well with any luck New Jersey Transit Riders could get a little cash to ease their troubles Congressman Josh Gottheimer is pushing a new public transit ridership plan calling on Amtrak to reimburse passengers if they experience long delays caused by lines the rail agency controls the action comes after customers were left stranded on trains and platforms for hours this summer in stifling heat and with few Alternatives all due to Amtrak's aging infrastructure now gimer and local leaders want a passenger Bill of Rights one that mirrors those of Airlines and for the agency to speed up its work fixing the problems senior correspondent Joanna gagas has the details it's time for Amtrak to start using the dollars we've allocated to them to start fixing these problems right now standing in front of an NJ Transit train station in Glenrock today Congressman Josh gimer alongside state and local leaders announced new measures to get NJ Transit and Amtrak systems back on track we will Implement a new rail passenger Bill of Rights modeled after the airline passenger Bill of Rights that the Department of Transportation introduced earlier this year there's no reason we should just address passenger rights for the air we should also do it for the rail the legislation will guarantee that passengers receive automatic prompt and full refunds when their trains are canceled or significantly Changed by more than 3 hours just like the airlines the passenger Bill of Rights would be included in new legislation called The All Aboard act that the congressman is still working on he says it would get all hands on deck to finally fix the train delays that have made this summer miserable for commuters some calling it The Summer of hell I represent 16 towns a lot of those residents are commuters and they commute from Fon from Glenrock from all over and need ways to get into the city with trouble but trouble seems to be finding commuters across the state almost two weeks ago passengers were stuck on a train leaving New York with no AC in sweltering heat for 3 hours some suffering minor health issues as a result this weekend an electrical fire broke out on an NJ Transit train leaving Point Pleasant although no one was injured and delays and cancellations have become the new Norm for far too many passengers lately it seems like especially this summer there have been lots of delays with New Jersey train it lots of issues with getting into the city so we are very grateful to our elected officials who are here to help try to solve these problems but many of the problems are caused by Amtrak's old infrastructure Amtrak owns the rails that NJ Transit operates on and NJ Transit pays them $100 million a year to use those rails so the second part of gimr's Bill would require Amtrak to begin spending the 66 billion that was allocated to them through the bipartisan infrastructure Bill and put an end to their their runto fail strategy those of you who don't know what run to fail is I'll explain this you won't believe it Amtrak doesn't replace its infrastructure until is well beyond his lifespan if a piece of infrastructure was meant to last say till 2024 they might plan to keep it till 2025 or 2026 until it fails in other words failure is part of their strategy and his bill would put the burden back on Amtrak when refunds have to be issued the rail passenger Bill of Rights will apply to Amtrak and ensure that when Amtrak is to blame for New Jersey Transit delay Amtrak will foot the bill for refunds on New Jersey Transit we reached out to NJ Transit and Amtrak to get their reaction to the proposal NJ Transit offered no comment and Amtrak didn't respond in time for the story but NJ transit's facing a massive budget deficit in the next fiscal year and having to issue refunds to passengers could hurt the bottom line gimer is also calling for a meeting with Transportation secretary Pete budajudge in the coming weeks question I want to know from the secretary will be how do we get these doll is moving faster to fix the problem are there more resources you know Human Resources we can put on the problem to move faster the bill is expected to be released later this week Congressman Gottheimer believes that due to the pervasiveness of the NJ Transit issues this summer it will have bipartisan support in Glenrock I'm Joanna Gagis NJ Spotlight News