Audit Report: Portal North Bridge Project Progressing, but ‘Opportunities to Improve’ Exist

Artist’s rendering of Portal North Bridge

NJ Transit

WASHINGTON, D.C. – From the Officer of Inspector General, National Railroad Passenger Corporation, it has found the Portal North Bridge project is on budget and on schedule.

The purpose of AmtrakOIG is to provide oversight of Amtrak’s programs and operations via audits and investigations. The audit report, used to assess Amtrak’s efforts to support NJ Transit and oversee its interests as construction continues, has found that Amtrak has “opportunities to improve its support to NJ Transit.” NJ Transit is the lead sponsor of the project. Additionally, the report did not see a demand for track outages and company labor, and that “it had differing expectations with NJ Transit related to information sharing, and it did not initially staff its project team to effectively manage its work on the project.”

Improvements were recommended that include identifying outage, labor, and information needs at the outside of future projects. For the Portal North Bridge project, the recommendation is that Amtrak assesses and addresses “where information-sharing expectations may continue to vary with NJ Transit.”