New Jersey: Train crashes into station

[notverydeep]

I do wonder if a brake failure may have been responsible, as a fairly articulate commuter whose eyewitness account was included on the BBC live news page earlier said (when asked how quickly he thought the train was travelling at the moment of impact) that it seemed to be moving at a speed of at least 80 mph. He did acknowledge that this was probably a substantial overestimation due to the relatively enclosed surroundings and the shock of what happened, but I doubt that someone would perceive 20 mph as 80, even in such circumstances.

Even 20 mph seems unlikely given the videos show the leading vehicle has come to a stand barely 10 to 12 metres beyond the bufferstop and the point the train on the adjacent track is stopped. There is little apparent distortion of the car body, suggesting the vehicle has not absorbed much energy. The driving cab is just short of the brick wall across the fairly narrow concourse and shows little apparent damage above the solebar. I would expect that all the serious casualties were either in the train's path or hit by the roof it brought down and that most injuries on board would have been 'walking wounded'.

 

[w0033944]

Even 20 mph seems unlikely given the videos show the leading vehicle has come to a stand barely 10 to 12 metres beyond the bufferstop and the point the train on the adjacent track is stopped. There is little apparent distortion of the car body, suggesting the vehicle has not absorbed much energy. The driving cab is just short of the brick wall across the fairly narrow concourse and shows little apparent damage above the solebar. I would expect that all the serious casualties were either in the train's path or hit by the roof it brought down and that most injuries on board would have been 'walking wounded'.

If you're right it condemns the buffer stop provision even more severely. Hydraulic stops at British termini backing onto solid masonry platform edges would surely arrest the train, even if the vehicles themselves were more severely damaged.

 

[Bletchleyite]

If you're right it condemns the buffer stop provision even more severely. Hydraulic stops at British termini backing onto solid masonry platform edges would surely arrest the train, even if the vehicles themselves were more severely damaged.

Not necessarily. It took a building to stop a Pacer at Lime St. And a big, heavy US style locomotive hauled train will have one heck of a lot more kinetic energy than a lightweight Pacer.

 

[WatcherZero]

Lime street didn't have proper buffers then, just a light frame with lights bolted to the track itself which you can see the top of in the foreground.

Identical to one of these pictured at Kirkby, but in better condition and I don't think the Lime street ones had side panels, just the frame.

They have since been upgraded:

 

[racyrich]

My friend at work was on a conference call with his american counterpart who was actually sat in the front carriage at the time!
He escaped completely unhurt, just spilt his drink over his suit and was able to just walk away and go to work. He said there was no braking at all and then it came to a very quick halt.

 

[MarkyT]

If you're right it condemns the buffer stop provision even more severely. Hydraulic stops at British termini backing onto solid masonry platform edges would surely arrest the train, even if the vehicles themselves were more severely damaged.

Friction is the way to go today. Like this one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffer_stop#/media/File:Buffer_stop_zurich.jpg

Also it's important to keep an area immediately behind the stops free of non moving people* and structural supports that could cause roof collapses for example if impacted.

* No waiting rooms, seats, coffee or other concession stands or areas where large numbers may be standing looking at departure boards for instance.

This is all best accepted practice in Europe. It seems it may not be in the USA.

 

[TRAX]

Another American train doing what they do best.



Thoughts with all involved.

 

[ac6000cw]

If you're right it condemns the buffer stop provision even more severely. Hydraulic stops at British termini backing onto solid masonry platform edges would surely arrest the train, even if the vehicles themselves were more severely damaged.

Whilst major termini do generally have energy-absorbing buffer stops, outside of those there are a lot of very basic buffer stops at the end of terminal platforms in the UK.

I had a quick look at what was at the end of the four bay platforms - two at each end - at Cambridge (quite a busy station these days) when I got off the train last night. Three of them have fixed buffer stops fabricated from old bullhead rails and lots of bolts, which looked like they dated back to at least early BR days and quite possibly older. A few feet beyond them is a solid concrete/masonry platform/gangway, then maybe 10 feet further on are the end wall(s) of the station building - on the other side of the wall(s) are passenger waiting rooms. The fourth bay has recently been shortened, so has a modern sliding friction buffer, but even there it's only got maybe 10 feet of 'slide length' (and a longer run of platform than the other three before reaching the building).

