NJ Transit rail service resumes after 3-day engineer strike
NEW YORK — Morning service on NJ Transit's rail lines was back on track Tuesday following an engineers strike this weekend — and back to old ways as a stranded Amtrak train caused delays into Penn Station.
Train service resumed as planned Tuesday morning, with trains operating on their regular schedules throughout the New Jersey rail network and on Metro North's NJ Transit-run lines west of the Hudson River.
The resumption of rail service came after NJ Transit train crews spent Monday performing safety inspections and moving rail equipment into place following a handshake deal on a contract Sunday that ended a three-day long strike by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen.
The engineers had walked off the job first thing Friday morning after contract talks stalled Thursday evening.
For commuters headed to Gotham, however, the good news was short-lived. Shortly after 9 a.m., NJ Transit reported 30 minute delays into New York Penn Station — the result, they said, of a stalled Amtrak train.
An Amtrak spokesman confirmed that Northeast Regional train 170 was delayed after applying its emergency brakes just outside Penn Station on Tuesday morning.
The delays came after reports of signal issues on the Northeast Corridor line, causing delays on southbound trains into Trenton.
Both Penn Station and the tracks of the Northeast Corridor are owned and maintained by Amtrak, the federal commuter railway.
Other than Amtrak-related hiccups, NJ Transit spokesman Jim Smith said Tuesday that the poststrike restart went off without a hitch.
The Garden State transit agency also ended its so-called 'contingency' services Tuesday, ceasing operation of four regional 'park and ride' bus routes.
Details are still scant on Sunday's tentative agreement between NJ Transit management and the railroad's 450 train engineers. Both sides had described wages — and specifically pay parity between those who operate trains in the Garden State and their MTA colleagues across the Hudson River — as the major sticking point in negotiations.
This weekend's tentative agreement is the second time BLET and NJ Transit management have shook hands on a wage bump.
An initial tentative contract agreement, penned in March, was overwhelmingly rejected by the union's membership, 87% of whom voted against the deal.
Sunday's agreement will need to be ratified both by union membership and the NJ Transit board. Both are expected to vote on the deal in early June.
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