{"id":471779,"date":"2026-02-16T10:23:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T10:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/471779\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T10:23:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T10:23:07","slug":"nj-transit-cancels-27-trains-on-first-day-of-portal-bridge-cutover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/471779\/","title":{"rendered":"NJ Transit cancels 27 trains on first day of Portal Bridge cutover"},"content":{"rendered":"

NJ Transit officials issued an apology to riders after canceling 27 trains Sunday on the first day of a month-long rail service reduction<\/a> to put one track of the new Portal Bridge in service. <\/p>\n

Most trains were canceled Sunday morning, with a few canceled in the afternoon, according to NJ Transit alerts.<\/p>\n

The agency bluntly suggested commuters who have the option to work from home to do so. <\/p>\n

The North Jersey Coast Line saw the brunt of the canceled trains with 10, followed by nine on the Northeast Corridor line, which includes canceling the Princeton Shuttle, according to NJ Transit alerts on X. <\/p>\n

Trains also were canceled on the Morris & Essex, Montclair-Boonton and Raritan Valley Lines. <\/p>\n

Alerts blamed the cancellations on \u201coriginally scheduled crew availability at the time of departure, resulting from the Portal Bridge cutover schedule.<\/p>\n

That schedule, which started Sunday reduced regularly scheduled weekday service by 178 trains to allow Amtrak construction crews to complete the process to move one of two Northeast Corridor line tracks to the New Portal North Bridge. That process started Sunday and continues until March 15.<\/p>\n

In an apology to riders posted on X and Facebook, NJ Transit officials blamed the cancellations on the contractual process locomotive engineers use to select new assignments which happens when rail schedules change.<\/p>\n

This time, the issue is all schedules of all engineers, trainmen and conductors have to be changed for the cutover, said NJ Transit CEO Kris Kolluri.<\/p>\n

Normally the twice-a-year schedule changes affect far fewer workers, and union workers have a 48-hour period to bid on new assignments, officials said. <\/p>\n

\u201cUnlike normal times, this time it\u2019s a total change of a schedule, all engineers are picking new assignments,\u201d he said. \u201cThe engineers are allowed 48 hours, they\u2019re going through the process.\u201d<\/p>\n

The cutover requires reducing the schedule from 332 weekday trains to 178 trains and sending all Midtown Direct trains that would normally go to New York to Hoboken instead. <\/p>\n

That schedule change allows Amtrak crews to work for 30 days to complete the signaling communications and infrastructure work to shift Northeast Corridor rail traffic from the 116-year-old Portal bridge to one track of the new Portal North Bridge. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt is the entirety of the railroad operations,\u201d Kolluri said. \u201cWe are working through it with the unions in a collaborative manner.\u201d<\/p>\n

Conductors\u2019 union members also are going through the same process, but Kolluri said there are more conductors on staff than engineers.<\/p>\n

Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers & Trainmen union officials said they offered to start the assignment selection process early. <\/p>\n

On Monday, trains run on a modified holiday cutover schedule for President\u2019s Day, which allows time to complete the assignment process, he said. <\/p>\n

Tuesday will be the real test to determine how the cutover schedule will work.<\/p>\n

Officials from NJ Transit and PATH, which will be called on to move thousands more riders between Hoboken and New York, both recommended commuters find ways to travel outside regular commuter rush periods.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NJ Transit officials issued an apology to riders after canceling 27 trains Sunday on the first day of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-471779","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}