(The following article by David A. Michaels was posted on the NorthJersey.com website on June 22.)
BERGEN, N.J. — Power problems Wednesday on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor lines delayed travelers for the third time this month, stopping some trains between Newark and New York and delaying others up to an hour.
Seventeen NJ Transit trains were stopped for about 40 minutes, with a total of 50 delayed, spokesman Dan Stessel said. Amtrak officials said eight of their trains were affected.
It was the third low-voltage problem this month. On May 25, an extensive failure stopped trains between Washington and New York, stranding thousands of travelers in tunnels under the Hudson River.
“There is clearly a pattern over recent weeks that is cause for concern,” Stessel said.
Four NJ Transit trains were stopped for several minutes Wednesday in the Hudson River tunnel after power was cut, Stessel said. Those trains drew enough residual power to move one-at-a-time to platforms at New York Penn Station.
Amtrak officials identified the source of the problem as a transmission line that carries high-voltage electricity around the rail system.
After voltage dipped on the line around 8 a.m., circuit breakers tripped at the nearby Kearny substation, which stopped feeding power to a section of railroad.
The national rail agency did not identify the cause of the latest problem, which occurred a day before its executives are scheduled to testify before the state Senate Transportation Committee about the May 25 failures.
Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black said Wednesday’s disruption does not appear to have anything in common with the low-voltage problems of June 2-3. Those failures temporarily shut down substations that convert commercial-grade power to the frequency required by the railroad.
“We all are hopeful that we are going to find some thread of commonality, so we can attack the problem head on,” Black said.
Amtrak, which narrowly escaped bankruptcy in 2002, has a backlog of infrastructure needs worth $70 million, according to its 2007 request for federal funding.
Among those needs is “essential rebuilding” of the Northeast Corridor’s 100-year-old electric traction system.
Black said Amtrak has spent almost $1.4 billion since 2003 on capital improvements.
“With many of these projects, continued capital funding is critical to bring these projects to conclusion,” he said.
George D. Warrington, executive director of NJ Transit, said this week that Congress has consistently underfunded Amtrak, forcing the company to put off essential projects.
To help, NJ Transit has spent $89 million over 10 years to upgrade the corridor’s electric system, including $35 million for a frequency-converter station near Philadelphia.
“There is a lot of catch-up that goes back decades,” Warrington said.
Amtrak has requested $730 million from lawmakers for capital improvements next year. The House of Representatives has approved $1.1 billion for the railroad, whose subsidies have been opposed by the Bush administration and some lawmakers who are angry that Amtrak has never turned a profit.
Amtrak has contracted with the North American Reliability Council, a regulatory organization, to investigate the cause of the May 25 outage.
Some of the substations involved in the May 25 failure date to the 1930s.
NERC has not issued its report, and Black said Amtrak would probably be unable to provide New Jersey lawmakers with a cause for the failures at today’s hearing.
“Once the cause is determined, it may be associated with inadequate capital funding, but we aren’t there yet,” Black said.