Ask Governor Murphy: August Recap

Title: Ask Governor Murphy: August Recap [theme music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We have some notable New Jersey news this morning if you haven't heard it yet. Governor Murphy has announced a week of free rides, a fare-free week on NJ Transit to compensate riders for all the troubles the system has seen this summer. He has now announced who he's appointing to fill out the term of Senator Menendez, who resigned for the rest of the year. It's George Helmy, not a household name, but a former chief of staff for the governor, I believe, and a former chief of staff for Senator Cory Booker.

As it happens, Murphy was on the station last night for his monthly Ask Governor Murphy call-in, hosted by WNYC's Nancy Solomon, who joins us now with clips from last night and analysis of this morning's breaking news. Hi, Nancy. Happy morning after.

Nancy Solomon: Hi, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: We'll get to the Senate appointment, but let's start with the thing that will more affect people day to day and right away. They're calling it a fare holiday, free rides on all NJ Transit systems from August 26th through Labor Day, September 2nd. Why are they doing this?

Nancy Solomon: Because it's been a summer of hell. There are heat-related problems that occur on the Amtrak lines that are owned and operated by Amtrak, but those are the train lines that New Jersey Transit uses so it's shared infrastructure. When the heat gets above a certain point, I'm not exactly sure whether that's 90, 95, I think it's probably somewhere around 90.

The catenary wires sag from the heat and that basically messes up service. There's been a bunch of problems. Governor Murphy got a call about it last night and he didn't mention the fare holiday, much to my chagrin but he did say that by the end of the summer, he'd be doing something for New Jersey Transit riders.

Brian Lehrer: He doesn't know the courtesy tradition of breaking news on the monthly call-in show. No, he didn't. He broke two news stories this morning. I'm reading here from the official New Jersey Transit release this morning. It says, "The fare holiday is a way to express the sincere appreciation for customer's continued loyalty and patronage, particularly during a time when transit service has not consistently met their expectations or our own.

NJ Transit recognizes the impacts these service issues have had over the past few months and remains committed to improving the travel experience for transit customers." They're acknowledging that service has been rough, or as you put it, it's been a summer from hell. I wonder how rare that is.

Nancy Solomon: Yes, they certainly haven't been giving away tickets before this. Murphy has talked about this throughout his term and a half. He's talked about it on the show many, many times. He's famously said, "I'm going to fix New Jersey transit if it kills me," so that gets thrown back in his face a lot. He expresses a lot of concern and care and attention to this matter. It's a little beyond my understanding. I understand that it takes a lot of money to fix these problems, but it's unclear to me why things haven't gotten better over the six, seven years of his term.

Some things have gotten better. There used to be a lot more cancellations because they didn't have enough train conductors and engineers. They've improved some of the rolling stock. Of course, the gateway tunnel is now funded, and that will take another 15 years to build. They're already at work at one of the choke points on the northeast corridor, which is the portal bridge, which famously, it's a drawbridge that sometimes would get stuck, and it would take somebody with a big sledgehammer to get the thing closed while everybody's waiting on the train to get in and out of the city.

Brian Lehrer: We call that old technology legacy technology. The sledgehammer.

Nancy Solomon: Exactly. The governor did have some good news last night about some increased funding to go towards certain infrastructure projects.

Brian Lehrer: My first impression, when I read that the fare holiday would be the week leading up to Labor Day, I thought people might be more impressed if it was for the week after Labor Day instead of a week when so many commuters are off anyway. Then I saw that the monthly pass holders, which is probably a lot of the commuters, the regular users, monthly pass holders for August, will get a 25% discount for September so that's not nothing, right?

Nancy Solomon: No. I think the sentiment will be appreciated more than anything else. Like, okay, at least they're acknowledging how bad this has been. I think a lot of people understand that the train and rail system has been starved of funding for decades, and now it's getting better. The Biden administration has been very good on funding some of these infrastructure upgrades, and the Murphy administration has been very good about putting money towards New Jersey transit. Maybe not everything that transit advocates would like. There's a huge improvement happening, but it's going to take a long time to fix these things. In the meantime, it's a bit of cold comfort to be stuck on the train.

