A drawbridge spanning the Passaic River near Newark got stuck wide open on Thursday, grinding rail service to a halt on three NJ TRANSIT lines and leaving commuters scrambling for alternate ways home. The Newark Drawbridge became stuck in the open position, triggering a suspension of service in both directions between Newark Broad Street and Hoboken that showed no sign of a quick fix.
The stoppage hit the Morris & Essex Line, the Gladstone Branch, and the Montclair-Boonton Line, according to News12 New Jersey. NJ TRANSIT confirmed the suspension affected all three rail lines in both directions, leaving riders on some of the busiest commuter corridors in the state without a direct route between Newark and Hoboken.
On X, the agency's Montclair-Boonton Line account, @NJTRANSIT_MOBO, told riders that service was suspended “due to the Newark Drawbridge opening for marine traffic” and that tickets and passes were being cross-honored elsewhere in the system. The same account noted that NJ TRANSIT rail tickets and passes would be accepted on NJ TRANSIT and private carrier buses, on NJ TRANSIT light rail, and on PATH trains at Newark Penn Station, Hoboken, and Penn Station New York.
Crowds Pack Secaucus Junction as Riders Reroute
With the direct Newark-to-Hoboken segment out of commission, heavy crowds built up at Secaucus Junction station as riders tried to piece together alternate routes. The station, a key transfer point for the affected lines, became a bottleneck as passengers waited for updates on when trains might start moving again.
As of Thursday evening, NJ TRANSIT had not announced a time for normal service to resume, the same report notes, leaving commuters without a clear sense of when the disruption would end. The agency said it continued to provide updated information for riders through its service advisory as conditions developed.
A Bridge With a Long History of Replacement Talk
The Newark Drawbridge's troubles are not new to NJ TRANSIT's planning documents. Years ago, the agency's board approved a contract to develop a rehabilitation plan for the bridge along with a conceptual design for its eventual replacement, according to a NJ TRANSIT press release. That rehabilitation plan was slated for completion by December 2005, the agency said at the time.
More recently, a 2020 post from NJ TRANSIT's official X account argued that swapping the span for “a more reliable, three-track bridge would increase capacity and efficiency” across the Morris & Essex, Gladstone, and Montclair-Boonton lines. Whether any of that planning translated into completed work on the bridge isn't addressed in available records, and Thursday's stuck-open span showed the aging structure still has the power to paralyze a chunk of the regional rail network with little warning.
