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Atlantic City Rail shutdown will continue at least until spring

It's possible the line could stay inactive for another five months.

The Atlantic City Rail Line has been out of service since September.
The Atlantic City Rail Line has been out of service since September.Read more--- Alejandro A. Alvarez

With January nearly over, NJ Transit acknowledged Friday that the suspended Atlantic City Rail Line would not resume service this month. Passengers will have to wait until at least April.

The transit agency released a statement Friday saying the line, which served close to 2,000 passengers a day, wouldn’t return to service until some time between April and June. The agency cited a shortage of engineers and equipment as the reason for the delay. Training and maintenance inspections were continuing, the statement said.

>>READ MORE: Work on Atlantic City Rail is done, but when trains will run remains unclear

Rail passengers have been making do with bus service during the line’s suspension.

As recently as December, NJ Transit was open to the possibility that the Atlantic City rail service could resume service in January. It did not respond to questions Friday asking whether new information or developments occurred in the first three weeks of the year that necessitated further delay. NJ Transit would prioritize reopening the Atlantic City Line and the Princeton Branch in the second quarter, the statement said, though it did not specify when in that three-month period. NJ Transit officials have repeatedly said they are committed to keeping the Atlantic City Line operational. It carries less than 1 percent of all NJ Transit passengers.

NJ Transit shut down the line in September 2018 as part of a frantic rush to install enough of the safety system, Positive Train Control, to qualify for an extension on a federal deadline to have the system in place by the end of last year. PTC can automatically slow or stop a train to prevent derailments and crashes.

NJ Transit was painfully slow in installing the system and could never have met the deadline, but qualifying for the extension allowed the railroad to continue running without incurring potential daily fines from the Federal Railroad Administration. NJ Transit now has until 2020 to fully activate PTC.

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The Atlantic City Line, though, has PTC equipment in place on its 60 miles of track, officials acknowledged in December. During the shutdown, the four locomotives and 16 passenger cars, along with some staff, from the Atlantic City Line supplemented busy lines in North Jersey that had been depleted due to PTC installation. The need for the equipment on other lines is a factor in keeping the Atlantic City Line shut down, officials have said.

Getting the safety system online requires vehicles to be pulled out of service, and NJ Transit has had to run its service with fewer cars statewide, leading to cancellations and delays on its busiest routes. In November 2018, NJ Transit as a whole had an 82 percent on-time rate, a dramatic low for the service. That rebounded to 90 percent in December.