Brian Lehrer: It's not just on the state. You mentioned Amtrak. The governor brought up Amtrak in the call-in with you last night in relation to New Jersey Transits woes, here's that clip.

Governor Murphy: Amtrak has applied for about $300 million in federal grants specifically for the catenary wire infrastructure to be addressed. You were asking if there's money specifically? I'm not sure I know as we sit here what the status of that is, but they are all in on that and we're supporting them in any way we can.

Nancy Solomon: Is there any scenario in which that actually gets done before next summer, before the heat of next summer when the wires sag?

Governor Murphy: I'm not technically gifted enough to tell you whether or not. In other words, if they got the money tomorrow, could they get it done by next summer?

Nancy Solomon: They're not digging a tunnel under the Hudson, but I imagine it's still a pretty big involved job-

Governor Murphy: Yes, it is.

Nancy Solomon: -that will disrupt service for a while.

Governor Murphy: God, please, God know.

Nancy Solomon: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: I don't know if you could have come away from that exchange feeling any more optimistic or pessimistic about next summer. Did you?

Nancy Solomon: Not necessarily. Like I said, I think it's going to take time for all of the infrastructure investments to really pay off probably after Murphy is no longer in office. I think it'd be worth clarifying a few things because he said 300 million for the catenary wires and it's actually from my reading of the coverage, it's 13 million on the catenary wires and then there's a bunch of other funding.

They're basically going to modernize the corridor from New Brunswick up to Newark, I believe, and they're replacing some substations and they're replacing a couple of bridges. This is a real injection of infrastructure support and like a lot of these infrastructure projects, you just have to be patient and have a little faith that we're going to get there because it's going to take a while.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, who has reactions to or questions about the NJ Transit fare holiday, the appointment of George Helmy to the Senate, which we'll get to, or anything that came up on Ask Governor Murphy last night or anything else for our Nancy Solomon, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, call or text. Here's a text that came in already. It says, "This Jersey City voter thinks the fare holiday is a silly gimmick. Meanwhile, they're still spending $10 billion on an ineffective highway expansion instead of improving transit infrastructure." Is that a true comparison?

Nancy Solomon: Yes. I think that's fair. Governor Murphy has his reasons for supporting that project and says both things can happen. He can improve New Jersey Transit and invest in mass transit. At the same time, you can't ignore the roads. People in Jersey City are very upset about it. This is what's called the Turnpike extension. It runs from Newark Airport to the Holland Tunnel. It's basically Route 78 East, and a lot of that is elevated, very expensive to repair and improve, and they are basically widening it.

Advocates for public transit and people in New Jersey City who don't want the road widened say, what is the point of widening this road if you still have the bottleneck at the Holland Tunnel and it's just going to back up? I've spoken with the governor and also with his commissioner for transportation about this many times, and basically, their argument is this road needs to be repaired. It's very expensive to repair it. Even if we get to a zero-emission future in 10 years, which is the goal, there are still going to be electric cars and trucks that need to operate on the roads so we need roads to be fixed and repaired and work well.

I think, if that elevated highway fell down or there was some horrible thing that happened on it, people would be understandably upset. He's caught a little bit, and I think both sides have a legit point of view. It's just how you balance these things. Roads, public transit. I think Jersey has a long history of preferring roads and cars, and so it's hard for the transit advocates to really trust that the funding is always going to be there to improve mass transit.

Brian Lehrer: This fare holiday, August 26th to September 2nd, one listener text, "Excited about the fare holiday. I'm out of state, and we'll make sure to come during this time." Another text, "Is the fare holiday on the buses or only on the trains?"

Nancy Solomon: I can't answer that one. It's a good question.

Brian Lehrer: I think it's on the buses because I'm reading again from the NJ Transit release this morning, and it says, "During this period, fares will be waived for all modes of transportation."

