NJ Transit riders of the world, unite!

For over a decade, New Jersey rail passengers have been treated, unconscionably, as second-class citizens by NJ Transit and the state’s elected officials. Public train transportation in New Jersey has been fiscally starved, leading to miserable, oftdelayed, routinely overcrowded and sometimes dangerous commutes for hundreds of thousands of New Jersey residents.

Recent efforts by New Jersey politicians to lower fares as a sop to riders during the upcoming commuter “Summer of Hell” don’t go nearly far enough.

It is long past time for some old-fashioned, peaceful, civil disobedience whereby New Jersey rail passengers board trains, en masse, but refuse to pay until the following conditions are met:

1. A normal schedule is resumed and the trains run on time;

2. Passengers are provided available sanitary rest rooms;

3. A deal to build a third tunnel into Manhattan is consummated;

4. New Jersey Transit implements a long overdue “Passenger Bill of Rights.”

This type of nonviolent direct action is tailored to the internet age. Passengers can sign up on social media to meet fellow riders at a designated time to board particular trains together and refuse to pay.

Signs posted on New Jersey Transit trains indicate that passengers will be asked to leave at the next stop if they decline payment. But if New Jerseyans band together, will the railroad really ask its own passengers to leave?

As a former elected official and attorney, I don’t take the step of advocating civil disobedience lightly and never have done it before. But at this juncture, given the profound and consistent contempt shown for New Jersey’s traveling public, no other option will likely lead to reform.

NJ Transit trains have lagged behind neighboring states’ railroads in on-time performance for years. Just last year the highly respected American Society of Civil Engineers gave New Jersey a Dplus grade for its rail transportation system.

Endless construction projects that never seem to solve track problems routinely leave passengers scrambling from one end of the train to the other, just to get out at their stop. The rest rooms at Penn Station in Manhattan, and on the trains, are a public disgrace and a health hazard.

If NJ Transit were a private corporation, I have little doubt it would be hauled into court under the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act, which specifically imposes liability for “unconscionable” business practices. The remedy would be exactly what I propose: a refund of passenger fares.

Years ago, I wrote a book about public corruption in New Jersey and detailed how casino magnates persuaded the state of New Jersey to appropriate $100 million to build a roadway just to one casino.

Our democracy has become dangerously atrophied when private interests can extract endless favors from government while starving public obligations like the railroads. Maybe the elected leaders of New Jersey should be required to spend one day a week on public transportation conducting official business until they understand what they have wrought.

Each year, unbelievably, the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce rents out an entire Amtrak train for its private use and transports all the elected officials of New Jersey — along with business lobbyists — to its annual dinner in Washington.

That train is on time. That train is stocked with bar cars, snacks, clean rest rooms and other emoluments that New Jersey Transit passengers can only dream of.

The possibilities for the great train of American democracy were outlined once by New Jersey’s unofficial poet laureate, Bruce Springsteen, who wrote in his song “Land of Hope and Dreams”:

I said, now this train, dreams will not be thwarted; this train, faith will be rewarded

I certainly have not had the opportunity to speak with Springsteen about rail transit in New Jersey, but he perhaps would not mind if all of us took some inspiration from another verse of his song: Come on this train People get ready You don’t need no ticket All you gotta do is Just get onboard