Transitgrid — arguably the most controversial proposal in NJ Transit’s portfolio of capital projects — has been canceled, according to three sources who were not authorized to publicly discuss the decision.
NJ Transit issued a press release Friday morning announcing the decision saying it was not “financially feasible.”
“Reallocation of the (microgrid central facility) funding not only supports these high-priority resiliency projects, it also ensures that good-paying, union construction jobs that this funding supports remain in New Jersey,” said New Jersey Department of Transportation Commissioner Diane Gutierrez-Scaccetti.
NJ Transit also said that since Transitgrid was initially designed, improvement to the parts of the affected power grid made the project “much less necessary.”
The agency credited PSE&G’s “significant investments in power grid resiliency.”
After Superstorm Sandy flooded the region in 2012 and led to shuttered transportation service, the project was originally developed to build a microgrid that would use a natural gas-powered plant to electrify some of the agency’s rail lines in the event of a blackout. When not used during an emergency, NJ Transit could sell power to other railroads, like Amtrak. NJ Transit was awarded a $409.7 million federal grant for the project in 2014 through a Federal Transit Administration emergency response grant program.