So don't get smug/complacent that the buffer stops will save you if the worst happens - only a year ago a 317 hit the buffers at Kings Cross - https://www.gov.uk/raib-reports/collision-with-buffer-stops-at-king-s-cross-station - due to braking misjudgement by a trainee driver with an instructor. The energy absorbing buffers saved the day there, but if that had been the other end of the line running into a south-end bay at Cambridge, it would have hit a solid buffer stop at 7.5mph (and then quite possibly the concrete platform end) - potentially a much more serious accident. Yes, TPWS (where fitted) should prevent/mitigate most of these sort of potential collisions, but as the above illustrates it can't prevent them all (the Kings Cross platform was TPWS equipped).

It's Kinetic Energy = 0.5 x mass x velocity x velocity that's important here - and the high mass of trains makes the energy (to be dissipated) very high in collisions... If it was a diesel loco hauled (push-pull) NJT train at Hoboken, it probably weighs 400 - 500 tonnes (the loco would be 110+ tonnes alone).

 

[Groningen]

Maastricht, Netherlands (due to slippery tracks)

 

[edwin_m]

Lime street didn't have proper buffers then, just a light frame with lights bolted to the track itself which you can see the top of in the foreground.

The photo in the post above yours looks to me like the Rawie-type sliding stops that you picture in your photo. Can't see the one that the Pacer actually hit though, so it's possible that platform hadn't been upgraded.

 

[notverydeep]

It's Kinetic Energy = 0.5 x mass x velocity x velocity that's important here - and the high mass of trains makes the energy (to be dissipated) very high in collisions... If it was a diesel loco hauled (push-pull) NJT train at Hoboken, it probably weighs 400 - 500 tonnes (the loco would be 110+ tonnes alone).

It appeared to be an EMD F40PH number 4909 on the rear of the train, with a Driving Trailer (with passenger accommodation) leading. There is a video on the Guardian websites showing these. There is another loco 4903 that could be in a pair with this, but might actually be on the train on the adjacent track.

If anything I would say with along rake of passenger cars built to US standards (i.e. like a brick outhouse), the train weight would be even higher than the 500 tonnes at the top of your estimate.

This is what convinces me that the impact speed was pretty low - sufficient to be arrested within 10 - 12 metres of impact with the arrester (the picture of the adjacent track does show one), whatever platform construction was behind it and lastly the relatively lightly constructed canopy supports. At 80 mph the entire train would have finished up in the Hudson! My guess is that the entry to the platform was at normal speed for this location, but for whatever reason, the final speed checking has not occurred or was commenced too late (as happened with the 317 at King's Cross, where the instructor was not in a suitable position to correct the trainee's braking error according to the RAIB report).

With a train arrester compliant with current European standards there would probably still have been damage and injuries, but it might not have ridden as far onto the concourse?

 

[w0033944]

Friction is the way to go today. Like this one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffer_stop#/media/File:Buffer_stop_zurich.jpg

Also it's important to keep an area immediately behind the stops free of non moving people* and structural supports that could cause roof collapses for example if impacted.

* No waiting rooms, seats, coffee or other concession stands or areas where large numbers may be standing looking at departure boards for instance.

This is all best accepted practice in Europe. It seems it may not be in the USA.

Interesting information; thanks for the link.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

If anything I would say with along rake of passenger cars built to US standards (i.e. like a brick outhouse), the train weight would be even higher than the 500 tonnes at the top of your estimate.

You raise an interesting point here. Does the rather old-fashioned US practice of constructing passenger-carryong vehicles so heavily, with the assumption that they may well crash, bring with it this previously under-considered problem of arresting such a (literally) massive train at relatively low speeds? Given that our network copes in relative safety with lighter vehicles (modern technology enables strong yet comparatively light structures with crumple zones), maybe it's time for a rethink of US rolling stock or the necessary available distance behind stop blocks to arrest trains of a given velocity before they hit roof supports/seating areas?

