NJ Transit customers on Wednesday faced another grueling commute, having to cope with fewer trains as a snow storm pulled away and the NJTransit.com website, which continued to malfunction, raising questions about whether the site would be ready for thousands of out-of-towners arriving next week for the Super Bowl.
These challenges come a day after NJ Transit’s website went down for more than three hours in the middle of a massive snow storm that sent commuters dashing for bus or train home. A spokesman initially said on Tuesday that the site was taken down for maintenance, but later said it went to down due to technical issues.
On Wednesday, rail riders who were able to access the site were greeted with the message: “Due to inclement weather, all NJ TRANSIT Rail Lines except the Atlantic City Line will operate on enhanced weekend schedule on Wednesday, January 22.”
And once on the site, commuters were given unusual directions for accessing the shortened train schedule — in order to get Wednesday’s “enhanced weekend schedule” they had to input Feb. 17 as the search date.
NJ Transit did not respond to repeated questions seeking an explanation for why it customers needed to use Feb. 17 instead of the actual date, instead addressing only the ongoing website problems.
NJ Transit is “actively working with our contractor to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. Additionally, we would like our customers to know they can contact us for customer assistance and transit information through our Transit Information Center at (973) 275-5555 and social media,” Spokeswoman Nancy Snyder wrote Wednesday evening.
Snyder said NJ Transit has 31,180 Facebook friends and nearly 38,600 followers on Twitter. More than 100,000 customers board NJ Transit trains each day at Hoboken, Secaucus, New York Penn and Newark Penn stations.
Joshua Crandall, founder of CleverCommute, a digital media service that gives commuters tips, alerts and warnings with regard to their commute — from mechanical breakdowns to schedule changes – on Wednesday asked his clients for feedback on their experience with NJ Transit during Tuesday’s blizzard.
“People are just confused. That’s for sure,” he said of the response. “They’re mentioning that their trains are late” and some were not aware that they had to search for the January 22 schedule using a February 17 date.
He said he was expecting his regular 7:32 a.m. train on Wednesday morning before he realized he needed to use “ the February 17 trick,” instructions he noted were “buried” in the website. That train was due at 7:44 a.m., he said, but didn’t arrive until 10 minutes later.
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