“Philip Plotch, principal researcher with the Eno Center for Transportation, said NJ Transit trains on the Northeast Corridor run reliably only 86% of the time. While aging tunnels cause problems, decrepit signal and electrical wiring also trigger shutdowns. It’s a vulnerable network that’s not ready for a long, hot summer, Plotch warned.”

“Philip Mark Plotch, a principal researcher at the Eno Center for Transportation in Washington, notes that Hochul was not without options. ‘She could have said, ‘We’re going to phase this in and we’re going to start with trucks because we just want to test the technology,’” says Plotch. “Or she could have just said we’re just going to start it from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. and just at the very peak periods and see how it works there.'”“It’s not a ‘if you build it, they will come’ type of scenario,” Puentes said. “It would actually be fitting a need.”

“‘If you Googled it, it would just tell you to take the train,’ Plotch said. Not helpful. Instead, Plotch’s wife rode the subway north to the 96th Street station in Manhattan, where Plotch, a transportation expert who lives in Fair Lawn, picked her up by car.

‘That is somewhat inexcusable,’ Plotch, principal researcher at the Eno Center for Transportation, said in an interview. ‘Transportation agencies should provide state-of-the-art information,’Plotch said. ‘That’s not the kind of information that was available for my wife.'”