 

[theageofthetra]

Isn't the US heavyweight construction due to the far greater likelihood of them hitting a truck, large animal or landslip than say the UK?

 

[MarkyT]

Isn't the US heavyweight construction due to the far greater likelihood of them hitting a truck, large animal or landslip than say the UK?

Agreed for the majority of American land mass but probably not so applicable to the more European like East Coast main line and suburban networks. Of course some trains on the East Coast routes work through onto the more rural lines and the suburban trains have to share track with them and the brick sh*thouse freights as well so they all have to share the same federal end buffing load specifications, which in turn leads them all tending to be built like the aforementioned masonry outbuildings.

 

[N228PF]

May I ask how a train can be brazen?

I meant to write bulky or clunky, particularly to describe the locomotive itself. Must have been a bit flustered after having to watch endless reports on CNN, where they show a video of the train at 8:05 and say look at it speeding "just before impact" even though a full 40 would still pass.

 

[gsnedders]

Agreed for the majority of American land mass but probably not so applicable to the more European like East Coast main line and suburban networks. Of course some trains on the East Coast routes work through onto the more rural lines and the suburban trains have to share track with them and the brick sh*thouse freights as well so they all have to share the same federal end buffing load specifications, which in turn leads them all tending to be built like the aforementioned masonry outbuildings.

If they share track with freight they have to be built to the same safety standards; the only lighter rolling stock is those on self-contained systems.

 

[TheEdge]

You raise an interesting point here. Does the rather old-fashioned US practice of constructing passenger-carryong vehicles so heavily, with the assumption that they may well crash, bring with it this previously under-considered problem of arresting such a (literally) massive train at relatively low speeds? Given that our network copes in relative safety with lighter vehicles (modern technology enables strong yet comparatively light structures with crumple zones), maybe it's time for a rethink of US rolling stock or the necessary available distance behind stop blocks to arrest trains of a given velocity before they hit roof supports/seating areas?

It goes back to the two different patterns of thought on each side of the Atlantic. Over here in the UK and Europe we have always designed the infrastructure to stop crashes, a lot of lines are maintained to a higher level, AWS, ATP, TPWS, ERTMS and so on, they are all systems designed to stop crashes from ever happening. While obviously our stock is designed with a certain amount of crashability, look at the performance of the 390 at Greyrigg, we always put more effort into the infrastructure and systems to stop them ever happening.

America on the other hand has, thanks to the days of private lines where passengers were expected to help re-rail derailed trains and where death and crashes was an accepted risk of train travel, headed towards accepting that crashes are going to happen. Therefore they put much more effort into designing massive heavy built trains designed to survive most crashes. So the US has more crashes but the trains tend to come off better than European crashes.

 

[edwin_m]

To add to that, British and European railways have moved towards greater structural crashworthiness and energy absorption in recent years. In my view this is difficult to justify in terms of safety benefit versus non-safety disbenefits, although the energy absorption may help in level crossing collisions. There has also been some emphasis on "secondary crashworthiness" - things like partitions in luggage racks and "mickey mouse ears" instead of metal handles on seat tops, to make a crash more survivable if people and luggage are being thrown about.

The opposite extreme from America is Japan, where as far as I know there is even more emphasis on collision prevention and less on structural crashworthiness.

 

[D Foster]

As to the speed that the train was going - this may be compared to perceived speed. One of the commuters reporting from the scene said that he was paying no attention to the approaching train - commented on a "high speed" (I don't recall what speed he said) but them qualified his remark by reaffirming that he had not been paying attention. Even when we are specifically looking at a movement - how many of us can accurately identify a train's speed?
Although this case was probably a straight platform curvature can drastically effect our perception of speed. This can make life hairy around the track - good reason to stay off it!

