GOP presidential ticket — before being eliminated by Donald Trump.
Trump has called for a trillion dollar investment in infrastructure, but as of yet there have been no plans announced or discussion of how to fund it. The Republican Congress appears to have the same budget priorities Christie has espoused, which among other things would eliminate most long distance Amtrak trains and impose other cuts.
The intent to shift Amtrak funding down to being handled on a state by state basis would place the fate of the national system in the largely Republican hands of governors and state legislatures with the same attitude towards public infrastructure and reverence for tax cuts as Governor Christie has embraced.
When it comes to transportation and infrastructure, Governor Christie is still the poster child for how not to do it.