NJ Transit was created in 1979, to "acquire, operate and contract for transportation service."

NJ Transit operates a fleet of more than 2,000 buses and 700 trains.

Nearly 223 million trips are taken on NJ Transit each year.

Almost 11,000 people are employed by NJ Transit.

NJ Transit, the state transportation agency that has consistently struggled to get adequate funding to keep its trains and buses running, has spent nearly $5 million since 2015 to lease and renovate a vacant floor in its Newark headquarters.

Now the agency is poised to spend millions more to purchase the empty 10th floor at Two Penn Plaza East to house 150 employees working on storm resiliency projects and positive train control, a safety system intended to prevent crashes.

But some are asking why permanent space is needed for temporary projects, given the fiscal crunch perennially faced by the agency. The deadline to install the positive train control safety system is next year and the Sandy projects are slated for completion by 2021.

"Isn’t this temporary?" asked Joseph Clift, a former planning director for the Long Island Rail Road who attended the July meeting where the purchase was unanimously approved. "When they’re done, the people are gone."

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The spending comes at a time when the agency is facing many challenges, both fiscal and operational. Among them:

NJ Transit currently owes Amtrak more than $90 million for its use of the Northeast Corridor for its commuter rail operations.

NJ Transit's funding from the state has been pieced together in recent years, with money coming from the Turnpike Authority, the state's Clean Energy Fund, and cash intended for capital projects.

The Record reported Sunday that NJ Transit has hired only four locomotive engineers since 2015, and has lost one engineer a month to Metro-North since March. Additionally, the agency is poised to see a wave of retirements in the next few years that increases the urgency of hiring replacements.

The agency's former compliance officer took it to task at a state legislative hearing last month, saying NJ Transit was "in great peril" because the loss of staff was removing the kind of institutional knowledge needed to operate safely.

Clift, in his comments to the board about purchasing the space, cited the money owed to Amtrak and the agency's ongoing reliance on capital dollars to pay for operating costs.

Amtrak spokeswoman Christina Leeds said it is working with NJ Transit to resolve the charges, which include $16.3 million in operating costs as well as $74.6 million in capital obligations for the fiscal year that ends on Sept. 30.

Two years ago, the vice chairman of NJ Transit's board praised the move to lease the space. However, he resigned late last year, citing his frustration with the unreliability of funding for the agency.

NJ Transit spends about $2.1 billion each year to keep operating, taking in about half that from passenger fares. The rest is pieced together from state and federal sources.

The agency, because the deal isn't yet final, won't disclose how much it’s paying to purchase the 35,500-square-foot office, roughly equivalent to the 87th or 88th floors of One World Trade Center in Manhattan.

NJ Transit’s board meeting minutes show approval of a three-year lease agreement in October 2015 for about $2.2 million, plus operating expenses of about $300,000 a year, with options to extend the lease another two years or purchase the space.

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In July, the board approved taking "all actions necessary" to purchase the 10th floor. The agency must make the purchase final by Oct. 1 to buy the space at 85 percent of its fair market value. Jim Smith, an NJ Transit spokesman, said the deal isn't yet final.

Smith did say that about $1.8 million has been spent to renovate the space, and that employees will move into it this fall.

"We anticipate employees moving in this fall following the finalization of the purchase and final code inspections, Smith said.

Vacant space

Though vacant now, the office space in Newark is intended to house support staff for NJ Transit's $320 million positive train control project, and four post-Sandy resiliency projects that will use $1.2 billion in Federal Transit Administration grants the agency received since the 2012 storm.

It's been almost five years since Superstorm Sandy damaged NJ Transit's infrastructure, rail cars and locomotives. And it's been nearly a decade since Congress required commuter railroads to install positive train control, a system that automatically slows or stops trains that are going too fast.

When the agency's board approved the lease agreement for the 10th-floor office space, then-Vice Chairman Bruce Meisel praised it as "a very thoughtful and intelligent move."

In December, Meisel stepped down.

"One conclusion from my term on this board is that the funding arrangement for NJ Transit, whether dedicated or otherwise, has to become more reliable,” he said then. “If we know the facts, we can prepare for them."

Reached at his commercial real-estate office in Bergen County, Meisel said he didn't have anything to add.

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Falling behind

The board voted in December to refinance bonds to keep the agency solvent in 2017 and 2018 and provide $60 million for capital projects, including positive train control.

Positive train control, which Congress required in 2008 after a deadly commuter train collision in southern California, is a system that some believe could have prevented last year's fatal NJ Transit crash at Hoboken Terminal.

The crash left one dead and more than 100 injured and caused substantial damage to the terminal, which is still being repaired.

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The agency is behind on the positive train control project, according to its most recent progress report submitted to the Federal Railroad Administration last month.

NJ Transit's former compliance chief, Todd Barretta, testified to lawmakers in Trenton last month that the agency was unlikely to meet the 2018 deadline to complete the system.

However, Steve Santoro, the agency's executive director, told lawmakers last month that NJ Transit would meet the deadline.

NJ Transit is now suing Barretta, who was fired last month.

Still, the agency has moved forward on four major post-Sandy resiliency projects:

A "safe harbor" storage facility for rail cars and locomotives away from flood zones, in North Brunswick.

An electric power grid designed to keep the railroad operating even if commercial power fails.

A replacement for the 109-year-old drawbridge across the Raritan River on the New Jersey Coast Line.

Filling in a former barge canal next to Hoboken Terminal to build six new tracks and platforms that are above the flood line.

All four of the projects, which combined have received federal grants of $1.2 billion, are scheduled for completion by 2021.