As to injuries. From way back (probably the 1880s) the Board of Trade Inspectors were very aware that buffer stop collisions - often in bay platforms - presented a particular problem with people being thrown forward. One issue they identified was that people got up from their seats ready to disembark - putting them in a [theoretically] less stable position. It has never been possible for the railways (unlike the airlines) to get everyone to stay in their seats until told they may move. Personally I tend to remain seated or at least have a firm grip on a solid fitting until the train has stopped.

As far as I'm aware the great enhancement in structural strength of carriage stock has been achieved by doing away with slam-door stock and developing "tubular" carriages with bodies similar to passenger aircraft. Of course this principle did not apply with BR's "buses on wheels" stock.

As a general principle I'd have thought that all railways tend to combine track layout, track condition (maintenance), stock design, signalling and communication systems and operating practices to avoid collisions and all other damaging incidents - because they cost money and upset the customers. There have always been determining factors of cost and availability of funds.

 

[edwin_m]

As far as I'm aware the great enhancement in structural strength of carriage stock has been achieved by doing away with slam-door stock and developing "tubular" carriages with bodies similar to passenger aircraft. Of course this principle did not apply with BR's "buses on wheels" stock.

To some extent yes.

Mk1 and older stock was a relatively light non-structural body on a heavy underframe, which carried the particular risk that in a collision the buffers would override each other and the underframe would slice through the body of the next coach. So, despite many accident reports in the mid-20th century commenting on the Mk1 and other all-steel designs withstanding accidents far better than older stock (partly timber built), it was banned from the main line in the early 21st century with very limited exceptions. Mk2 and later stock is an integral construction where the whole body is structral, further improving crashworthiness.

The Pacer, and presumably classes 153/155 which are of similar construction, also have the lightweight body on a heavy underframe. However contrary to what people may believe, the ends were strengthened to railway standards and this is the reason, for example, why the class 142 has very heavy bars between the cab windows and the Leyland National bus which provided the basis for the design doesn't.

A more recent development has been energy absorbing structure, which I commented on in an earlier post.

Slam versus sliding doors is really a separate issue, although trains of Mk1 construction also had sliam doors so it was convenient to ban both at the same time. However the Mk2 and Mk3 coaches also have slam doors and the 310 and 312 EMUs demonstrated that the Mk2 design principles could be adapted even to a traditional multi-door suburban layout. The safety reason to get rid of slam doors was avoiding them at speed (whether by a passenger or due to some fault in the mechanism) and a passenger falling out, or being opened as the train came into a platform and striking passengers waiting close to the edge. Central door locking also deals with both safety risks but not the operational issue that someone has to close each door separately before the train can leave a station.

I'm very relaxed about getting up and walking down a train while it is moving even if I know it is approaching a buffer stop. The chances of a collision are tiny. At Hoboken it appears the end of track bumpers offered no sort of energy absorption for a gradual stop, unlike the friction stops found at most passenger terminal platforms in the UK. Despite this there appear to have been no life-threatening injuries on the heavily-loaded train.

 

[WatcherZero]

Isn't the US heavyweight construction due to the far greater likelihood of them hitting a truck, large animal or landslip than say the UK?

They built longer and heavier freight trains because they could with far fewer pesky bridges or urban areas and the space to find an alternative alignment to tunnelling as they were effectivley creating the communities not serving existing ones. This of course meant the passenger trains had to be capable of mixing with them so federal regulations specified stuff so strong and heavy that to meet them rolling stock in the USA is as further north of the world norm than we are south of it.

While you can reasonably adapt japanese and European designs to our more constrained dimensions, everything for the US has to be specially designed from scratch.

 

[ac6000cw]

It appeared to be an EMD F40PH number 4909 on the rear of the train, with a Driving Trailer (with passenger accommodation) leading. There is a video on the Guardian websites showing these. There is another loco 4903 that could be in a pair with this, but might actually be on the train on the adjacent track.

If anything I would say with along rake of passenger cars built to US standards (i.e. like a brick outhouse), the train weight would be even higher than the 500 tonnes at the top of your estimate.

