NJ Transit and Amtrack are warning their rail customers to gird their loins for a potential full month of misery as a yearslong infrastructure project reaches a critical juncture — while promising the pain will be worth it in the end.

“In just a few short weeks, we will reward the patience of Amtrak and NJ TRANSIT customers by helping eliminate a cause of long delays and unreliable commutes,” Amtrak President Roger Harris said in a statement.

Amtrak on Sunday began the laborious process of transferring rail traffic away from the 115-year-old Portal Bridge spanning the Hackensack River in New Jersey to the newly constructed Portal North Bridge.

The train route is notorious for creating downstream effects affecting the entire Northeast Corridor because NJ Transit and Amtrak share a track north of Trenton. Delays at the junction frequently cause train traffic into and out of New York City to grind to a halt.

NJ Transit train riders will now have to do without direct weekday service into Penn Station on its Morristown, Gladstone Branch and Montclair-Boonton Lines — with all Midtown Direct service to be diverted to Hoboken — for the next few weeks.

Straphangers’ tickets will be cross-honored on the PATH train between Hoboken and 33rd Street, NJ Transit’s 126 bus and the NY Waterway ferry.

Transit officials are warning riders to expect delays because of the changes, particularly in Hoboken, which is expected to be badly jammed during peak hours and with the NJ Transit cross-honoring program.

Amtrak riders will meanwhile see a reduction in service for the month as 280 trains have been adjusted in light of the project’s last big push. The train service’s Acela, Northeast Regional and Keystone routes are among those affected.

The bridge work will be performed on both sides of the span simultaneously and will see 2.5 miles of new railroad connected to existing infrastructure. Two new interlockings will be built, and more than 4,500 feet of new track will be laid.

Amtrak says the job will require about 40,000 labor hours, to be done by 70 to 90 workers per day over the next month.

The work is expected to wrap up by March 14, when regular schedules will hopefully be resumed.

NJ Transit riders can check if their routes are affected here, and Amtrak customers can get help by calling 1-800-USA-RAIL or through Amtrak.com.

The current crossing has long been beset by delays caused by mechanisms locking up, particularly when contending with boat traffic — with Gothamist reporting that sometimes workers have even had to resort to banging the locking mechanism with a sledgehammer to get it working again.

Former Gov. Phil Murphy said during the project’s 2022 groundbreaking that the existing bridge gets stuck one out of seven times it opens to allow maritime traffic to traverse the waterway.

Fortunately, the new Portal Bridge North won’t have to open to accommodate traffic along the river. However completing the project means trains will be operating on a single track between Newark and Secaucus for the next month, limiting service into Penn Station on weekdays, the outlet said.

LINDENWOLD, NJ (WPVI) — The United States Department of Homeland Security has issued an update on an ICE incident in Camden County, New Jersey.

Video obtained by Action News shows elementary students in Lindenwold running from their bus stop after spotting immigration agents Thursday.

A DHS spokesperson says agents were trying to arrest Hugo Ariel Coello, who they say has a criminal history and is in the U.S. illegally from Honduras.

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Officials say he refused to stop his vehicle, got caught in school bus traffic, and then ran into the Woodland Village Apartments.

The spokesperson said, “for their safety, and that of the community, officers left the apartment complex without completing the arrest.”

New Jerseyans will lose an hour of sleep on March 8, 2026, when Daylight Saving Time returns, despite growing public frustration with the biannual clock changes and ongoing debate about making the practice permanent.

At 2 a.m. on that Sunday, clocks will jump forward to 3 a.m. across most of the United States. The clocks will fall back on November 1, 2026, returning to standard time.

The sun will set at around 5:57 p.m. in New Jersey on Saturday, March 7. The following day, after the time shift and the end of standard time, sunset is at about 6:58 p.m.

However, the sun will rise nearly an hour later at about 7:21 a.m. on Sunday, March 8, after coming up at approximately 6:23 a.m. the previous day, making for darker mornings.

Spring officially arrives at 10:46 a.m. on Friday, March 20.

Feb. 4 marked the mid-point of winter. From here on, we’re closer to the spring equinox than the winter solstice, and the amount of daylight we have each day in New Jersey continues to increase.

The sun will set at 5:31 p.m. in Atlantic City and and 5:27 p.m. in Newark on Thursday, Feb. 12.

Hawaii and most of Arizona remain the only states that don’t observe the time changes, along with several U.S. territories including Puerto Rico and Guam. The Navajo Nation observes daylight saving time despite being located within Arizona.

While many Americans want to end the twice-yearly ritual, chronobiologists generally advocate for permanent standard time instead, arguing it better aligns people’s schedules with the sun year-round.

Till Roenneberg, a pioneering chronobiologist and sleep researcher, warned that permanent DST would make Europeans “dicker, dümmer und grantiger” (fatter, dumber, and grumpier).

“Any schedule that implies that you have to get up before sunrise may cause problems,” said Derk-Jan Dijk, a sleep and physiology professor at the University of Surrey.

The Senate passed the Sunshine Protection Act in March 2022, which would have established permanent daylight saving time nationwide, but the House never voted on the legislation.

A similar bill, the Sunshine Protection Act of 2025 was introduced last January. The proposal would make Daylight saving time the new, permanent standard time.

Multiple states have passed laws supporting year-round daylight saving time, but they cannot implement the change without federal authorization.

The practice originated during World War I as a fuel-saving measure, not for agricultural purposes as commonly believed. The 1966 Uniform Time Act established the current national schedule after decades of local time chaos.