(Bloomberg) -- One week into the post-Labor Day back-to-work push and New Jersey commuters are once again rattled.
Traffic was already expected to be bad in New York City this week with street closures planned for the United Nations General Assembly, New York Fashion Week and the annual Sept. 11 ceremony.
But Tuesday started with a crash in the Lincoln Tunnel that stranded some bleary-eyed bus riders for hours and caused congestion to ripple through the Hudson River crossings. Lower Manhattan’s Holland Tunnel was backed up by 45 minutes, and crossing the George Washington Bridge took an hour.
Commuters were encouraged to take the train — then hours later, NJ Transit and Amtrak rail service was held up due to problems with Amtrak’s overhead wires.
The issues come on the back of a string of disruptions earlier this summer. A confluence of decades of underfunding, unusually hot weather and aging infrastructure led to a transit breakdown along the busiest rail corridor — incidents which caused Governor Phil Murphy to waive fares during the last week of August.
While service is operating close to schedule as of Tuesday afternoon, multiple modes of transportation into New York City from New Jersey were disrupted one way or another in the morning, spurring commuters who suffered a summer of transit nightmares to bemoan yet another day of delays.
Sal Ruiz, a professor of special education at Hunter College, said it took him more than three hours to get from Hackensack, New Jersey, to Manhattan this morning — about two-and-a-half hours longer than usual. He was forced to cancel a meeting with one of his graduate students because of the delays.
“The employees of NJ Transit do the best they can, but they’re really underfunded,” he said. “It can get a bit frustrating.”
Ruiz was one of thousands of daily bus riders who were diverted on Tuesday morning after traffic through the Lincoln Tunnel was halted. NJ Transit bus service traveling in and out of the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City was subject to delays of around 90 minutes because of the incident.
Some buses were rerouted to Secaucus where commuters were instructed to take trains into Manhattan and tickets were being cross-honored by rail and PATH trains. Even private bus companies got caught up in the pain.
Commuter-bus operator Boxcar encouraged riders to take the train. “We want you to have the best commute no matter who it’s with and this morning that is not on Boxcar,” the operator said in a message to riders. “We’ve never seen this before.”
That option worked until it didn’t. Around 9:45 a.m. Eastern time, NJ Transit announced that rail service into New York’s Penn Station was suspended because of overhead issues on Amtrak wires in the Hudson River tunnels. Midtown service was being diverted to Hoboken. Trains on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor were subject to 50 minute delays because of the wire issues.
Jerry Caviston, an actor in an off-Broadway play, planned to take the train from Morristown, New Jersey, to rehearsal in New York when he received an alert that service was disrupted because of the wire issues. He ended up driving almost an hour to Hoboken to take the PATH.
“Today’s commute was probably the worst I’ve ever personally experienced,” he said in a text message on Tuesday afternoon. Missing work for him would be unfortunate “because a job like theater can’t wait, the show must go on.”
--With assistance from Natalie Harrison and Sri Taylor.
(Updates story with additional information throughout, including resumption of scheduled service in third paragraph.)
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.