This is what convinces me that the impact speed was pretty low - sufficient to be arrested within 10 - 12 metres of impact with the arrester (the picture of the adjacent track does show one), whatever platform construction was behind it and lastly the relatively lightly constructed canopy supports. At 80 mph the entire train would have finished up in the Hudson! My guess is that the entry to the platform was at normal speed for this location, but for whatever reason, the final speed checking has not occurred or was commenced too late (as happened with the 317 at King's Cross, where the instructor was not in a suitable position to correct the trainee's braking error according to the RAIB report).

With a train arrester compliant with current European standards there would probably still have been damage and injuries, but it might not have ridden as far onto the concourse?

I think they are likely to be single-level 'Comet V' passenger cars, which are about 45 tonnes each (I was guessing at about 50 tonnes earlier), so a loco + 8 car train would be in the region of 500 tonnes (NJT diesels are around 115-130 tonnes each - on four axles!). The Wikipedia article on the crash is saying it was a 4 car train, so around 300 tonnes.

I agree with your analysis that if it had been travelling at 'high speed' when it ran out of track it might have ended up in the river, so it looks very much like the final 'braking to a stop' is what didn't happen (for whatever reason). From what I've read normal speeds on the approaches to Hoboken are 10-20 mph (pretty much as I'd expect at a major terminal). I assume the passenger cars have standard automatic air brakes.

There was a similar, less serious, accident at Hoboken in 1985, blamed on lubricant that had been left behind on the track.

 

[TRAX]

One data recorder wasn't functioning, second one still unreachable.



http://newjersey.news12.com/news/nt...-functioning-2nd-still-unreachable-1.12395571

 

[Groningen]

New Jersey Transit Was Under Investigation Before Fatal Crash

The Federal Railroad Administration began investigating safety problems at New Jersey Transit before a fatal train crash last week, a federal rail official confirmed on Saturday.

Federal officials began an audit in June of New Jersey Transit, the nation’s third-busiest commuter railroad, after noticing an increase in safety violations and a leadership vacuum at the top of the agency, said the official, who was briefed on the investigation but was not authorized to discuss it publicly. After completing the audit, the federal agency issued a series of violations to the railroad, the official said.

During the busy morning commute on Thursday, a crowded New Jersey Transit train slammed into a wall at the Hoboken Terminal in New Jersey, killing a woman and injuring more than 100 people. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the cause of the crash.

As part of the earlier railroad administration audit, dozens of inspectors visited New Jersey Transit’s railroad operations in June, the official said. The federal agency often inspects railroads, but an audit is a more serious step that is not common.

On Saturday, Eric Weiss, a spokesman for the safety board, said the agency would review the federal audit as part of the investigation into the crash.

A spokeswoman for New Jersey Transit did not respond to a request for comment.

Before the crash, the railroad administration had been considering other enforcement actions against New Jersey Transit, including a compliance agreement to require additional changes. Officials at the administration declined to comment on the audit on Saturday, citing the continuing investigation by the safety board.

The railroad administration completed a similar review of Metro-North Railroad in New York after a derailment in 2013 killed four passengers and injured more than 70 people. The review found that the railroad had a poor safety culture that prioritized on-time performance over protecting riders and workers.

On Saturday, federal investigators from the safety board were working to determine the cause of the Hoboken crash — the first fatal train crash on New Jersey Transit since 1996. The train’s engineer, Thomas Gallagher, was interviewed by investigators, officials said. They declined to provide details of the conversation.

Investigators could not remove the train from the crash site, officials said on Saturday, because of concerns over asbestos and the structural integrity of the building; part of the roof collapsed on to the train. Officials said they did not find any signal anomalies on the tracks leading to the terminal.

Officials will examine the event recorder from the train to determine how fast it was traveling, and consider several possible factors, including the engineer’s actions and the maintenance on the railroad.

