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Several members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation have again sent a letter calling on the U.S. Department of Transportation to get involved in the issues plaguing train travel for NJ Transit and Amtrak riders on the Northeast Corridor this summer.

The letter, sent to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Friday, is at least the third he has received from officials in New Jersey seeking accountability over the repeated delays Amtrak and NJ Transit customers have experienced due to failing infrastructure.

“I’m sick and tired of a ‘Summer of Hell’ — year after year,” wrote U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill, who led the letter, co-signed with U.S. Reps. Frank Pallone, Robert Menendez, Josh Gottheimer, Andy Kim, Bonnie Watson Coleman, Bill Pascrell and Donald Norcross.

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“We need Amtrak to use the $6 billion we passed in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to repair these lines so NJ Transit commuters see fewer delays,” Sherrill wrote. “It’s time to get this fixed.”

Among the requests of U.S. DOT that were outlined in the letter:

• “Have Amtrak provide a schedule regarding how it intends to spend the funds appropriated for state-of-good-repair on New Jersey’s portion of the Northeast corridor”
• “More must be done in the interim to inform riders about outage plans, repairs, and other improvements affecting their daily commute. We ask that you urgently outline a plan to keep commuters fully informed of planned and unplanned disruptions.”

Despite the letters, there has been little direct communication with Buttigieg since the first congressional letter was sent June 25. The secretary was also copied on a letter New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy sent to Amtrak CEO Stephen Gardner in May.

Rep. Menendez spoke to Buttigieg during a June 27 hearing of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, imploring the secretary to “treat this like the crisis that it is.”

“We’re hearing from our residents every day who don’t want to go to work, who don’t want to travel, who are worried about what child care looks like because there’s no reliability,” Menendez said.

Buttigieg said federal staff helping Amtrak assess causes

Buttigieg said Federal Railroad Administration personnel have been “on the ground” assessing the situation and are assisting Amtrak and NJ Transit in a joint review they are finalizing. The review is assessing why NJ Transit’s overhead train equipment is getting tangled with Amtrak’s power lines — the central cause of significant cancellations, delays and disruptions in April, May and June.

Those issues have not reoccurred in July, as NJ Transit and Amtrak have increased inspections, brought in third party assistance and placed cameras on top of trains.

A July 10 incident that was reported as “downed wires” was actually a rope that fell, and on July 21 wires that fell on the tracks were not Amtrak’s but PSE&G’s and had nothing to do with Amtrak’s infrastructure, the utility company confirmed.

Murphy said he has kept in close contact with Tony Coscia, Amtrak’s board chair, as the two agencies work to prevent further incidents.

Earlier this month, Amtrak applied for four federal grants that would help pay for upgrades to overhead wires, a substation replacement project and signal improvements, as well as replacing the Sawtooth Bridge, but those projects likely wouldn’t be completed for years.

Similarly, completion of the Portal Bridge replacement across the Hackensack River and construction of the Gateway tunnels, which would include wire upgrades, won’t be finished until 2026 and 2035, respectively.

Overhead wires, signals and substations throughout New Jersey were first identified for replacement 50 years ago, but $4.6 billion in overdue repairs and upgrades have built up over time.

Amtrak, according to its own documents, has adapted a “run-to-fail approach” instead of a long-term strategy that would have required consistent funding it doesn’t normally have. This has allowed the infrastructure to deteriorate. As a result, decades-old wires droop, causing them to fall or get tangled during extreme changes in weather.

Friday’s letter adds pressure to U.S. DOT and Amtrak to use the $6 billion in federal funding allocated specifically for the Northeast Corridor’s maintenance backlog.

“We were proud to secure this funding for precisely this purpose, and these funds should be used to address the problem right now,” the letter said.

Here are the top New Jersey news stories for Friday:

If you are in your yard or basement and pick up a foul stench, it might not be a skunk. It might be a snake.

Some people say it smells like rotten cucumbers, others say it’s just rancid.

New Jersey is home to one of the smelliest snakes. Unfortunately it is also the most common snake you will find in the Garden State.

Once again, Canadian wildfires are in the news. And some of my meteorological colleagues have been quick to ring smoke alarm bells for New Jersey, harkening those frightening images of choking smoke and hazy days from last year’s crisis.

