Delays (Transportation)

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      New Jersey Transit Service Disrupted for Third Time in Less Than a Week

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      Rush-hour commuters at Penn Station faced a shutdown of close to an hour, followed by extensive delays, after Amtrak investigated a report of a problem with overhead wires.New Jersey Transit service was disrupted once again on Monday evening, with travel suspended in and out of Pennsylvania Station for nearly an hour because of a report of a problem with Amtrak overhead wires in one of the Hudson River tunnels.Service was suspended at 6:37 p.m. and resumed shortly before 7:30 p.m., but trains were still subject to delays of up to 60 minutes, a New Jersey Transit spokesman said.It was at least the fifth disruption for New Jersey commuters in the last two months, and the third in less than a week. Amtrak and New Jersey Transit trains share the portion of Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor between New York City and Trenton, N.J., so issues with Amtrak tracks or wires immediately affect New Jersey Transit service.Trains were held in place for about 25 minutes, or in some cases pulled back to Penn Station, according to a New Jersey Transit customer service representative.An Amtrak spokesman said service had been suspended as a precautionary measure after a report of trouble with the overhead wires that provide the electricity that powers trains moving in and out of Penn Station. The inspection turned up no problems, he said, so service resumed after about half an hour.During the shutdown, trains were diverted to Hoboken, N.J., and New Jersey Transit rail tickets were accepted for rides by private bus companies and PATH trains in Newark, Hoboken, N.J., and Midtown Manhattan.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Euro 2024 Tournament Runs Smoothly in Germany, but the Trains Do Not

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      Sweltering train cars, frequent delays and regular cancellations: At the Euro 2024 men’s soccer tournament, Germany’s faltering rail system emerges as a tough opponent.Niclas Füllkrug arrived early at the Adidas campus just outside Herzogenaurach, a picture-postcard town in Bavaria that was to host the German national team before this summer’s European soccer championships. The staff had been told that players would start arriving on a Monday morning, a few days before their opening game. But Füllkrug, one of the team’s forwards, turned up on Sunday night.He had decided to make the 300-mile journey from his home in Hanover by high-speed train on Germany’s national railway carrier, Deutsche Bahn. The company was not just one of the tournament’s sponsors; it was also supposed to be a standard-bearer of the event’s ecological credentials.But years of failure to invest in rolling stock, upgrade railways and digitalize signal boxes have made Deutsche Bahn notorious for delays and cancellations. In a country that has long prided itself on its efficiency and punctuality, Germans — as well as fans — had been warning for months that the problems might mar the tournament.So Füllkrug was hardly surprised when he found himself crammed into a train car packed with high school students on a class trip. He spent the journey fielding their questions about life with the national team.By the time he made it to Herzogenaurach, he had been traveling for several hours longer than expected, hardly ideal preparation for an elite athlete on the eve of a major tournament. Still, the delays had at least vindicated his decision to build in extra time. In Germany, as Füllkrug said, it pays to “have a bit of respect for Deutsche Bahn.”Many of the hundreds of thousands of fans from across Europe — as well as a remarkable number from the United States — who have joined him in Germany will, after an often fraught opening week, doubtless understand what he means.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Are Planes Safe Right Now? How to Understand Flight Disruptions.

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      You should expect the unexpected while flying, but few disruptions should provoke serious concern, aviation experts say.Smoke in the cabin. A tire blowout. A cracked windshield. No shortage of problems can affect a flight, fueling traveler anxiety and contributing to thousands of daily delays and cancellations around the world.But for all of the frustration and alarm such events cause, it can be difficult to interpret and understand their severity. Here’s how aviation safety experts say travelers should think about disruptions when they occur.Problems happen.Several alarming air travel incidents have made headlines in recent weeks — a sharp plunge toward an ocean, an unnerving wobble that damaged the tail of a plane and an aborted departure after an apparent engine fire.But the most common mishaps and malfunctions, even if hair-raising, are not typically severe, experts said.A hydraulic leak, for example, is a familiar occurrence that pilots take seriously, but it is not as disruptive as it may sound. That’s because planes have backup hydraulic systems, which are used to power equipment like the landing gear, brakes, wing flaps and flight controls, allowing planes to take off, fly and land. A plane veering off a runway, in what is known as a runway excursion, makes for captivating video and a possibly terrifying experience for those on board. But it doesn’t necessarily cause significant damage to an airplane or threaten the safety of those on board.The same is true of the wide range of mechanical or maintenance issues that can come up before takeoff, which might force a pilot to hold a plane at its gate or return to the gate from taxiing. Those incidents are important to understand and address, but they are often minor, experts said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Rush-Hour Delays Again Hit New Jersey Transit Commuters

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      A track inspection held up travelers for more than an hour, two weeks after a suspension of service stopped all Amtrak trains into New York’s Penn Station.Another round of delays at New York’s Pennsylvania Station on Wednesday night gave commuters flashbacks to the meltdown two weeks ago, when fallen electrical wires in New Jersey forced Amtrak to suspend train service on the entire Northeast Corridor between New York and Washington for most of the night.Wait times this time around were not as severe. Trains leaving Penn Station for New Jersey faced 45-minute delays starting at 5:16 p.m. because of an inspection of tracks owned by Amtrak in Secaucus, N.J., according to an Amtrak spokesman.Large crowds gathered inside the station after 6 p.m., as at least 10 New Jersey Transit trains were unable to depart on time. Only one Amtrak train was delayed by 33 minutes, said Jason Abrams, an Amtrak spokesman. The track inspection was complete by 6:25 p.m., Mr. Abrams said, and service began to return to normal.The delays are an “ongoing issue,” said Antonio Shaw, 33, who arrived at Penn Station at 5:45 p.m. for a train to Rahway, N.J. “It’s frustrating as a commuter,” he said.The Northeast Corridor is the busiest section of passenger rail track in the United States. The section between Newark, N.J., and New York includes some of the nation’s oldest train infrastructure, including rail yards in Kearny, N.J., and a pair of tunnels under the Hudson River, which were built to service the original Pennsylvania Station in New York, which opened in 1910.Parts of the line are failing. In 2014, Amtrak said it would be forced to close at least one of the tunnels by 2034 because of damage caused by age and chemicals left behind by floods from Hurricane Sandy in 2012.At least in part because of that aging infrastructure, commuters who rely the most on train lines using the Northeast Corridor face the most frequent delays. New Jersey Transit lines that don’t use the corridor, including the Main-Bergen and Pascack Valley Lines, arrive at their destinations on time more than 95 percent of the time, according to the agency.The New Jersey Transit line from New York to Trenton, N.J., follows the Northeast Corridor the entire way. It has the agency’s second-worst performance, with 86.6 percent of its trains arriving on time.At Penn Station on Wednesday evening, commuters said they were growing tired of trains running late.“It has been insane the past six weeks,” said Annika McTamaney, 23, a New Jersey resident who canceled a date on Wednesday because of the delays.Aimee Ortiz More