If you are an NJ Transit commuter, your nerves are probably jangled, your pulse is thrumming like a hyperkinetic tuning fork, and you really just want someone to fix the soul-sucking experience that you refer to as that damn ride home. Good times.

So the one thing you probably didn’t want to hear Tuesday was that your daily ordeal might be a little more tolerable because the country’s third-largest transit system has just received – pause here for drum roll – a 1.1-percent bump in its operating budget.

In fact, if you’re a bottom-line purist, you probably didn’t see anything in Gov. Murphy’s funding proposal for NJ Transit that told you that the crisis is being managed with the vigor it deserves.

The first step in answering this crisis must be adequate funding, and this budget plan fails that test. The $25 million boost in state aid is a pittance in a budget of $2.316 billion.

And Murphy is still siphoning $461 million from the capital budget – that’s money needed for things like long-term projects and new rolling stock to replace the 40-year-old cars still in service. These transfers are debilitating: Every day, we see what happens to this agency when its capital projects are underfunded.

This is an improvement from the $510 million NJT transferred from capital to operations last year - when the Legislature forced Murphy to divert $50 million more than he intended – but when you’re still repeating Chris Christie’s old budget gimmicks, this is nothing to celebrate.

And when all the numbers are crunched into a thick gray paste, the bottom line represents a mere blip that both Senate President Steve Sweeney and Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg have signaled is inadequate.

We hope they mean it, because they can be certain that the number isn’t likely to change the commuter experience for customers who are already angry enough to eat raw wolverine.

In fact, it may not represent a gain at all, because the governor’s math doesn’t show whether passenger revenue – which is nearly 50 percent of the operating budget – will remain at this year’s levels ($986 million) after a year of annulments and fare discounts. An anticipated $75-million increase in labor costs hasn’t been factored in, either, experts noted.

So this is what a fiscal crisis looks like: happy talk about fare freezes, followed by more commuter bodies thrown on the bonfire.

“It’s good that there’s more coming in from the general fund, and it’s good to diminish the diversions,” says Janna Chernetz of Tri-State Transportation Campaign, the formidable rail commuter advocate. “But doesn’t solve the underlying problem, which is no new revenue sources, and no plan to wean off capital-to-operation transfers, which have just moved back to Christie levels.”

This, no doubt, still has Christie’s paw prints all over it. He took an award-winning agency and debased it in every way, and everyone knew it would take years for the real transit professionals hired by Murphy to scrub away the stench that Christie’s patronage fiesta left behind.

But we have moved into a new phase in the evolution of NJ Transit, and budgeting in general.

The governor needs to be reminded by legislative leaders that there is time for subtlety and a time for daring. There is a time for the rapier and a time for the bludgeon.

Murphy spent Wednesday at the NJT maintenance facility in Wood-Ridge declaring that transportation is the top priority of his administration, and that he’ll get it right “if it kills me.”

With his usual jaunty optimism — fueled by a warehouse filled with fans and TV cameras — he announced his transit budget with the strut of a $25-million-a-year free agent who had just parked one in the upper deck in his first at-bat. Unfortunately, this looks more like a check-swing single.

Legislative leaders spoke up, and that’s good. Now they must convince the governor to put his money where their mouths are.

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