Weather and more "crew shortage" were impacting NJ Transit riders Monday.
Weather-related issues began causing problems on NJ Transit's Montclair-Boonton, Morris & Essex and North Jersey Coast lines Monday morning.
A downed tree caused delays of up to 45 minutes between Long Branch and Hazlet on the North Jersey Coast line, and another downed tree near Hackettstown suspended service between Hackettstown and Mount Olive on the Montclair-Boonton and Morris & Essex lines.
Later in the afternoon, the Morris & Essex line cancelled two trains -- one from Hoboken and another from Gladstone -- because of crew shortage. The commuter rail line and the union for locomotive engineers have been at odds over who's to blame for the manpower shortage.
PATH riders saw delays earlier Monday morning when a stalled train threatened to snarl the morning commute for thousands: a "car equipment problem" started causing delays on the Hoboken-33rd Street line just before 7:20 a.m., according to a tweet from PATH. About 10 minutes later, PATH tweeted that there was a stalled train in Hoboken and advised customers to take the World Trade Center service. By about 8 a.m., PATH service resumed its normal schedule.
The Monday commute headaches follow a week of train pain that affected PATH, NJ Transit, AirTrain, LIRR and subway riders -- though none of it was due to the long-feared rehab work at New York Penn Station.
