NJ Transit: Delayed Beyoncé and Jay-Z concert pushed crews late, stalled morning commute

It turns out Thursday night's Beyoncé and Jay-Z concert at MetLife Stadium was partly to blame for this morning’s cancellation of nearly 20 trains across several NJ Transit lines. This is according to a New Jersey Transit spokeswoman, who said that engineer absences due to concert obligations were part of this morning's rail commuting headaches.

Nancy Snyder said equipment installation pulled engineers away and that the "previous administration's failure to adequately fund NJ Transit" has created challenges.

NJ Transit is contractually obligated to support concerts with rail service when attendance is more than 50,000, explained Snyder.

"Due to inclement weather, last night’s concert started later than usual and ended very early this morning, forcing crews to work until close to 3:30 a.m. today," she said. "As a result, some of these crews did not have the required rest time to begin their scheduled shifts this morning."

She said more than 12,000 customers were transported to and from MetLife Stadium Thursday night and early Friday.

Severe weather caused a delay at the show in East Rutherford as stadium officials asked fans to leave their seats and take shelter inside. Fans were let back in at about 10:35 p.m.

The concert finally began shortly after 11 p.m. and Beyonce thanked the crowd for waiting.

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Also to blame for the morning commute delays was ongoing work on advance positive train control equipment, and PATH lines were delayed because of signal failures. As of late Friday morning most trains were back on schedule.

Snyder said NJ Transit has taken steps to address these issues by recruiting and training more engineers.

"We anticipate a class graduating within the next week that will add nine engineers to the roster," she said.

The number of classes has been increased from two to four to qualify new engineers, she added.

Snyder said that a historic funding increase under Gov. Phil Murphy will restore NJ Transit as a national leader in public transportation. She said the PTC project has ramped up and in the last three months the completion percentage has increased from 13 percent to 52 percent.

"The governor's budget also allows us to staff other critical positions, like bus operators, and we're expanding our recruiting efforts to fill positions across the organization," she said. "It's going to take some time to undo nearly a decade of under-investing, but we're wholly committed to NJ Transit's success and already starting to see movement in the right direction."

Staff writers Joshua Jongsma and Kaitlyn Kanzler contributed to this report.

Follow Jai Agnish on Twitter: @JaiAgnish. Email: agnish@northjersey.com