It's been a year since Gov. Phil Murphy took office, and fixing NJ Transit was one of the first items on his agenda.

He ordered an audit of the agency. He appointed new leadership. He asked lawmakers to give the agency a funding boost. He signed legislation to overhaul the agency's board as well as its governance.

"Rebuilding NJ Transit for the 1 million New Jersey residents who ride the trains and buses every day has been a priority since I began my campaign for governor," Murphy said last month when he signed the bill.

He accelerated work on a required safety system that had been neglected for years.

“We promised the people of New Jersey that we would start making it right at

NJ Transit, and this achievement shows we are doing just that," Murphy said last month at an event marking the agency's progress on positive train control.

It might be hard to convince regular riders that things are substantially better.

Their trains are still late and overcrowded, if they even run at all. The agency still doesn't have enough locomotive engineers, even as it has stepped up the hiring and training of new ones.

Rail service that was temporarily suspended to complete positive train control has still not come back, including the entire route from Philadelphia to Atlantic City. The agency has not set a firm date for bringing it back.

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To many riders, NJ Transit under Murphy looks a lot like NJ Transit under his predecessor, former Gov. Chris Christie, whom Murphy blamed for creating the problems that are now his.

Assemblyman John McKeon, D-Essex-Morris, who was co-chairman of an oversight committee that held hearings on NJ Transit from 2016 until last year, said Murphy's team has done a "pretty damn good job under the circumstances."

He said Murphy faced two difficulties at once: the urgency of completing positive train control and the shortage of personnel.

"He’s delivered within reason," McKeon said. "Two of the major reasons why it was such a lousy year are solved."

'They should be upset'

Still, McKeon acknowledged that riders largely haven't seen their commutes improve.

"I would imagine the frustration, if you were to poll it, was higher in this last year than the year before," he said.

Assemblyman Anthony Bucco, R-Morris-Somerset, has called on the Assembly Transportation Committee to hold a hearing on the continued overcrowding, delays and cancellations.

"People are upset because they can’t rely on NJ Transit," Bucco said. "That’s understandable. They should be upset."

Assemblyman Dan Benson, D-Mercer-Middlesex, the committee's chairman, has not scheduled a hearing. Bucco said that if conditions don't improve soon, he'll renew his request.

"The public and the commuters need to know what’s going on," Bucco said. "They have a right to hear firsthand why these things continue to linger."

The agency has been less than forthcoming, according to some observers, about how it is implementing the recommendations of the audit, which urged improvements in communications, human resources and procurement.

Those had deteriorated under Christie, who appointed people to leadership positions in the agency based on their ties to the governor's office. Though the audit didn't name Christie, it faulted his administration's hiring practices.

It's not entirely clear how the changes are being made, or whether they're working.

"There isn’t that much transparency we’ve had from NJ Transit’s leadership to allow us to really make a judgment," said Martin Robins, a former executive of the agency and one of its principal architects. "There isn’t an assurance that the issues are going to be fixed."

A rough start

Murphy and NJ Transit's management had their work cut out for them.

They inherited an underfunded and understaffed agency with poor morale. They were forced to compress several years of work on positive train control into less than a year.

The audit pointed to the most significant problems, but it didn't arrive until October.

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In the preceding months, NJ Transit riders had endured a rough patch of abruptly canceled trains due to lack of engineer availability. Then, in September, they lost rail service to Atlantic City and saw reduced service on other routes.

The agency had to meet a Dec. 31 federal deadline to equip the railroad with positive train control, an automatic system intended to prevent derailments and collisions.

It made the deadline, but at a cost. The system diverted attention and resources away from other problems, and it's still not complete. NJ Transit and most other commuter railroads now have until the end of 2020 to make positive train control fully operational.

"It’s not solved by any means, but it’s not as red-hot and worrisome an issue as it was," said Robins, who's also the founding director of the Voorhees Transportation Center at Rutgers University.

New people, new trains

The agency began an aggressive push to hire and train new locomotive engineers. Though it has committed to graduating four classes a year, the training takes as long as 20 months, meaning it could be another year before the numbers start to look better.

Last month, NJ Transit's board approved the purchase of 113 multilevel cars from Bombardier at a cost of $669 million. The new cars will be equipped with USB charging ports, bike racks and motorized restroom doors. They will replace some of the oldest trains in the agency's fleet, the single-level Arrow III cars dating to the late 1970s.

However, the new cars won't be in service until 2023.

Thanks to the law Murphy signed last month, NJ Transit's board will be expanded, with more representation from the riding public in all parts of the state. The board will also hold half its meetings in the evening, allowing more of the public to participate.

The law will install a customer advocate and a chief ethics officer within the agency. It will require more robust disclosure of safety information and strengthen whistle-blower protections. It will allow NJ Transit to recruit more personnel who live out of state.

Robins said inadequate funding will continue to drag NJ Transit's performance.

He said Murphy and lawmakers need to have a discussion about a dedicated, sustainable source of funding for the agency.

"Without adequate and steady funding, NJ Transit isn’t going to go anywhere," he said. "It isn’t going to pull itself together."

If better days are coming for NJ Transit riders, they may not be able to see them yet.

That's testing their patience, and that of lawmakers.

"A year has been generous," Bucco said. "We’ve given them an entire year to get their act together."

McKeon said improvements are around the corner.

"This is going to be a better year," he said. "When we get into June, it will look better than the six months before."

Email: tate@northjersey.com