NJ: There’s some good news for Amtrak, NJ Transit commuters after bridge work brings weeks of disruptions

The project to put one track of the busy Northeast Corridor Line in service on the $2.3 billion Portal North Bridge will be completed as promised by March 15, Amtrak officials said.

“The bridge goes back into service on the 16th, on schedule,” said Jason Abrams, an Amtrak spokesperson Monday morning.

For NJ Transit rail passengers who’ve endured 30 days of reduced schedules and New York trains being sent to Hoboken, that means their commuting life returns to normal.

This week, the project responsible for a 53% reduction in NJ Transit schedules is in the home stretch toward the stated March 15 completion date. That project switches one track of the busy Northeast Corridor Line to the new Portal North bridge.

It started on Feb. 15 when NJ Transit and Amtrak rail service was reduced to give construction crews a safe opportunity to make the change called a cutover.

A blizzard and rain don’t seem to be stopping the 150 Amtrak, NJ Transit and contractor construction workers in their race toward the completion date.

Among the tasks to be completed between before that date are operating test trains on the new track and having the Federal Railroad Administration certify the track is ready for passenger train use.

That final week’s work is “focused on final punch list work along with the testing and commissioning of the bridge assets in compliance with the FRA’s requirements,” Abrams said.

“Track, including all surfacing, and Electrical Traction work has been completed,” said Jim Smith, an NJ Transit spokesperson. “Signals work, PTC (positive train control) testing, final systems testing, and track inspections are underway.”

From March 1 to 8 the bridge’s signals, communication and track circuits were tested and during the final week test trains will be run between New York and Newark over the new bridge.

Testing will be conducted and completed prior to the revenue service date, he said.

Amtrak also used the reduction in train traffic to do additional track work between Penn Station New York and the Hudson River rail tunnels. That work wasn’t made public until a recent news report about it.

“We need to change out a very specialized key track component that is heavily used in normal service,” Abrams said. “The work involves four switches and an intersection crossing that links multiple tracks between Penn Station and the North River Tunnels.

That work was expected to begin Monday night and those tracks are scheduled to return to service on the same day as the Portal North bridge cutover by March 16, he said. There is no additional service reductions planned to accomplish this work.

“Given its location, tackling this concurrently with the Portal North Bridge outage reduces the total time passengers are impacted,” Abrams said.

That track work is taking place in an underground labyrinth of track junctions between the tunnel mouth and Penn Station that allow trains to change tracks to reach one of the 21 platforms in the subterranean station.

If this track work sounds familiar to veteran commuters, it’s because Amtrak did similar work in summer 2017 in Penn Station, which also sent Midtown Direct trains to Hoboken for the duration.

That work happened after a series of embarrassing derailments blamed on track problems in Penn Station and the maze of track junctions between the tunnel and station. Amtrak kept the track work project on schedule to make the Labor Day weekend completion date.

Commuters will get a faster, smoother ride, Amtrak officials said.

Now trains slow down to 60 mph to clatter across the existing 116-year-old Portal swing bridge. On Portal North Bridge, they’ll be able to hit the 90 mph speed limit.

Passengers also get better reliability because Portal North Bridge is 50 feet high over the river, meaning it doesn’t have to open to let boats pass underneath, he said.

The Portal North Bridge track cutover project is the first step in replacing the existing 116-year-old swing bridge over the Hackensack River.

A second cutover project will happen in October to move the second NEC track on to the new bridge.

Construction on the new Portal North Bridge started in August 2022.

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