New Jersey commuters should take a deep breath this weekend, as they brace for five more weeks of service cuts and disruptions to replace the century-old Portal Bridge, a critical link to Manhattan.
The work involves the final phase of a “cutover,” the complex process of moving wiring and tons of new equipment to the bridge’s taller, more modern replacement. Construction began on Friday, but service changes are expected to start on Sunday.
“Grin and bear it,” is how Jim Lyons, a 58-year-old who works in construction, said he would handle the disruption. He commutes to New York City from Monmouth County Monday through Friday.
“I’ll probably take an earlier train, but other than that, going home, I don’t know,” Mr. Lyons said Friday night at Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan.
NJ Transit, the most frequent user of the bridge, is expected to cut the number of weekday train trips between Newark and Secaucus in New Jersey by roughly half, with trips to and from Penn Station being diverted through Hoboken. Service on Amtrak’s Acela, Northeast Regional and Keystone lines will also be reduced. Regular service is expected to return on Nov. 15.
Beginning Monday, riders of the Morris & Essex, Gladstone Branch and Montclair-Boonton lines will be diverted on weekdays to end at Hoboken instead of Penn Station. Riders can complete their trips to and from Manhattan with a free transfer to the 126 bus; a ferry ride with NY Waterway; or the PATH train at the 33rd Street stop. Weekend trains will still travel to Penn Station.
Some North Jersey Coast line riders will have to transfer to buses while rehabilitation is done on a movable bridge in Brielle, N.J. Bus service will also replace some sections of the Port Jervis and Raritan Valley lines for track maintenance and replacement work. NJ Transit has more details on its website.
Amtrak, the national railroad that owns the track infrastructure, will also conduct a number of unrelated repair projects along sections of the Northeast Corridor, which runs from Boston to Washington.
Most riders won’t notice the changes until Tuesday, because of the three-day Columbus Day weekend.
The disruptions are in service of finally freeing train riders from the vagaries of the 116-year-old bridge, an often dysfunctional span along the Northeast Corridor, the busiest passenger rail route in the country. It carries about 200,000 daily riders, most of them NJ Transit customers, between Midtown Manhattan and New Jersey.
The 961-foot swing bridge, which crosses the Hackensack River, opens to maritime traffic below and often gets stuck, causing a cascade of delays in the region. It has been the site of electrical fires, and even when traffic is moving smoothly, its outdated design requires trains to slow down.
Its replacement, the Portal North Bridge, a 50-foot-tall, three-arch span high enough to allow ships to pass freely, partially opened in March, after four weeks of construction and service disruption. Train passengers heading to New Jersey are already crossing the new structure, and this work will open the bridge for eastbound traffic.
This final phase of construction will take a week longer, NJ Transit officials said, because the work involves connecting tracks to a new interlocking, a system of train signals and other heavy equipment.
Kris Kolluri, the chief executive of NJ Transit, acknowledged the inconvenience to riders, but has said the disruptions are necessary to prevent delays along this busy corridor for decades to come.
To ease congestion, the agency has asked commuters to work from home when possible.
That’s not an option for people like 21-year-old Anjelica Soto. She’s a senior at Montclair State University in New Jersey and an assistant director at an Off Broadway show in the city.
“It has to be in person,” she said of her theater job. “There’s no calling in.”
“I try to have the mentality of, we’ll just make it work. So that’s how I’m getting through,” she said. “It definitely does make life a little bit tricky.”
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