WASHINGTON — NJ Transit will receive $1.6 billion in federal funding under the American Rescue Plan signed into law in spring 2021, U.S. Sens. Bob Menendez and Cory Booker (both D-N.J.) announced. The money will allow the transit agency to keep workers on the payroll and maintain bus and rail service.
“I’m proud to have fought for this critical funding which will ensure NJ Transit can get residents safely where they need to go, keep essential workers on the job, and our economy moving forward,” Menendez said in a press release. Booker said the funds “will help ensure that NJ Transit is able to continue the critical role it currently plays across New Jersey communities, especially as our state confronts the many challenges posed by the Omicron variant.”
Has anybody noticed this is for New Jersey where people DO ride the trains
Ditto.
Mr Landey, I for one am getting increasingly tired of you pushing your passenger train negativity on this site. If you don’t like the idea of publicly supported transportation then why don’t you stay home. Because as I’m sure you know, all forms of public transport are heavily subsidized by the taxpayers. And for someone who obviously subscribes to Trains magazine I’ve never understood why you seem to be against subsidized train service. Maybe you’d rather see all the money go to airlines and highways. And maybe you’d relegate most passenger train service to history. I don’t see you complaining about or even mentioning that the government, once again bailed out the airlines with billions of dollars of taxpayer money. Or the trillions spent on highways that are used by bus and trucking companies who pay nowhere near their fair share of highway use taxes. I’d like my grandkids to have the opportunity to one day travel across this country by train. Cutting funding for or eliminating Amtrak or any part of it will not decrease your taxes one cent. Could it be spent better elsewhere? Probably so. But billions of tax dollars are pissed away every year in this country and unfortunately based on history that ain’t going to change. And that being said it’s hard for me to understand why someone who says they enjoy riding trains is against funding them even if they do run empty.
And as for Covid, I’ve had a 48 year old brother and 43 year old close friend die because they listened to the STUPID rhetoric that you have bought into and are now spreading. If you don’t won’t to wear a mask or are against mask or vaccine mandates then fine. But saying that there is a “hysterical reaction to Covid” when millions have been sickened and or died is insensitive at best. We all know you’ve gotten your Covid vaccination as you mentioned it in one of your earlier post. But then you turned right around in a later post and question whether you should have gotten it. There’s a lot of hypocrisy going around when it comes to Covid vaccination these days. Most of it politically motivated I suspect. Why don’t you give it a rest. At least on this site. We all know where you stand by now.
Thank you, Chris!
If I read the article correctly, all this money is operating subsidy, as opposed to capital improvements. In other words, more money to operate empty trains and buses on top of the subsidies required to operate full trains and buses.
Yesterday I drove to downtown Milwaukee for a rare visit. Not knowing where else to park, I headed for the Amtrak station hoping there would be an open parking space. I was shocked. St. Paul Avenue, normally parked solid, didn’t have a single vehicle. The parking lot had about twenty cars. Yet the Hiawatha is long since back to full schedule. Just about no one is riding it. Trains require an operating subsidy, generally, if every seat is sold. COVID, or more properly, the hysterical reaction to COVID, has destroyed the economics of public transportation which was struggling before COVID.
The last time I rode Amtrak – the Hiawatha to downtown Chicago, was almost two years ago, just before the lockdown and the mask requirement. Between the mask requirement (which I totally oppose) and the collapse of public safety in Chicago, it’s conceivable that I might never again ride the Hiawatha, a train I used to enjoy several times each year.