NJ Transit and Amtrak riders will see a 53% reduction in train service to and from New York beginning Feb. 15 to connect the new Portal North Bridge to the rest of the busy Northeast Corridor Line.
Officials announced Thursday that the four‑week process will affect the schedules of 280 Amtrak trains and 332 NJ Transit trains across five rail lines to allow for infrastructure work and testing.
Regular service is expected to resume March 15.
“We understand what an impact that will have on riders,” said Kris Kolluri, NJ Transit CEO. ”Our commitment is not only to work to provide mitigating strategies, but at the end of the process, we will have a brand new bridge.”
The long‑awaited change will shift one track from the 115‑year‑old Portal swing bridge onto the new, two‑track, $2.3 billion Portal North Bridge over the Hackensack River in Kearny.
The old Portal Bridge is notorious for getting stuck after it is opened for marine traffic and refusing to close all the way until work crews “persuade” it with sledgehammers.
The process, known as a cutover, will connect one track of the new bridge to the Northeast Corridor Line. Construction of the new, higher two-track, triple-arch bridge started in August 2022.
“We’re asking our passengers to be a little patient while we integrate this bridge into our network,” said Roger Harris, Amtrak President. “We planned the most expeditious plan involving the least amount of pain over the least time.”
Schedule changes and other information is on a dedicated NJ Transit website for the project.
NJ Transit’s Northeast Corridor service will be reduced from 133 weekday trains to 112 trains. The North Jersey Coast line will be reduced from 109 weekday trains to 92, many of which are off-peak trains running in the opposite direction of the peak-period commute, officials said.
The Morris & Essex line will have a reduction from 149 weekday trains to 141, and Montclair-Boonton line trains will be cut from 64 weekday trains to 60.
Weekday Mid-Town Direct trains will operate to Hoboken instead of New York. Tickets for those commuters will be cross‑honored on PATH, New York Waterway ferries and the NJ Transit bus No. 126. Riders should purchase tickets to and from Hoboken to receive cross‑honoring.
The Main, Bergen, Pascack Valley and Port Jervis lines will not be affected. NJ Transit will add 44 shuttle trips between Secaucus and Penn Station New York to maintain connections for those commuters.
Amtrak passengers will see Acela service reduced from 20 weekday trains to 18, Northeast Regional service cut from 44 weekday trains to 40 and Keystone service reduced from 24 weekday trains to 10.
A plan to do the work during weekends and overnight was ruled out because of the complexity, for safety reasons and to avoid the risk of construction interfering with the Monday morning rush, Amtrak officials said.
The plan agreed to “ensure every community has access to the rail system,” Kolluri said.
The ambitious schedule will have 70 to 90 workers working two shifts, seven days a week. They’ll install pre-constructed panels of assembled tracks to be “lifted up and connected like Legos” to piece tracks together as efficiently as possible, Amtrak officials said.
Other work includes digging up existing infrastructure, such as six to eight catenary poles that support overhead wire and are in the way of the new tracks, Amtrak officials said.
Other work includes connecting the electric catenary wire, installing signal and communications systems, and completing the Federal Railroad Administration testing required before rail service can resume.
Portal North Bridge is the first major piece of the larger Gateway Project, said Tom Wright of the Regional Plan Association. The bridge is nearing completion, while the broader Gateway Project continues.
“While service is temporarily disrupted along the Northeast Corridor, we hope the railroads will look to fast-track any other improvements and investments that can be delivered during the service reductions,“ he said.
“The Northeast Corridor has enormous needs and multiple projects,” Wright said. ”The railroads should do everything in their power to expedite other projects during this short-term reduction in service.”
A similar shutdown will be repeated in late summer or early fall 2026 to connect the second and final track between the bridge and the Northeast Corridor, Harris said.
“It’s a little early to predict. We’re threading the needle between the World Cup and Thanksgiving,” Harris said.
The entire two-track Portal North Bridge project is scheduled to be completed in 2027.
The old two-track bridge is the busiest rail bridge in the nation and a chokepoint on the Northeast Corridor line, used by hundreds of Amtrak and NJ Transit trains each day.
“I can’t think of a better way to kick off 2026 than by eliminating one of the largest delays on the Northeast Corridor by replacing Portal Bridge with a fixed span designed so it does not have to open,” Harris said.