New Jersey Transit has recently faced a series of challenges, from funding shortfalls to the lack of a permanent executive director. Veronique Hakim resigned from the post last year to join the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York. A former Amtrak executive appointed to the job, William Crosbie, ultimately turned it down, leaving Dennis J. Martin as an interim director. Transit advocates have criticized the agency because its board has not met in months.

New Jersey lawmakers were at a stalemate recently over how to finance the state’s transportation trust fund, which pays for New Jersey Transit projects, and roads and bridges. After halting most work on transportation projects this summer, Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, announced a deal with Democratic legislative leaders on Friday to raise the gas tax by 23 cents per gallon to finance the fund.

After the crash, Mr. Christie said it was too early to know what caused the train to travel at a high speed into the station or whether the crash could have been prevented by a technology known as positive train control, which can automatically slow or stop a train. New Jersey Transit has not installed the technology, the Federal Railroad Administration said.

New Jersey Transit agreed in June to pay $70,000 in penalties for 10 safety violations found by the administration, according to its 2015 enforcement report. Two of those fines were for violations of passenger equipment safety regulations, the report shows.

Reports covering the last three years show that New Jersey Transit agreed, from 2013 through 2015, to pay nearly $335,000 in penalties for 33 violations of federal safety regulations found by the railroad administration. Ten of those fines were for violations of passenger equipment safety regulations, the reports show.

Stephen Burkert, a spokesman for a union that represents New Jersey Transit rail workers, welcomed the federal agency’s safety review.

At the Hoboken Terminal on Saturday afternoon, crews prepared to clear the station of debris. The whirring of buzz saws and banging of tools filled the building as crews began to remove the rubble by hand, loading the pieces into small bulldozers.

New Jersey Transit train service at the terminal has been halted since the crash. The agency has not said when it would return.

Source: NY Times (October 1, 2016)

 

[WatcherZero]

Engineer been interviewed now. Says he was fully rested and alert and performed a brake test before starting the journey, last thing he remembers was approaching the station at 10mph and noting he was running 6 minutes later but claims no memory of the crash itself.

The black box in the Locomotive was non functional, been examined by engineers and wasn't recording on the day. The other black box is still trapped under the collapsed roof.

 

[ac6000cw]

Source: NY Times (October 1, 2016)

Yes, NJT hasn't been the most well-run of transit agencies for a while (even allowing for the usual public-body lack of money issues).

It didn't handle Hurricane Sandy very well in 2012, parking a considerable amount of rolling stock in a low-lying yard near the coast (which got flooded), including nine almost new, very expensive ALP-45DP dual-mode locos, which cost 20+ million dollars to repair afterwards...

 

[Groningen]

That New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (now supporting Donald Trump) could also be part of the problem. In 2013 there was Bridgegate with a dispute with a Democrate. He thought he had to have his support in a re-election.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Lee_lane_closure_scandal

 

[notverydeep]

The Wikipedia article on the crash is saying it was a 4 car train, so around 300 tonnes.

This suggests that the train in the Guardian's video - showing F40PH 4909, was either in a different platform, or perhaps just stock video. The loco was at the 'throat' end of one of the platforms and it was this that suggested (wrongly it seems) to me that the train was longer than 4 cars, though that doesn't change my sense that some witnesses perceived the speed to be much higher than it actually was.

 

[Groningen]

And it gets worse

New Jersey was not ready to handle the Hoboken train crash

We don’t know why a New Jersey Transit train crashed at high speed into the Hoboken train station last Thursday, killing 34-year-old Fabiola Bittar de Kroon and injuring 114, just a month after a New Jersey Transit bus collision killed two people.

But we do know this: States are best prepared to handle a disaster when they’re doing well before it happens — and when they’ve built up some public goodwill, too.

New Jersey doesn’t fit that bill: It doesn’t run its transportation well on a day-to-day basis.

And without big changes, it’s going to get worse.

Without New Jersey Transit, the Garden State withers. Last year, 272.3 million people took its trains or buses — up from 237.4 million a decade ago. 32.7 million people took the Hoboken line, up 41 percent from the 23.2 million who took it back then.

