Five weeks of single-track rail work starting October 9 will see service cuts near 62 percent. The window opens on a Friday, in the middle of the morning rush, and will overlap with several MetLife stadium event days.

After Colombian pop star Karol G plays her second show at MetLife Stadium on Friday night, the crowd will stream to the Meadowlands rail platform and repeat the routine that stadium crowds have followed all summer: wait for the next load-and-go train, which leaves as it fills, no more than 15 minutes apart in the post-show crush; ride the short spur to Secaucus Junction; check the last-train boards before committing to a connection.

These ordinary operations will pause on October 9, when Amtrak begins the second and final cutover of the Portal North Bridge: five weeks of scheduled work running through November 16. The cutover moves train operations from the 116-year-old Portal Bridge to its replacement, one track at a time, and this phase puts trains from both directions on a single track between Newark Penn Station and Secaucus Junction. Laura Mason, Amtrak's executive vice president of capital delivery, told the railroad's July 29 board meeting that the agencies are “continuing to take lessons from the spring to mitigate the delays and the impact and balance and shift the pain of those reductions,” as reported by NJ.com, and that “this impact will look and feel similar.” The agencies are building the fall window to spread the burden across rider groups. Mason put the fall reduction on the order of 62 percent.

The Portal Bridge spans the Hackensack River where it separates Newark from Secaucus, and every train feeding the junction from the south and west crosses it. During the work, riders on the Main, Bergen County and Pascack Valley lines change at Secaucus for the last leg to Manhattan, per the agency's service guidance, and the trains they change to arrive from the west and south. A Bergen County commuter bound for New York rides Portal-crossing service whether the connection started in Trenton or in Long Branch. NJ Transit's own project page puts the corridor at 200,000 passengers a day before the pandemic.

The bridge opened in 1910 with a swing span that rotates open for river traffic, and the $2.3 billion replacement next to it exists because of what happens when the span sticks. “When it happens, you literally have to have a person go out there with a hammer and try to put the tracks back in,” NJ TRANSIT President and CEO Kris Kolluri said in February. The disruption has a payoff, he told CBS News New York: “The most important thing I want people to remember is we're not doing this for fun. We're doing this because there's a brand new bridge.”

The old bridge has forced the project's hand once already: a catenary pole leaning toward a live track pressed the new span into early service March 13, “about two and a half days ahead of schedule,” one day after a ceremonial first trip with Governor Mikie Sherrill aboard; regular schedules resumed March 15.

The first phase ran from February 15 to March 15

During the spring construction, trains through the corridor fell from 48 an hour to 18. All but one of NJ TRANSIT's rail lines lost service; the Atlantic City Line was untouched. Midtown Direct trains on the Gladstone, Morristown and Montclair-Boonton lines went to Hoboken on weekdays, and weekend trains still reached New York Penn Station. Roughly 280 Amtrak trains were caught up in the same period.

PATH, the ferries and the 126 bus cross-honored tickets and absorbed the overflow. NJ TRANSIT told riders to travel "before 7 a.m. or after 9 a.m. and before 4 p.m. or after 7 p.m."

A rider-built site called Reroute NJ mapped the disruption line by line, warning that even riders who never transfer at Secaucus felt the junction's delays "ripple across the entire system." The site relays the agency's own estimate that Hoboken-bound trips under the cross-honoring saved regular riders up to 25 percent.

The first morning of the spring construction brought 27 cancellations, which the agency attributed to crew-assignment rules and called a "temporary transition issue." Rider Katie Schalow told CBS News New York she "got up about 45 minutes earlier to make sure" she checked the times. "It was horrible. I am not going to lie," said Stafan Stephen, a commuter, in comments to NJ Spotlight News. "It was congested with people, and it just sucks."

Second phase set for after the World Cup

Amtrak and NJ TRANSIT set the final cutover for after the World Cup in June and July, when the tournament's crowds broke NJ TRANSIT's event-ridership record: more than 370,000 passengers across eight matches, with 700 ambassadors working 4,000 shifts in more than 40 languages. The operation was planned at $48 million, around a commitment to move 40,000 fans per match day; actual rail ridership ran 20,000–26,000 per match.

During the World Cup, NJ TRANSIT restricted bus service to American Dream from five hours before each match until five hours after, per the event's commuter guidance. The agency's after-action report found that pedestrian traffic linking the stadium and American Dream ran more than 80 percent above FIFA's projections and concluded the stadium-and-mall complex will stay "primarily automobile-oriented," with roughly 28,000 parking spaces between the stadium and the mall. The report recommends future event plans assume no more than 20,000 rail passengers in a two-hour window and formally incorporate American Dream's parking into those plans.

Construction window spans several stadium events

The spring window ran with the stadium dark, but the fall one does not. Seven event days land inside the work window, starting with the Jets and the Browns on Sunday, October 11. Usher and Chris Brown perform on October 15. The games resume with the Giants and Saints on October 18, the Jets and Dolphins on October 25, the Jets and Raiders on November 1, the Giants and Commanders on November 12, and the Jets and Bills on November 15. The last event before the work begins is the Giants-Cardinals game on Sunday, October 4.

As of this week, no line-by-line fall schedules are published. The agencies have said the impact will resemble the spring outage, with the burden deliberately spread across rider groups. They have not yet said which lines will absorb it, or at what specific times. The plan is expected before the first morning of construction: Friday, October 9.

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Sources

• Amtrak, “NJ TRANSIT and Amtrak Prepare to Open First Track on New Portal North Bridge” (March 12, 2026)

• CBS News New York, “Portal Bridge transfer means NJ Transit, Amtrak riders will see big changes” (February 16, 2026)

• CBS News New York, report on commuters adjusting to Portal Bridge service cuts, including remarks by NJ TRANSIT President and CEO Kris Kolluri (February 17, 2026)

• Higgs, Larry, NJ.com, “N.J. bridge outage will have a major impact on Amtrak and NJ Transit riders” (August 3, 2026)

• MetLife Stadium, “Events” calendar (accessed September 14, 2026)

• NJ Spotlight News, “'It just sucks': Commuters slam month of upended rail service” (February 18, 2026)

• NJ TRANSIT, “Getting to New York by Train” (accessed September 14, 2026)

• NJ TRANSIT, “Meadowlands” event schedule (accessed September 14, 2026)

• NJ TRANSIT, “Portal Bridge Cutover” service page (March 15, 2026)

• NJ TRANSIT, “Portal North Bridge” project page (accessed September 14, 2026)

• NJ TRANSIT, “Ready to Kick Off the NFL Regular Season at MetLife Stadium” (September 11, 2026)

• NJ.com, “NJ Transit moved a record number of fans during World Cup and still lost money” (updated August 26, 2026)

• njtworldcup.com, World Cup commuter guidance, American Dream bus service restrictions (accessed September 14, 2026)

• Reroute NJ, “Portal Bridge Cutover Guide” (accessed September 14, 2026)

• ROI-NJ, “First track on new Portal North Bridge to enter service March 16” (March 13, 2026)

• Trains, “NJ Transit ridership for first World Cup game meets revised target” (updated) (June 15, 2026)

• WABC-TV, “Portal Bridge cutover begins, impacting NJ Transit, Amtrak commuters” (February 15, 2026)

• Wilson, Colleen, NorthJersey.com, “In baptism by fire, here's how new Portal Bridge opened early” (March 15, 2026)

• WRNJ, report on NJ TRANSIT's World Cup after-action findings (July 23, 2026)

Photo: Portal North Bridge, June 4, 2025. NJTScottMaas via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0; image cropped and overlaid.