In his budget address Tuesday, Murphy said the state will modernize the fleet by “providing funding to begin replacing every single outdated bus and rail car that remains in the agency’s fleet.”
“Getting this done will make NJ Transit more reliable and more accessible for every New Jerseyan,” he said.
Murphy’s budget proposal still needs to be approved by the state Legislature and be signed into law. But, for commuters, the money to replace aging trains and buses could reduce canceled trains and improve the distances buses and trains travel between breakdowns.
Last month, NJ Transit rail performance plummeted to 50,000 miles traveled between breakdowns in January, the lowest point in nine years, according to agency data.
Mechanical problems were the top reason for canceled trains in January, with breakdowns blamed for 140 canceled trains, or about 63 percent. For buses, the mean distance between failures was about 9,000 in January. That was better than the high of 16,000 miles between breakdowns in late 2017.
“We have about 1,000 buses and 250 rail cars that need to be replaced,” Kris Kolluri, president and CEO of NJ Transit, said in an interview with NJ Advance Media on Wednesday.
The oldest Arrow III, Comet II, IV and V rail cars have been identified as having the lowest distance between failures in past NJ Transit data.
Replacing trains and buses, referred to in the transit industry as rolling stock, is one of his priorities that Kolluri mentioned in his first board meeting as CEO this month.
“In order to make sure the system is reliable for our customers, we need to make sure the tracks and infrastructure are working fine, and the rolling stock is in tip-top shape,” he said. “That what this effort is.”
How Will Buses Be Replaced?
If the money proposed by Murphy in the 2026 budget comes through, NJ Transit will exercise options it has on existing contracts to buy new rail cars and buses, Kolluri said. The purchases would start this year and continue for “the next three years,” he said.
The remaining Arrow and Comet trains would be retired — “every one of them,” Kolluri said.
Both types of rail cars are part of NJ Transit’s legacy fleet. The electric-propelled Arrow III’s were built in 1977 and 1978 for the state Department of Transportation and were rebuilt in 1992 and 1995.
The locomotive hauled Comet II cars were built in 1982 and rebuilt in 2000. The newest Comet V cars entered service in 2002.
Buses headed for retirement are the “transit” and urban style city buses built by the North American Bus Industries company in 2008. The “younger” NABI buses in the fleet are being rebuilt.
The agency purchased the last 172 cruisers in 2022, completing an effort that began in 2015 to replace its entire fleet of 1,400 cruiser buses.
In November 2023 , NJ Transit’s board authorized $685.95 million to buy 750 new buses, which have not been purchased yet.
A 200-bus order could be presented to NJ Transit’s board of directors in the first quarter of this year, said John Chartier , an NJ Transit spokesperson. Those buses would replace the oldest of the NABI buses that are at the end of their service lives.
How Much Will It Cost?
The most expensive multi-level train cars are electric-powered and cost roughly $5 million each because it is a passenger car and locomotive in one.
New bus prices will vary between $800,000 and $1 million, depending on whether the bus is an articulated model that bends in the middle and hauls more passengers or a conventional bus, Kolluri said.
“That is the rough number, that’s why it won’t all be done in one year,” Kolluri said. “What we intend to do is provide a road map, a fiscally constrained plan on how to order these things over the next 3 years.”
In December 2018, NJ Transit ordered 118 new electric powered multi-level rail cars, the first of which are being tested at a U.S. Department of Transportation facility in Colorado .
More cars could be purchased under that contract. NJ Transit has already done that twice, exercising an option in February 2022 to buy 25 multi-level rail cars for $74 million. Last July, the agency spent $178 million to buy 36 more.
Federal funding will play a major part in paying for the new trains.
In 2024, New Jersey received $551.28 million from the Federal Transit Administration’s Urbanized Area Formula Program. Bus and train replacement and rebuilding are among the eligible uses for those funds, according to federal officials.
What About Electric Buses?
Under Murphy’s policies on climate change, all bus purchases must be zero emission vehicles by 2032. The governor also said NJ Transit’s bus fleet has to transition to 100 percent zero emission vehicles by 2040.
The first part of that plan is that 10 percent of bus purchases must be zero emission buses, starting at the end of last year.
Earlier this month, President Trump froze funds for the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program. That puts a road block up for electric bus purchases beyond the eight NJ Transit has running in Camden under a test program. NJ Transit first needs charging stations for the buses.
It is unclear how Trump’s funding freeze will affect bus purchases. “We don’t know and we intend to ask,” Kolluri said. “We have to reevaluate our infrastructure ... How do we run electric buses if we’re not allowed to have EV charging infrastructure in place?”
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