Governor Murphy was pressed on the issue at New Jersey Transit today by senior political correspondent David Cruz during a one on one interview for his season premiere of Chat Box.

David asked the governor about dedicated sources of funding for the beleaguered agency, his decision to offer a fare hike as an apology to riders, and what's being done about the disruptions caused by Amtrak.

Take a listen.

Another favorite topic of yours, you're still alive.

So I think you know where I'm going with this.

It's been another hellish summer on the rails.

Just reading this week, the key to Birkoff at the Monitor talks about 820 cancellations between June 1st and August 31st of this year, which is more in the same three month period than any year on your watch except 2020.

Yeah.

Now, I know you're a big cheerleader for the agency, but how does that represent progress?

I thought Nikita's piece is really well done, by the way.

That's something folks may not be expecting me to say, given how critical it was.

We did a really good job, and it was objective.

And it was.

It was.

It called balls and Strikes.

Give me a minute on this one, David.

There's a big difference between the first two or three years, including 2020, 2018 and 19 would be on that list in 2024.

Here's one different.

Here's one that is a different.

It was a miserable summer.

If you're a commuter, there's just no two ways about it.

But when you look at the cause of the summer and the cause of the breakdowns dramatically different.

Early on, when we got here, it was self-inflicted.

The prior administration had defunded NJ Transit.

There weren't enough engineers.

The equipment was all old.

It was overwhelmingly on NJ Transit, as the key news article pointed out.

I think quite rightfully.

We've got a good relationship with Amtrak, but this is first and foremost on them.

Overwhelmingly, we lease space from them.

We're now doing a lot with them to try to get out of had joint inspections would be one area.

They need funding from the feds.

The infrastructure is very old that we lease and run our trains on.

NJ Transit is not blameless, but we need the other folks to punch it their way and God willing, they will.

How do you get Amtrak on the same page?

Yeah, I got.

I got got them in the same room together in June.

We came up with a plan that was actually a plan that both sides agreed to and they've been pursuing.

So the end of the summer wasn't great by any means, but June was the worst part of the summer by far.

They need funding.

They need, I think, at least $300 million to fund new category wires, which are wires that are above us folks, though, that tend to fail in extreme heat and which is part of the reason why these bad months happened during the summer.

We're getting the gateway tunnels built at long last after my predecessor canceled them to new tunnels rehabbing the old two.

You'll get one seat rides that a lot more communities like Westfield when that's done so that the trajectory is right, we're going in the right direction.

It ain't going to be overnight.

Unfortunately, merely with the song.

Cuando, cuando, cuando.

Yeah I do.

Like.

So but the, the, the point to point progress is without question significant.

I think there are 175 new double decker cars that are on order.

Lots of good things are happening.

But let me just say unequivocally the summer sucked and I'm not happy about it either.

So then you apologize sort of by offering this fare holiday for which you got criticized anyway, because the whole point is that the agency is tough to fund and now you're just giving money back.

Now we've funded this corporate trip.

I got a lot more applause than criticism in fairness.

On all of this.

All right.

But the fact of the matter is, we needed to find a permanent source of funding.

We did with this corporate transit fee.

I applaud the corporations that are going to put a lot of coin into this.

And God willing, they'll get a lot back from it because they employ the overwhelming amount of our folks.

But that was a tip of the cap to say, you know what, it was a lousy summer.

This isn't the solution.

Never said it was the solution, but we owe you something.

And that was what that was.