Nancy Solomon: Let me just say one more thing about the fare holiday. There's been a lot of unhappiness among riders about the fact that this year, New Jersey Transit made the tickets have an expiration date of, I think it's 30 days. You buy a bunch of tickets because it's convenient to do it all at once. Especially these days where commuters maybe aren't doing five days a week in the city, so they can't. It's harder to plan how many tickets you're going to need. I know that's true. For me, it's a little frustrating to have such a short leash on those tickets that you purchase in advance.

Brian Lehrer: Just 30 days. I know the MTA commuter lines, Metro North, and Long Island Railroad, they give you, I believe, it's 60 days.

Nancy Solomon: That would be better, twice as good. I think there is reason for skepticism and disgruntlement among riders about the fare holiday. I get it, but I also see the governor trying to do something to acknowledge that he gets it, that this has been a real problem this summer.

Brian Lehrer: About the buses, the press release says all modes of transportation in the NJ Transit system but a lot of the bus lines are private so not everything. I don't know what counts. If you're going out of port authority to somewhere in Jersey, some of those bus lines are privately owned. I don't know if they count as NJ Transit. This morning, the governor appointed interim US Senator George Helmy to fill out Bob Menendez's term for the rest of the year. Nancy, I guess my first question is George who?

Nancy Solomon: Yes, right. George Helmy is very well known in deep political circles, but otherwise, not so much. He worked for both Cory Booker and the late Senator Frank Lautenberg, and then he became Murphy's chief of staff in 2019 and was there until last year, and now he is an executive vice president at RWJ Barnabas Health. This is a guy, he's very close to the governor. I think one of the most interesting responses that I've seen so far this morning came from Ross Baker, longtime political scientist at Rutgers, whose whole focus of his scholarship has been Congress.

This guy really knows the history of Congress. He tweeted, "George Helmy may not be a biological relative of Governor Phil Murphy, but naming Helmy to fill the vacant US Senate seat reminds us of his boosting his wife Tammy for the job. Murphy's ex-chief of staff is like a relative. Murphy disses Andy Kim and blocks his getting seniority." That was a very powerful tweet. It takes a little bit of unpacking if you want to hear more about what that means.

Brian Lehrer: They've been so close to each other. I guess he was Cory Booker's chief of staff, too. He's got some meaningful US Senate experience there. To Ross Baker's point, why wouldn't Murphy have appointed Andy Kim, who is the Democratic nominee in the Senate race right now? This appointment is only until the end of the year because that's when Menendez's term would have ended. Why didn't Murphy just appoint Kim and give him the further electoral advantage of being the incumbent?

Nancy Solomon: Right. It depends on who you ask. There are two basically opposing viewpoints on this. There are progressive Democrats who love Andy Kim and are supporting his Senate race and loved the fact that he took on both political reform and Tammy Murphy, which was seen as nepotism when she announced her run for Senate. He is the beloved leader of progressives currently in New Jersey, and people argue that he should have been given the seat. This is a democratic appointment, it would help him with his race in November.

More importantly, it would give him a leg up with seniority in the Senate because there'll be a class of freshmen coming in in January, and he will be ahead of all of them instead of part of them. That was the argument pro-Andy Kim. People went so far as to say, and not just like cranks and trolls, but legitimate people involved in political discourse in New Jersey said the governor was being petty when he refused to A, first, endorse Andy Kim and second, to give any real serious thought to appointing him to the Senate.

There's that. On the other side, and this is also a legit argument, is if Andy Kim were appointed to the Senate, that would leave his seat in the House vacant. We all know how close the split is between Democrats and Republicans. The way it works is Senate vacancies are appointed by the governor to be filled in a temporary basis until there's an election. House of Representative vacancies are not. They have to go through a special election. There's no way you would get one done by January really, to get somebody in there. You got to have a primary, then you got to have a special.

Basically, the argument on the kind of pro-Murphy side, even though he didn't talk about it last night when I asked him about it, is that he didn't want to create another vacancy. We already have one because Donald Payne died in April, and we're still going through the special election on that seat that would last till January. Bill Pascrell, another congressman who's 87 years old, is in the hospital.

Brian Lehrer: Right. He's in hospital.

