Trains – October 2019

over the infrastructure of the Northeast
Corridor? When something goes wrong,
commuters complain, “Oh no, it’s New
Jersey Transit again,” and it’s got nothing
to do with NJ Transit. Is that the price of
doing business?

A Unfortunately so.
With Amtrak, we have made a point of
rather than going to war with them,
choosing to try to work with them to
tackle the real nuts-and-bolts problems.
I’m big on metrics. ... You look at what the
causes are of on-time performance. We
have the biggest impact on the NEC; it’s
Amtrak signal problems and power issues
that affect us. Don’t get me wrong; I’d
rather work with Amtrak.
It would be great if we owned it. It
would be in our own destiny. However,
due to legacy, we must deal with Amtrak.
We have similar issues on the Raritan
Valley Line, where there is no temporal
separation with the freights that use the
line as well. I’d love to live in heaven, but,
living in the real world, I’d rather work
with Amtrak and Conrail.

Q How much do you worry about failure

in the current tunnels and to what extent
does NJ Transit have contingency plans?

A We’re never going to operate there in

unsafe conditions. ... I’m not worried today,
but it is obviously a serious concern.
With any particular contingency, we
have state emergency management; we
have plans. If you remember 9/11, Lower
Manhattan was cut off and the Holland
Tunnel was closed. This had an impact that
brought a negative effect on the region’s
economy. You would have to think it’s dif-
ferent but it is definitely analogous: what
would happen if the rail tunnels go out?
What would that do to the Trans-Hud-
son capacity? It’d be pretty scary and no
plan can adjust for that loss of capacity.

Q Can you update us on the status of pos-

itive train control and the biggest chal-
lenges you’re facing before Dec. 31, 2020?

A I think there are three challenges.
There’s still one which is fairly narrow,
but we’re trying to get together with Par-
sons, our PTC vendor, [on] the oldest vehi-
cles in the fleet, the GP40s. We’ve been
back and forth on getting them fully PTC
installed and compliant. ... We have had so

many repairs over the years with gaps in

documentation for these engines. In the

short term, that’s an issue and that has im-

pact on some of our service where we need

more diesels.

The two big worries are getting in reve-

nue service demonstration by the end of

this year [and] the biggest problem ...

software glitches.

You know when you’re commissioning,

you’re going to be testing and you’re going

to have these glitches which you work out

in the commissioning. If we had two years,

2½ years, that’s one thing, but all the rail-

roads are now realizing you’re still getting

anomalies. ... Every time you have to

change a software version, that means

regression testing, and that takes time, so

every month you get closer and closer [to

the deadline] and Congress didn’t end up

changing that deadline.

We have to be there by December 2020.

If you keep having software glitches, what

is the impact of that? The challenge is going

to be all inside the black box and the batch

of computer programmers who are writing

lines of code and it’s proprietary software. I

could take 50 people from here and go up

there, but they’re not going to be able to do

that computer code. It’s like trying to get

more people in a phone booth trying to fix

the phone. It’s the quality of the program-

ming. ... Where are we going to be in De-

cember and next spring? Will we still be

sorting out those glitches? If one train goes

into penalty because it gets that false signal,

that means shutting that train down for 20

minutes. The repercussions right down the

NEC on this would be huge.

Q What do you think is NJ Transit’s

greatest current unfunded need?

A First is the state of good repair of the

current system and we’re just in the pro-

cess, more than halfway through, but we

don’t have a five-year capital plan which, to

me, is pretty outstanding, pretty scary. ...

I want to have that ready by next spring;

when I go to the legislature by that time, all

of the annulments will be a thing of the

past, as well as the mechanical ones. We’ll

have a full complement of engineers so that

we go to the legislature and say, “Hey, you

gave us money, we took the money, and

spent it wisely.”

There was a backlog of existing capital

projects that we had money for, we just

didn’t have staff for. ... Those projects now,

they’re out in the open, and you saw we’re

actually up to $100 million and there’s

going to be more next year.

To your point, the priority projects go-

ing ahead, that’s where we’ll really be able

to, next spring, go to the Legislature and

say, “You gave us two years of money, now

this is what we need to really be a first-class

system. Talk is cheap, this is what it will

take for us to be a first-class system.” And

it’s going to be pretty shocking numbers, I

think, for a lot of people, and we have to

find a dedicated [funding] stream for that.

— Ralph Spielman. See Trains “News Wire”

for more from this interview.

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NJ Transit GP40PH-2B No. 4203 brings an Atlantic City Line train past Winslow Junction Tower.

Equipping the GP40s for positive train control is proving to be a challenge. Bill Monaghan