But let’s hold on a second here. The smoke situation is very different this time around. While I can not say there will be “no” impacts to New Jersey’s air and weather, it is very important to keep potential impacts in perspective and in check.

A man from New Jersey and his Florida girlfriend were killed in cold blood by the woman’s teenage child who told police that she disapproved of her mother’s dating age gap and reluctance to accept her transition.

Matthew Szejnrok, 22, and girlfriend Kelly McCollom, 41, were shot and stabbed by the 16-year-old girl on July 7 in the Palm Bay home they all shared, investigators said.

The bloodbath began shortly after the 16-year-old told the couple “welcome home” as they walked through the door, police said, citing the teen’s confession.

TRENTON — A city police officer responding to a call about a possible gunman on Thursday morning ended up in the hospital after crashing into a building.

City officials said the crash was caused by an unlicensed driver speeding through a stop sign on the corner of Second and Bridge streets.

The collision sent the officer’s and driver’s vehicle hurling into a residential building. The crash caused considerable property damage and injured the officer, his police dog, and the driver, Mayor Reed Gusciora said

Lots of disgust from the public after a Cape May man was charged with animal cruelty for a deadly attack on a seagull at the Jersey Shore.

The 29-year-old has been accused of beheading a seagull at a popular Wildwood location.

On July 6, North Wildwood police were called to Morey’s Pier at 2501 Boardwalk Avenue, where witnesses said that a man later identified as Franklin Zeigler had decapitated one of the birds.

Start your day with up-to-the-minute news, traffic and weather for the Garden State.

New Jersey’s First News with Eric Scott is the longest running news program in New Jersey. Eric Scott began hosting the program in 1991.

It airs live on New Jersey 101.5 each weekday morning from 5:30 – 6 a.m.

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New Jersey itself is a home to many large pharmaceutical companies—and if these companies use AI to design new drugs, nearby data centers are vital, Sullivan says.

“If you’re three people at a desk trying to develop the next Google, the next Tesla—in the AI space or in any space—this computing power is scarce. And it’s very valuable. It’s essential,” Sullivan says. So, in addition to any permanent jobs created by these companies, the tax incentives could lead to further growth and innovation for smaller startups, he claims. “The potential for economic impact is off the charts.”

Still, skeptical policy experts say the AI carveout may just be a new bow on an older idea, coming as the AI boom creates a rapid increase in demand for data centers. “There’s just this history of [tax incentive] deals building up the necessary infrastructure for these tech firms and not paying off for the taxpayer,” says Pat Garofalo, director of state and local policy at the American Economic Liberties Project, a nonprofit organization that calls for government accountability. The loss in tax revenue “is often astronomical” when compared to each job created, Garofalo says.

A 2016 report by Tarczynska showed that governments often forego more than $1 million in taxes for each job created when subsidizing data centers that are built by large companies, and many data centers create between 100 and 200 permanent jobs. The local impact may be small, but The Data Center Coalition, an industry group, paints a different picture: Each job at a data center supports more than six jobs elsewhere, a 2023 study it commissioned found.

In other states, a backlash against data centers is growing. Northern Virginia, home to a high concentration of data centers that sit close to Washington, DC, has seen political shifts as people oppose the centers’ growing presence. In May, Georgia’s governor vetoed a bill that would have halted tax breaks for two years as the state studied the energy impact of the centers, which are rapidly expanding near Atlanta.

This hasn’t deterred Big Tech companies’ expansion: In May, Microsoft announced it would build a new AI data center in Wisconsin, making a $3.3 billion investment and partnering with a local technical college to train and certify more than 1,000 students over the next five years to work in the new data center or IT jobs in the region. Google said just a month earlier it would build a $2 billion AI data center in Indiana, which is expected to create 200 jobs. Google will get a 35-year sales tax exemption in return if it makes an $800 million capital investment.

In Europe, the same contradictory approach is playing out: Some cities, including Amsterdam and Frankfurt, where companies have already set up data centers, are pushing new restrictions. In Ireland, data centers now account for one-fifth of the energy used in the country—more than all of the nation’s homes combined—raising concerns over their impact on the climate. Others are seeking out the economic opportunity: The Labour Party in the UK promised to make it easier to build data centers before emerging victorious in the recent UK election.