An NJ Transit bus crashed into the front of a house on Rockwood Place in Englewood just before 5:45 a.m. Thursday, plowing across the home's front lawn before slamming into the structure. The bus driver was hospitalized, and authorities said the impact left the home's structural integrity compromised.
The bus was empty at the time, carrying no passengers, according to WABC-TV. NJ Transit told the outlet the vehicle had just left its garage in Oradell and was heading to begin its scheduled Route 166 run when it veered off course. The extent of the driver's injuries was not immediately known, but the driver was taken to a local hospital for treatment.
Englewood officials, the city's buildings department, and PSE&G all responded to the scene, and local police are leading the investigation into what caused the crash. As reported by CBS New York, the bus was en route to its starting location at Van Nostrand Avenue and Grand Avenue in Englewood to begin its 166 line run when it crashed into the house near Route 4.
A Route With a Rough History
The Oradell facility the bus departed from, located at 455 Marginal Road, serves as the dispatch point for several major northern Bergen County bus lines, including routes 144, 155, 163, 165, and 166, according to Ridgewood Public Schools. Route 166 runs as many as 103 stops between towns like Cresskill, Dumont, and Bergenfield and the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Midtown Manhattan, per route data published by Moovit.
Rockwood Place, where the crash occurred, sits adjacent to the Route 4 eastbound ramps near Grand Avenue, a stretch that state transportation planners have flagged in the past. Engineering and public hearing records published by NJ.gov in 2019 identified sharp 90-degree turns and unsafe merging conditions at that interchange, and state plans at the time proposed cul-de-sacing Rockwood Place to cut off direct highway access and reduce residential traffic impacts. Separately, state infrastructure records show the broader Route 4 and Grand Avenue corridor recorded 370 vehicle crashes over a three-year study period, which state engineers attributed to short merging lanes and heavy traffic volume.
Part of a Troubling Pattern in Bergen County
Thursday's crash adds to a string of recent NJ Transit bus incidents across Bergen County. Hoodline previously reported that an NJ Transit bus struck two women in a Hackensack crosswalk last month, pinning one beneath a wheel and resulting in a failure-to-yield summons for the driver. Both women were hospitalized at Hackensack University Medical Center.
That same month, a 41-year-old e-bike rider suffered critical head trauma after crossing the double-yellow line on Huyler Street in South Hackensack and colliding head-on with a northbound NJ Transit bus, Hoodline reported. And in August, a commercial shuttle bus crashed into a concrete structural wall along the Terminal B departures roadway at Newark Liberty International Airport, injuring as many as 17 people and triggering a mass-casualty response.
NJ Transit's bus network is enormous by scale, operating a fleet of more than 2,800 buses across 18 garages statewide and carrying over 113 million annual passenger trips, according to an NJDOT technology transfer research report, accounting for nearly 64% of the agency's total passenger volume. Federal data published on Data.Transportation.gov in September pegs the national rate of major safety and security events on transit buses at 0.15 per million passenger boardings, a benchmark against which Thursday's crash will likely be measured as investigators work to determine what sent the bus across the lawn and into the house on Rockwood Place.
