Gov. Christie: AMTRAK Needs To Make Sure Their Rails Are Safe For Our People To Travel On

Statement

I'll be speaking later this afternoon or early this evening with the CEO of Amtrak directly, and I'll convey that to him directly, Brenda, but let's start off with can the rails be in good enough repair so the trains can go over them and not derail? How about we start with that? And you know, and by the way they're the landlord. They're the owner of the rails, and they need to make sure they're safe for our people to travel on them, especially since our taxpayers both through taxes and through fares are paying an enormous amount for those rails to be in a state of good repair. And so you know that's what I wrote to Mr. Coscia, the Chairman of Amtrak, who should know better. He's from New Jersey. He was the Chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. He knows how important this system is, and he also knows that this Northeast corridor is the only profitable area of Amtrak. Well, if you're going to start to let the only profitable area that you have deteriorate, it'll have a huge impact on Amtrak, which won't be good for travel in the region, but it has an enormous impact on New Jersey TRANSIT, because of how interconnected we are. So I'm going to talk to the CEO of Amtrak later, either late this afternoon or early this evening. The weather has delayed my travel today and is delaying his, as well, but I will be talking to him very soon, and I will convey all this to him directly and privately to let him know what we want. But I'm going to make very clear to him that we're not making any more payments until they show us something. They've got to show us better work than what they're doing. And to have just been out there to inspect those rails less than 10 days ago, and then have another derailment in the very same area less than 10 days later is just unacceptable. It's unacceptable, and it's unfair by the way also to the hardworking people of New Jersey TRANSIT who are trying to do their jobs. And yet you have people yelling and screaming about this is New Jersey TRANSIT's problem. I'm sorry, it's not. We're not the maintenance person in charge of the rails. And so not only are the commuters of New Jersey a victim of this but the hardworking people of New Jersey TRANSIT who have absorbed the rightful wrath of commuters this week didn't deserve it. It wasn't their fault, and I'm not going to allow them to be blamed for something that they didn't do.

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