New Jersey Traffic Saturday Night: Two More Northeast Corridor Trains Cancelled, Portal Delays Reach 25 Minutes

The Northeast Corridor closed out a hard Saturday with two more cancellations. NJ Transit reported at 5:05 p.m. that train #7858, the 6:34 p.m. departure from Trenton scheduled to arrive at Penn Station New York at 7:59 p.m., was cancelled because the originally scheduled engineer was not available at departure; riders were directed to train #7860, the 7:16 p.m. departure from Trenton. Earlier, train #7855, the 3:57 p.m. departure from Penn Station due in Trenton at 5:22 p.m., was cancelled for the same stated reason, with riders directed to #7857.

Two more Corridor trains were cancelled in the afternoon for equipment and crew reasons: #3949, the 4:48 p.m. departure from Penn Station, for equipment availability, with riders directed to #3951, and #3954, the 2:48 p.m. departure from Trenton, for engineer availability, with riders directed to #3856. The cancellations extend a day-long pattern of crew-availability losses on the Corridor and the North Jersey Coast Line, covered earlier on this site.

Delays compounded the gaps. Train #3866, due at Penn Station at 7:10 p.m., ran up to 25 minutes late due to congestion resulting from the Portal Cutover Project; #3879 to Trenton ran up to 15 minutes late on equipment availability resulting from the same project; and #3864 to Penn Station ran up to 15 minutes late after an earlier mechanical issue in Rahway. The cutover schedule - not the regular timetable - remains in force on Sunday, when NJ Transit also runs its MetLife Stadium trains for the Jets game and the marathon travel wave crosses the Hudson.