Nancy Solomon: The idea is you don't want to create another vacancy. Better to just put a placeholder in there. Andy Kim's in pretty good shape to win the election in November. Republican hasn't won a Senate seat in New Jersey in 50 years. There are two opposing arguments depending on who you ask.

Brian Lehrer: Looking at our caller board, we're going to go right back to NJ Transit and highway expansion. Jordan in Jersey City, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Jordan: Hi, there. First-time caller, a long-time listener. My question is, and I know people that are actively opposing the expansion of the spur but the idea of having a single-seat ride from New York to the airport is something that we don't see here. The air link goes close to it, but not to the airport. Then in London, they built a single-seat train from Paddington to Heathrow that takes 15 minutes. It seems like instead of expanding the 78, if they could, I don't know, if they build a whole new rail line that would just run to New York that way. Just that philosophy of a single-seat ride.

Brian Lehrer: Jordan, thank you very much.

Jordan: That's all.

Brian Lehrer: Jordan, thank you. Staying on that, you mentioned EVs before and we've been talking about road expansion and mass transit. The governor also did talk about EV charging stations with you last night. Here's that clip.

Governor Murphy: Big deal, 250 million, we won this competitively, and this means a whole lot more charging stations on the parkway and the turnpike. I hope to walk out of here in January of '26 with a dramatically different reality on electric vehicle infrastructure. When we got here, we were decent in terms of the amount of vehicles. We were awful in terms of the infrastructure. We've stayed strong in the amount of vehicles. Our job has been laser-focused, not just on making the vehicles more affordable, but to build the infrastructure out. This is a huge step in that direction and it's a huge step toward the clean energy state that we aspire to.

Brian Lehrer: There's that duality, I guess, Nancy, you were talking about before, there's still going to be a lot of drivers in New Jersey. Part of the push for a greener world is not only out of cars, but it's into electric vehicles as opposed to gasoline-powered so both those things are happening.

Nancy Solomon: Yes, and the governor is correct in what he said that the state has improved from being very low on the list of states that had charging infrastructure, too. I think New Jersey's moved considerably up the list. I can't remember. I looked at it yesterday, but I think it's about 6th or 7th in the country.

Brian Lehrer: It's pretty good at 5th.

Nancy Solomon: This is very important. I think I look at the truck, EV charging money that's coming in that'll put charging stations on the turnpike for trucks. It's not very sexy, most of us are eagerly awaiting the opportunity to someday buy an electric vehicle and be able to charge it and go on longer trips. Do we care about trucks being able to charge? Probably not in terms of everyday people. If you look at the environmental impacts and the need, this is huge.

To electrify the trucking supply chain and the gas-powered trucks off the road is huge, and it's not going to happen without that infrastructure. The governor is rightly very proud of the fact that New Jersey was one of the states in the northeast corridor that got one of these grants and it's like Connecticut, Jersey, Maryland. This is building out that infrastructure on the whole northeast corridor and New Jersey is now going to be part of that.

Brian Lehrer: On a whole other issue, you got a call last night on Ask Governor Murphy as the school year is approaching from somebody who was raising the specter of a teacher shortage, at least in some places. This is from a caller named Frank. The governor responded like this.

Governor Murphy: I do know there's a particular strata of young teachers in the system, young educators, where the pension system is squeezing them and that's something there's no easy fix to that.

Speaker 1: That's so true.

Governor Murphy: We've had good conversations with, among others, NJEA on that front, trying to think about creative ways to deal with that. Thirdly, we have both tried to increase the pipeline and decrease the attrition. On the latter, it's making life less bureaucratic, eliminating things that have no logical need without lowering standards. On the pipeline, doing things like paid stipends for teacher apprenticeships, incenting stem education and focus where we have a particular need for educators, loan forgiveness programs, et cetera, et cetera. We've done similar things in healthcare.

Brian Lehrer: Nancy, talk about the context there. It seems like the implication is people are starting out in teaching, but they don't stay with it.

