(The following article by David A. Michaels was posted on the Bergen Record website on April 2.)
BERGEN, N.J. — It was one of those hurly-burly evenings in New York’s Penn Station. Instead of the controlled chaos that flows from footsteps and train movements, it was the real chaos that ensues when everything stops.
“We had no power in the station and we couldn’t get the trains out,” said Frank Coye, a retired railroad employee who worked in customer service. “The trainmasters said, ‘We’re waiting for George to call.’ ”
Bypassing a few rungs on the chain of command, Coye phoned George Warrington. The executive director of NJ Transit picked up.
Warrington said people should be allowed to board buses with their train tickets and asked Coye to spread word that he approved cross-honoring the passes. Within 15 to 20 minutes, the train station was clear, Coye said.
“George always made it happen,” Coye said. “He was a hands-on person.”
That hands-on era ended last week. Warrington, credited with expanding capacity and pushing the biggest rail initiative in a generation — a new set of tubes between New Jersey and Manhattan — stepped down to start a consulting firm.
Warrington said NJ Transit was in better shape than he found it, and insisted he had positioned it to continue to grow.
“I feel like we will have made a difference,” he said.
But there were skeptics when Warrington arrived in Newark five years ago, fresh from the presidency of Amtrak.
Warrington had been both a willing participant and conscientious objector in Washington’s Amtrak experiment, in which Congress gave the company five years to wean itself off federal subsidies.
Warrington professed it could be done, mostly because the law said it had to be. But Warrington also said it was bad for the railroad.
In New Jersey, unlike in Washington, there was no doubt about the need for a passenger railroad. The Legislature might short-change public transportation, but it did not starve it.
Warrington said he came to NJ Transit because he longed to get back to basics. Consumed by politics at Amtrak, he barely touched the subject of late trains and missed connections. He said he missed the rush of running a commuter railroad.
“The entire apparatus of the place is focused on the morning and the evening, and it is high intensity,” he said. “Minutes matter.”
But trains didn’t just have to be on time, they needed more room. Warrington added 100 trains and pressed the agency to accelerate the turnaround time for cars that needed maintenance.
“There were specific steps that added up to more seats,” said John McGoldrick, a former NJ Transit board member. “Part of that was scheduling and equipment, and part of it was good, efficient business management.”
Of course, NJ Transit’s peak-hour trains remain so crowded that some passengers cannot find a seat. If there is a big bang to relieve that pressure, it’s the tunnel.
The tunnel was often dismissed as a “Jersey project” as it struggled to gain the New York support necessary for federal funding. Warrington and a few other New Jersey leaders, including Port Authority Chairman Anthony R. Coscia, managed to convince New York that it was a regional project.
Jamie Fox, a former New Jersey commissioner of transportation, said Warrington’s ability to move the tunnel forward qualified him as one of the state’s most effective mass-transit advocates since NJ Transit was established in the late 1970s.
“That is a great achievement in a lifetime, and he accomplished it in five short years,” said Fox, who will be Warrington’s business partner in the consulting firm.
But Tom Downs, another former transportation commissioner, said Warrington’s legacy is far from clear. Downs, who hired Warrington at Amtrak when Downs was its president in the mid 1990s, said Warrington’s promotion of the tunnel has ignored its hefty price-tag. He said New Jersey, with a crushing load of debt, might not be able to fund its portion of the tunnel’s cost, which Downs predicted would grow to $10 billion.
“The ability to talk about large-scale capital investments in spite of a mountain of debt is a bit Pollyana-ish” Downs said.
Warrington batted away the criticism, saying he had “absolutely no doubt” that New Jersey would find a way to pay for the tunnel, which is currently listed at $7.2 billion.
The project would connect North Jersey’s rail lines to midtown Manhattan, allowing local riders to avoid a transfer in Secaucus. Warrington also has pushed for diesel trolleys on the Northern Branch, a new service that would allow direct trav- el between Tenafly and New York.
Warrington, who grew up in Ridgefield Park, said Bergen County’s public transportation options are already “behind the curve,” and predicted the county would be overwhelmed by traffic if new train service is not added.
“That is the single most-powerful investment that the state of New Jersey can make with respect to any individual transit project,” he said.