Lauren Rivera 
In late July, The Hoboken Girl team shared a breakdown of all the issues the PATH has faced since May 2025. Whether it was train fires sending commuters to the hospital or delayed trains that ended in complete service shutdowns, it’s been a rough few months for local commuters, and now they’re asking why. Some point to funding, others say it’s the whole system. Read on for a detailed look into what’s been happening behind the scenes at the PATH and what might explain the issues we’ve been seeing.
PATH Woes, Continued
Since July 2025, there have been a few updates to the ongoing PATH saga. On August 4th, during the early morning commute, a fire broke out underneath an Eastbound train at the Newport Station in Jersey City. The train filled with smoke, and passengers were evacuated onto the platform. According to CBS News, some experienced chest pains as they exited the train, others received oxygen on-site, and a few were taken to the hospital for smoke-related injuries.
Read More: Delays, Closures, Confusion: What’s Happening with the PATH?
Just six days later, around 2AM on August 10th, a man at the Hoboken station was found unconscious after suffering an electric shock. Per the Daily Voice, he had been trying to retrieve a dropped phone when he came in contact with the third rail, which delivers high-voltage power to the trains. The man was taken to the hospital, and power to the third rail was shut off for around two hours.
Oh, and ICYMI, the Hoboken PATH station will be closed from 11:59PM on August 28th to 5AM on September 2nd for “urgent repairs to the track and interlocking system.” Read more about this here.
It seems as if PATH train malfunctions are not going away anytime soon, and despite the news of upcoming maintenance shutdowns aimed at fixing said issues, most riders have lost hope that these efforts will fully resolve the problems.
What’s the Problem? Is It Funding?
Every time a new headline surfaces about PATH’s issues, time and time again the same question crosses every rider’s mind: What is going on? Some local officials have given their two cents as to what they think the problem is, including Hoboken Mayor Ravi S. Bhalla.
On July 13th, 2025, in an interview with Gothamist, Mayor Bhalla voiced his frustrations with the faulty PATH system, stating that “The Port Authority — a bi‑state agency run by both New York and New Jersey — has routinely underfunded the PATH system and instead has opted for multi‑billion dollar investments to the region’s new airport terminals.”
“The concern is that a lower budget … increases the timeline for delays, … shutdowns on weekend service… and increases the intervals between trains,” he said.
The multi-billion-dollar investments that Mayor Bhalla speaks of are in reference to the Port Authority’s (PANYNJ) various transit restoration projects. The Hoboken Girl went directly to the source to find out if the PATH is underfunded and spoke with Seth Stein, a spokesperson for the PANYNJ, who provided details on the agency’s 2025 budget. So, let’s break down the numbers.
For its 2025 budget, PANYNJ has designated $9.4 billion in total funding. Of the number, the capital budget, which includes long-term projects like multi-year-long restorations, includes:
- $2.07 billion toward the JFK Terminal One redevelopment, Newark Liberty International Airport AirTrain replacement, + LaGuardia Airport ground access
- $960 million to the Midtown Bus Terminal + George Washington Bridge restorations
- $134 million to Port Newark + wharf repairs
- $74 million for maintenance + upgrades at the World Trade Center
Budget for the PATH
- A total of $908 million is set aside for the PATH
- Capital budget is $338 million
- Operational budget (the day-to-day system costs) is $570 million
- $104 million of that $338 million is set aside for PATH Forward, a program aiming to rehabilitate the Hoboken, Grove Street, Newport, and Exchange Place stations over two years
Seth also shares that over the past five years, the PANYNJ has spent a total of $3 billion on PATH improvements, which include station improvements, TAPP, faregates, rail cars, signal upgrades, and more.
So, is the PATH underfunded? No, not really. But funding is an issue with where the money comes from.
Looking at the JFK terminal one redevelopment project as an example, the total cost for this project is $9.5 billion, according to the budget. This amount does not come from the PANYNJ directly, Seth says. This project is entirely funded by private and third-party partners, which can include airlines and private developers.
PATH upgrades, on the other hand, mostly come from the agency’s capital expenditure budget, meaning from the PANYNJ directly, with no third-party investor involvement. Seth says that the revenue from train fares only totals $182 million, “…meaning nearly 80% of the money spent on PATH does not come from fare revenue,” he says.
It’s Also a Systemic Issue
The problems the PATH is currently facing are not unique to the system. According to a 2025 backlog analysis conducted by the Federal Transit Administration + the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center, using 2022 data, railway systems across the country are facing a total of $140.2 billion in deferred maintenance and repairs. In 2018, the backlog was only $101.4 billion, indicating a $38.8 billion or 38% increase in just four years.
Of the $140.2 billion backlog, $33.5 billion comes from system assets, including signals, train controls, communications, and more. The analysis claims that, among all categories, system assets are in the worst condition.
Transit experts for the Eno Center for Transportation, Malcolm Kenton, a consultant and writer, and Paul Lewis, the Vice President of Policy and Finance, in their essay Tools for a Smoother Ride, point to outdated maintenance practices as a reason for this nationwide problem.
The authors claim that most transit agencies use generic engineering estimates to determine when maintenance is needed on an asset. This means agencies are assigning each asset an expected lifespan and planning replacement around that date without accounting for factors like weather damage, heavy usage, or general wear and tear. What this means in practice: if a rail switch is expected to last 30 years before replacement, it usually isn’t replaced until it reaches that 30-year mark, even if it actually needed to be replaced years before that. This means that we can assume most repairs we see today are reactive, not preventive.
Citing a 2013 U.S. Government Accountability Office report, the authors claim that “…while most transit agencies can quantify their maintenance backlog and have inventories that provide accessible, consistent, and comprehensive information about their assets, the actual condition of the assets is ‘generally not measured,’” the essay says.
Another major factor is that there are no federal standards for asset management, the analysis claims, meaning there is no strict guideline an agency must follow when analyzing the condition of an asset.
The Federal Transportation Administration currently uses a measurement system called the Transit Economic Requirements Model (TERM), which ranks assets on a scale of one to five, with one being “poor” and five being “excellent.” Using this system, an asset is considered to be in “good repair” if it scores 2.5 or higher. The authors argue that on this system, “even the definition of ‘state of good repair’ (SOGR) has no [real] consensus.”
The PANYNJ itself uses this measurement system for federal reporting, but in 2018, it began rolling out a new internal system called the Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) program, which will serve as an addition to TERM, according to Route Fifty. The new system, which is still being integrated in phases today, will be a more holistic approach to determine the condition of an asset and when it needs to be replaced.
EAM, which has yet to be given a timeline as to when it will be fully implemented, will eventually form the internal backbone of PATH’s asset management approach, hopefully meaning riders can expect a more reliable transit system sometime in the future.
See More: Where to Find ADA-Accessible Train Stations in New Jersey
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