Amtrak power outage “an unmitigated disaster,” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy says. Here’s what started it.

NEW JERSEY — New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy called the power outage that brought Amtrak and NJ Transit to a halt for hours Wednesday — and continued to cause delays Thursday — “an unmitigated disaster” in a harsh letter to the railroad’s chairman. 

Service was suspended between New York City and Philadelphia due to overhead wires falling on the tracks in Kearny at the start of the evening rush hour. 

Passengers stuck for hours 

“Yesterday evening, a complete system failure caused an unmitigated disaster during the rush hour commute for thousands of passengers in the NJ-NY region. Some commuters were stranded for hours at New York Penn Station, while some passengers were stuck on trains in between tracks for over three hours,” Murphy wrote. “It made it impossible for commuters to get home on time. And it caused a domino effect of delays and cancellations, on both rail and bus, stranding commuters as far away as Washington, D.C.”

Some service resumed after more than four hours once crews restored a single track between New York City and Newark. 

Murphy said it was Amtrak’s third infrastructure failure in two days and noted NJ Transit pays the railroad over $100 million to maintain power on the tracks between New York City and Trenton.

“I believe Amtrak needs to make immediate short-term and long-term investments to address infrastructure vulnerabilities and updated emergency management plans to provide more robust alternate modes of transportation when equipment failure occurs,” Murphy’s letter said. 

Delays continue Thursday

Amtrak said there may still be delays Thursday along the Northeast Corridor. NJ Transit warned riders to expect cancelations and delays “resulting from crew availability and equipment that was out of position” due to the overhead wire issues.   

Murphy sent a copy of the letter to U.S. Dept. of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.