I just came back from what was billed as a kind of hearing/information meet­ing on New Jer­sey Tran­sit’s planned shut­down of the Atlantic City Line. At least two of us had tak­en this seri­ous­ly enough that we had writ­ten 500-word state­ments (here’s mine) but as soon as I walked into the Atlantic City rail sta­tion this morn­ing at 8am, I real­ized that this was just a pro-forma, dis­or­ga­nized PR appearance.

The chief exec­u­tive of New Jer­sey Tran­sit, Kevin Cor­bett ¹, was there telling us the same list of excus­es for the shut­down they’ve been telling us, name­ly, that this is about Pos­i­tive Train Con­trol (PTC) test­ing ². At least I think he was. NJT appar­ent­ly does­n’t believe in micro­phones. I squeezed as close­ly as I could in the amor­phous crowd of maybe 100 pas­sen­gers who had turned up but I still could only make out a few words. Near­est Cor­bett were video cam­eras whose spot­lights lit up his face. Maybe I can watch the news tonight and hear the meet­ing that I drove forty min­utes to attend³.

I did hear repeat­ed invok­ing of “PTC” but no of those words were admis­sions or mea cul­pas about the long-simmering labor prob­lems that have led to train crew short­ages. Because NJ Tran­sit’s man­age­ment have been behind tar­gets for train­ing new crews, and because engi­neers have been leav­ing for better-paying jobs on Amtrak and Metro North, there aren’t enough crews to run all of its lines and also do PTC test­ing. The eas­i­est fix to the labor short­age is to just shut down the least polit­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed train line and rede­ploy its crews to NYC-bound trains. We’re told this is a tem­po­rary fix but what if the man­age­ment prob­lems hir­ing, train­ing, and retain­ing crews con­tin­ues to bot­tom out?

After half an hour of this, Tran­sit police found portable line mark­ers so that pas­sen­gers could line up to talk to Cor­bett. There were many pas­sen­gers I rec­og­nized from my 15 years of com­mut­ing this line and I stood try­ing to hear them but again, to no avail. It was clear he was just giv­ing the line.

Near­by was a table with sched­ules. I was pret­ty unhap­py but I asked them a spe­cif­ic ques­tion ⁴. At least the Tran­sit employ­ee said she did­n’t know and would look into it. She even wrote “Far­ley” on a pad of paper. I guess my trip was­n’t total­ly wasted.

If you’re a South Jer­sey local affect­ed by all this, there’s a peti­tion to sign. My friend Joseph (bicy­cleri­i­ights on Twit­ter) has also done a great job writ­ing about the pos­si­bil­i­ties of vision­ary South Jer­sey tran­sit reform. Update: Also, Nore­ast­er­N­ick did a much bet­ter job get­ting to the front of the line and chal­leng­ing Cor­bett. His video is great.

1. Cor­bett report­ed makes $288,000 a year. He’s spend­ing all day today and tomor­row morn­ing talk­ing to AC rail pas­sen­gers. That’s around $2000. There were also a half-dozen employ­ees and a dozen or so secu­ri­ty police. This day and a half of PR is prob­a­bly cost­ing NJTran­sit cus­tomers some­thing in the ball­park of $12,000.
2. No oth­er rail­road line in N.J. (and I believe any­where) has need­ed to be shut down because of PTC testing.
3. That’s right, drove. The pub­lished start time of this event at the AC rail ter­mi­nal was­n’t coor­di­nat­ed with the AC-bound train sched­ule. I was late any­way as I passed acres of emp­ty park­ing lots charg­ing $10 – 15 on my way to street park­ing half a mile away.
4. If they includ­ed the Frank Far­ley Trav­el Plaza in the list of stops that the 551 Express bus cross-honors, it would be a viable option for Ham­mon­ton, N.J., rid­ers. Oth­er 551 stops, notably Avon­dale, are list­ed but that’s twice as far from Ham­mon­ton; any­one think­ing of dri­ving that far would prob­a­bly just go direct­ly to PATCO.