NJ Transit riders have two dates to watch as crews transfer service from the last track on the old Portal Bridge over New Jersey’s Hackensack River. NJ Transit’s cutover plan calls for regular schedules to resume Sunday, Nov. 15, if safety testing is complete. In a Nov. 12 update, Amtrak said crews in Kearny were working around the clock to finish the transfer and restore full service Monday, Nov. 16.
The distinction matters if you ride Midtown Direct. During the work, trains have only one track available between Newark and Secaucus. That means fewer weekday Northeast Corridor and North Jersey Coast Line trains into New York Penn Station, and weekday Midtown Direct trains on the Morristown Line, Gladstone Branch and Montclair-Boonton Line are diverted to Hoboken under the temporary service plan. For a Monday commute, check your specific train in NJ Transit’s timetables, which list the temporary schedules alongside those effective Nov. 15.
Moving the last track into service takes more than connecting the rails. The cutover plan also calls for putting new signals, power and communications into service and testing the systems that control train movements. The new bridge is a fixed, two-track crossing, according to the Federal Transit Administration’s project profile.
That profile also puts the federal funding in context. It lists $766.5 million in Federal Transit Administration Capital Investment Grant funding under the agreement signed in January 2021. That figure describes the grant commitment for the project; it does not say how much had been spent by the time of this week’s work.