as if commuting in the heat isn't already brutal thousands of passengers experience another meltdown this time down wires leaving many stranded for hours yesterday's Transit nightmare comes just weeks before fairs are scheduled to increase by 15% with 3% annual increases in the following years Amtrak which is the landlord for the lines is usually blamed for the NJ Transit delays and as senior correspondent Brenda Flanigan reports Governor Murphy is demanding NJ Transit and am tra get together to prevent a Summer full of Transit troubles I don't know but it's really bad angry NJ Transit rail Riders suffered another service meltdown Tuesday a system shutdown that stopped commuters in their tracks for hours that's the Northeast Corridor trains of New Jersey Transit no service at all another NJ Transit Nightmare riters fumed on social media took me three hours to get home absolute absurdity 3 and 1/2 hours I've been trying to get my family home moreover this latest crisis comes about 3 weeks after a similar shutdown also stranded Riders she got off at 10: p.m. at night and didn't get home until 4: in the morning Governor Murphy today called it unacceptable it feels like both Amtrak and NJ Transit had issues we're trying to get to the bottom of that uh we have been dogged for whatever used to be because of lack of Manpower that's not the reasons today unfortunately it it's so fre that is not a surprise anymore when people are stuck Transportation researcher Phil plot says NJ Transit trains on the northeast carer run reliably only 86% of the time while aging tunnels do cause problems decrepit signal and electrical wires also trigger shutdowns it's a vulnerable Network that's not ready for this long hot summer plot warns they're unreliable and they're susceptible to heat they're susceptible to wind to lightning strikes to cold um and so we're having problem after problem associated with that I really worry about about the climate and and continued heat waves and then as we move into the fall into storms I think that we're going to be getting a bunch of sucker punches that are that are going to hurt the system the rpa's Tom Wright says Amtrak owns the tracks the wires and the switches while NJ Transit pays more than 200 million a year to use them and endures more disruption when something breaks the two agents genes argue over repairs I think of New Jersey Transit and Amtrak as sort of two spouses that get divorced and they share the same house and they fight over the refrigerator and they fight over who's going to vacuum they fight over who's going to pay for the roof Governor Murphy has asked both Amtrak and NJ transit to coordinate their responses to service Interruption but as always the bottom line here is money Murphy fired off a letter demanding Amtrak needs to to make immediate short-term and long-term Investments to address infrastructure vulnerabilities the agency replied it's working with NJ Transit which stated both sides are fully aligned to reduce such occurrences while we work collectively on the longer term work that needs to be prioritized on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor to replace and upgrade their Antiquated infrastructure but NJ Transit still confronting a budget Cliff even as it raises fairs 15% starting July first trying to force NJ Transit you know to do more with less does not make any sense in this situation it's beggaring ourselves this is this is a key part of the economic engine of the state and it's got to have the resources that it needs Riders reactions yeah you're not going to want to pay more for the same service if the service isn't as good as you would need it to be yes it should be more dependable but things happen and because things happen what you do is you just make an adjustment many meters say they'd Pony up for a decent ride in New York I'm Brenda Flanagan NJ Spotlight News NJ Spotlight News [Music]