In a sign of the problems plaguing New Jersey Transit, the agency preemptively announced on Sunday that its Monday morning service would be delayed because of “power issues” and repairs on Amtrak’s overhead power lines. Commuters’ tickets into Manhattan would be cross-honored by private bus and ferry services as well as the PATH train, it said.

The delays are not just miserable for the passengers stuck on the trains; they have a ripple effect, sending more traffic onto roads and wasting hours for commuters who could be working. The shutdown of the corridor for one day could cost the country $100 million in added congestion, productivity losses and other effects, according to a report from the Northeast Corridor Infrastructure and Operations Advisory Commission, a group established by Congress to improve the network.

The two passenger train tunnels under the Hudson River between New Jersey and New York City, which opened in 1910, are perhaps the worst choke points along the corridor, and the federal transportation secretary, Anthony Foxx, said last week that replacing them was one of the top rail priorities in the country. But there are plenty of other problems that date from another era. The Susquehanna River Bridge in Maryland, a railroad and swing bridge built in 1906, requires as many as 30 workers to open and close. Trains must slow to 30 miles per hour to pass through the Baltimore and Potomac Tunnel in Maryland, which opened not long after the Civil War, in 1873.