by Nikita Biryukov, New Jersey Monitor
Gubernatorial candidates racing to succeed Gov. Phil Murphy gave low marks to NJ Transit on debate stages this week, with all the Democrats vying for the job agreeing that the agency deserves an F rating.
The NJ Transit-bashing — from six Democrats and four Republicans hoping to become governor in January 2026 — included gripes about the reliability of its service, the number of buses running after hours, and the availability of public transit in South Jersey.
The comments come as NJ Transit remains stung by complaints from the summer, when service delays and cancelations led to headaches for its train riders. The agency last month welcomed a new CEO and president, Kris Kolluri, who has said he plans to focus on service reliability and capital improvements. Kolluri replaced Kevin Corbett, who had led the agency for seven years before resigning.
The 10 would-be governors each agreed NJ Transit’s reliability needs improvement, though they diverged on how to build a more dependable transit system.
Former Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli, a Republican, called for the state to merge various transportation entities into a single office.
“We’ll put them all under one roof. I believe the Turnpike, the Parkway, and transit should all be under one authority, the Garden State Transportation Authority, with people appointed by me that know what they’re doing to get the job done,” he said Tuesday.
Some candidates said New Jersey needs to do more to ensure a dedicated funding source for an agency that runs the nation’s busiest commuter rail line, while others called for the state to abandon a project along the Turnpike extension between Newark and Hudson County and use the funds elsewhere.
“Whoever is the governor needs to cancel the Turnpike-widening project, $11 billion boondoggle, and reallocate that money to mass transit right out of the gate,” said Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, a Democrat.
The Turnpike extension project is set to add additional lanes and shoulders on Route 78 between Turnpike Exit 14 and Columbus Drive in Jersey City, a busy artery for commuters headed into Manhattan. Critics say it would merely encourage more drivers to use that congested portion of the highway, while supporters say the roadway needs replacement. It’s also not clear if the project’s $10.6 billion cost could be redirected.
NJ Transit declined to comment specifically on the two debates. But spokesman Jim Smith noted a host of what the agency has deemed its success stories since Murphy, a Democrat, took office in 2018, including a “complete modernization of our customer-facing technology,” $6 billion in projects that advanced and another $8 billion in expenditures over the next three years, “remarkable progress” on the Portal North Bridge project (the replacement of a 114-year-old rail line crossing the Hackensack River in Kearny), and station modernization efforts.
But Murphy’s potential successors this week focused instead on NJ Transit’s problems.
Republican Bill Spadea called for the agency to curtail late-night buses that run on a handful of routes in North Jersey and said the agency should return some of its land to municipalities to increase their tax base.
“Why do you have buses running in the middle of the night with no one on it? Why does New Jersey Transit sit on so many acres of land that could be monetized for ratables to our local communities?” Spadea said.
Murphy won some praise from Democrats for the new corporate transit fee, a 2.5% surtax on business’ net income above $10 million, though Fulop noted that it is due to sunset at the start of 2029. The tax is set to bring roughly $800 million to NJ Transit annually through a statutory dedication beginning in the fiscal year that starts July 1.
Others warned lawmakers could easily divert those funds to patch other budget holes.
“I give the governor a lot of credit for signing the corporate business tax to invest in New Jersey Transit. One big problem: They didn’t constitutionally dedicate it, and knowing how the budget works, that money will be gone in three years,” said former Sen. Steve Sweeney, a Democrat.
Statute is not written in stone, and budget language and other legislation can overwrite statutory dedications and other limitations. For example, the current year’s budget was written to ignore statute that requires deposits into Stay NJ, a property tax relief program for seniors, be paused if the state’s reserves fall below a set amount.
Sweeney said he’d like to see more transit options in South Jersey, while former Sen. Ed Durr, a Republican, warned against service expansions until the agency could guarantee timeliness for existing train and bus routes.
“Where I’m from, they’re talking about building a rail line from Camden and Glassboro. Why would we even do that when we can’t get the trains to run on time that are existing?” said Durr.
Every candidate who named NJ Transit as an issue dinged the agency for its reliability. Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-11) said persistent delays and cancellations forced her husband to give up soccer coaching.
“My husband commutes, and he hasn’t coached our kids’ soccer team in years,” Sherrill said. “He loves coaching, but he just couldn’t get home in time. In too many cases, he was calling other moms and dads to try to pitch in for him.”
The congresswoman and Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-05) said the next administration needs to put more pressure on Amtrak, which owns rails used by some of NJ Transit’s lines and whose infrastructure was a major source of cancellations and delays this summer.
“We’ve got to fix this. We’ve got to do it now. We’re paying Amtrak $200 million a year to use their rail, and they stick it to our families all the time. They hold our trains up while they let their trains go by,” said Gottheimer. “It’s ridiculous, and we need to stand up to them.”