NJ Transit and Amtrak Riders found themselves stranded again after the Northeast Corridor was disrupted during the Friday morning Rush Amtrak putting out a statement blaming the disruptions on a disabled commuter train at New York Penn Station meanwhile NJ Transit pointing fingers at Amtrak for the service delays that marks two major schedule suspensions in a 72-hour period and at last count five Rush Hour disruptions during this week alone causing a hellish commute for thousand thousand of riders who are fed up the rash of problems comes as Riders are set to pay more to ride the rail starting in July to discuss all the headaches and finger pointing I'm joined by transportation and commuting reporter at nj.com Larry higs Larry thanks for joining me happy to be here happy to be here and not on a train we'll start off with that right so this morning again commuters were stranded train suspended for 2 hours due to a disabled train at New York's New York Penn Station this is becoming an everyday occurrence people are fed up what can be done about this well there's two issues at hand one is Amtrak's aging infrastructure which is responsible for the problems with overhead wires you know those overhead wires between New Brunswick and New York are basically they did back to the 1940s so they need to be replaced with some something that Amtrak already has between New Brunswick and Trenton and it's called constant tension catenary and in human terms what that means is it those wires automatically adjust to pull the slack out of them if they're if it's too hot or to little little let a little slack into them if it's too cold which would basically prevent some of the problems we're seeing here with warmer weather this week and summer here should commuters brace themselves for a summer of Transit meltdowns well and this is one of the questions that we're asking we're asking elected officials and we're asking Amtrak as well if this is a kind of a repeat of the summer of Hell from 2017 but that was a very different situation that was caused by two am excuse me that was caused by several Amtrak track issues in Penn Station New York that caused low-level derailments and of course public officials wanted some answers and Amtrak came back with a program to basically do some emergency track work over the summer NJ Transit cooperated by moving a certain number of trains to Hoboken for the duration and it proved not to be as hellish as people thought it was but this is a different situation because this deals with infrastructure on the nation's busiest railroad it's it's different than saying we're going to take track 14 out of service in Penn Station New York to say we're going to take track one on the Northeast Corridor between New York and Trenton out of service or however many weeks it needs to be taken out of service NJ tree is trying to help out by offering some increased Windows of opportunity in other words what they've talked about is possibly curtailing service at the extreme early morning one in the morning period till like the one o'clock excuse me the four o'clock 4 in the morning period giv amra more time to work on the clock well you know here's here's the thing low it feels like there's a lot of finger pointing going on is it NJ transit's fault or Amtrak's fault who is to blame well in fact we're dealing with that this morning because NJ transer put out an alert that said service was suspended to an to an Amtrak wire problem Amtrak put out an alert saying that service had a 60 Minute delay do it to to a disabled computer train NJ transits train in Pen Station and you know when I'm going back to say okay what was the real cause now everybody is saying well we're investigating the cause but this leaves commuters in kind of a world of confusion because you know they have to get to work you know when when they're coming home they have to get home I've interviewed commuters who deal with the child care issue and if they're not there to pick up their kid at a certain time they actually have to pay a cash penalty so this is the real these are the real world consequences right and it's confusion and frustration because we know in two weeks Transit Fair hikes will be you know here so how can they justify that that 15% Fair hike with such inconsistent surface well and this is one of the interesting things you know I was in Penn Station interviewing commuters saying basically is the surface worth 15% more and if not what would you how much more would you be willing to pay people I interviewed said they were willing to pay they they felt it was 15% more value none of them felt it was worth paying anything more and this is one of the problems that happens and one of their major complaints is that when a problem happens it's how it's communicated to them you know while I was there we watched one of the trains disappear from the video monitors and after that there was no information and it was leaving those commuters with well what do I do do I go bus terminal do I get a ferry do I get five people together and get an Uber how do I get home how do you get home that is the question Larry thank you so much for joining me thanks for having me