Phase 2 of the Portal Bridge cutover begins Sunday, Oct., 11. This is the final step to fully opening the new train bridge over the Hackensack River. It means reduced and altered service on all lines during construction.

“This is an extremely complex work procedure that we have to put in place," said NJ Transit President/CEO Kris Kolluri. "We have a live track, next to which we have to do this work. We have a group of people working on the job who are committed to doing this in the five weeks that have been allotted.”

The Raritan Valley Line will end at Newark these five weeks. The Morristown Line, Gladstone Branch and Montclair-Boonton Line will not offer the popular Midtown Direct service into the city. Instead, they will end at Hoboken Terminal, where commuters will have to take the PATH, bus or ferry to Manhattan.

“A whole lot of people don’t hit Hoboken Terminal very often, especially if they take it to Newark Broad Street and transfer there," said Joe Amditis. He works at the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University, and built reroutenj.org to map out the impact to your commute. 

"Maybe a 35-minute commute from Watsessing, you’re going to have to tack on maybe 18-20 minutes," said Amditis.

Boxcar bus transit says during the last cutover, its customer base grew from 2,000 to 5,000.

“You can look at our existing bus map to see if there are any of these that work for you, and if there aren’t, you can request a new route," said Boxcar CEO Joe Colangelo.

The cutover is set to finish November 15 -  the week before peak Thanksgiving travel.

“The Portal Bridge will no longer swing open during commuting hours, and then shut with a guy having to swing a sledgehammer in order to get the trains running again," said Colangelo. "It’s a great project, it’s going to be really helpful for our state.”

The promise of reliability ahead - with a temporary Toll of Commuting first.