More people are commuting for a few reasons: taking the car is more expensive and harder, as tolls go up and buses take up more of the Hudson crossings. Last month, the Port Authority hinted at the idea of a second bus-only lane on the highway to the Lincoln Tunnel.

Increasingly, too, the jobs are in New York. As New Jersey Transit itself notes, “New Jersey’s economy . . . fared significantly worse than its neighbors” after the 2008 recession. Employment dropped by 6 percent, twice as much as in New York City. New Jersey didn’t recover its lost jobs until last year, four years later than New York.

So you’d think the state would care about its transit system. It sure isn’t acting like it: Between 2001 and 2006, New Jersey Transit spent $4.1 billion, in today’s dollars, on major capital projects like train, station and track upgrades. Between 2011 and 2016, it spent only $3.4 billion.

And until recently, it’s been spending almost nothing. Over the summer, Jersey’s transportation fund ran out of money. (It still takes in $1.2 billion a year, including from the gas tax, but it must spend all of that money on its existing debt.)

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and lawmakers couldn’t agree on how to find more money: some lawmakers wanted to raise the gas tax, but Christie said they had to cut another tax in return. So they spent the summer bickering over whether to cut the sales tax or the estate tax.

As the money ran out in August, Christie signed an emergency order diverting money from the state’s overall budget to pay for critical transportation projects — stuff like filling in potholes, not funding better track and signaling systems.

Of course, when you have no money, raising one tax only to cut another one makes no sense. But the day after the crash, that’s exactly what New Jersey did — raising its gas tax but cutting a slew of other taxes, including both the sales tax and the estate tax, in return. Noting the average family would see an overall tax cut, Christie said “it’s the first statewide tax cut . . . that affects all New Jerseyans since 1994.”

Realistically, though, Jersey is dead broke — it can’t make even half of its necessary payments to pension funds. Christie is using this tragedy, then, to pretend to do something responsible about infrastructure while boasting about tax cuts.

Would investment in better technology have averted Thursday’s crash? It’s impossible to know. New York and Amtrak aren’t flat broke like New Jersey is, but they’ve been slow, too, in rolling out automated-stop technology.

Capital investments would give people a better day-to-day commute — and could avert a future disaster. New Jersey needs to fund about $5 billion out of the $20 billion cost of building a new tunnel across the Hudson River to do major repairs to the existing, century-old tunnel. But it has no idea where it’s going to get that money.

Just how bad are the decisions state officials have been making? New Jersey continues to squander the infrastructure money it does have on trifles and amusements. Last month, as the Bond Buyer reported, the state made plans to issue $1.2 billion in debt to fund a long-delayed “megamall” in East Rutherford.

Using scarce tax dollars to fund a mall made no sense in 2002, when the state launched the bizarre project, and it makes less sense today. Maybe, though, Christie and lawmakers can prod the mall’s owners to add an indoor miniature train to the planned indoor ski slope and water slide.

At least, then, the state could say it’s working on some train project.

Source: New York Post

 

[nlogax]

And it gets worse

Quite. I'm not surprised that NJ Transit is underfunded, but it's a reflection on Jersey's recent infrastructure spending misfire as a whole. NJ is an incredibly densely populated corridor state. Take a drive north from exit 8 of the Turnpike through the Brunswicks, Woodbridge and up to Edison, Elizabeth and beyond Newark..you'll see the scale of the road infrastructure built over the last seventy+ years to accommodate new residents commuting into NYC. Rail funding isn't anywhere near catching up with the overspill and increased demand it's seeing from people fleeing their cars - which is itself partly due to extremely overdue repairs to vital arteries (the 495 helix and Pulaski Skyway two good examples). Roads are literally crumbling, and rail spending doesn't get the attention it needs while NJDOT plays catchup with highway projects.

Vanity projects still seem to catch state spending attention more than getting the basics right, and yet gas taxes are the second lowest in the country. For NJ's rail infrastructure to keep pace and maintain the level of safety you'd expect from such a vital region, the spending formula and the thinking will need to change out of all recognition.