Nancy Solomon: Yes, I think there's a huge exodus that happens even among young teachers. They don't stay long in the profession. Of course, then, you've got a whole generation of teachers who are retiring, and there's just an out-and-out shortage. There's retention and longevity, but then there's also just a shortage. The governor talked about the fact this is not a New Jersey problem, it's a national problem, and I believe that's true. It's a bit his answer. It's a bit nibbling around the edges and he might acknowledge that, that really, this is just going to take a huge infusion of money to fix the pension issues and also to raise salaries. I think teacher salaries in New Jersey are better than a lot of places but this is just a very hard problem to crack for a governor because he's hemmed in by the property taxes that would go up if more money was put towards teacher salaries. That's a very tough choice for a governor to make so it's a very hard problem to solve.

Brian Lehrer: One more call on one more issue. Sam in Bloomfield, you're on WNYC with Nancy Solomon. Hi, Sam.

Sam: Hi, Brian. You are amazing. Thank you for all you do. I listen to you all the time. You're the best.

Brian Lehrer: You're too nice.

Sam: I was just calling to see if there's an update on the Essex–Hudson Greenway in Jersey. I live off the trail line. Hold on. I'm sorry. I have two small children. Tiny monsters. One second. I love you so much, Felix White. So sorry.

Nancy Solomon: It is real life for you.

Sam: I'm so sorry, I'm a Jersey dad.

Brian Lehrer: Two more New Jerseyans make their radio debut.

Sam: Exactly.

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead.

Sam: Yes, but it's supposed to arrival the high line in New York. It's supposed to help with flood waters in our area. We got hit with massive flooding a couple of years back. Bike trails to commute from Montclair all the way into the city and it was rumored that Murphy said a portion of it would be open by the time he left his first term of office. We've seen him rip up the lines. Just be huge for the community and getting people around in a green way to commute. Just curious if there's any updates on that. Thank you both so much.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. Nancy, you know about that?

Nancy Solomon: I know about it. I don't have an update. I'm not sure exactly where we are with the commitment to funding. Murphy has talked positively about it. He's excited about it. He wants to see it happen. I know we've had that level of conversation about it. What's in this year's budget for it which would be a key indicator if it's going to happen anytime soon? I do not know. Yes, it would do all those things. Imagine for New Yorkers, imagine a highline that runs Jersey City towards Hoboken and then extending that in both directions for bikers and pedestrians. There's nothing bad about that.

Brian Lehrer: They're so great. This is just personal interest but they're so great when you have these off-road trails, sometimes called rails to trails, when they build them on former railroad beds where trains don't run anymore. It's something that I personally like to do. I was actually just on vacation in the Lambertville, New Jersey area last year, largely-

Nancy Solomon: Like an highway.

Brian Lehrer: -to ride that. Yes, the canal trails that they have on both sides of the river down there. I've been doing little pieces at a time of the Empire State Trail, which runs largely off-road from New York to Albany. There are a lot of places where you can put in and ride for a while and get home. They're so great for pedestrians as well, and skaters and people with strollers to be in a green way, as the listener identified what that would be called. Of course, the high line is like that in the urban context in Manhattan where you really don't have to worry about cars, but you're not that far from-- You don't have to go all the way out to the mountains or something.

Nancy Solomon: It's something, Brian, you and I have never discussed this thing that we have in common because I, too, am a big lover of summer vacations on rail trails and just returned from one myself around Lake Champlain.

Brian Lehrer: How about that?

Nancy Solomon: Look at what's happened in New York City with the improvement of bike infrastructure and bike lanes and such. New Jersey is really behind on this, and it would be such an improvement to the quality of life here if we could get more bike lanes, more bike paths. You could connect from Maplewood to South Orange to Montclair here in Essex County. That would just be so popular among people. Yet, there's been no funding for that kind of thing as yet.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. My producer just looked up and saw there were lots of articles from late last year saying work was scheduled to begin on that greenway early this year, but then we're not seeing anything from this year saying it was actually kicked off so I guess it remains a question. There we have to leave it with our Nancy Solomon, who writes and reports and interviews about New Jersey for WNYC and Gothamist, including the monthly Ask Governor Murphy call-in, which was last night, and she usually comes on this show the morning after. Nancy, thanks a lot. Thanks for today.

Nancy Solomon: Thanks, Brian.

 

 

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