Why we built Reroute NJ

On February 15, NJ Transit is implementing the largest service disruption in its history. For four weeks, as Amtrak connects the new Portal North Bridge to the Northeast Corridor, every rail line except the Atlantic City Rail Line will be affected. Roughly half of all trains between New Jersey and New York will be cut.

Hundreds of thousands of commuters need to figure out, in a short time, how their daily routine changes. The official resources don't always give you the clear, personalized answer you need at 6:30 in the morning when you're trying to get to work.

Reroute NJ is an attempt to help.

Five tools, eleven languages

We built five interactive tools that help riders answer the questions they're asking:

Line guide — Select your NJ Transit line and station to see exactly how your commute changes, what alternative routes are available, and what tickets you need. Works for both directions: morning commuters heading into NYC and evening commuters heading home.

Commute comparison — Pick your NJ station and your Manhattan destination, and see every route option side by side with visual time breakdowns. PATH vs. ferry vs. bus, ranked by total travel time, with cost and transfer details.

News coverage — Reporting about the cutover from local and regional news sources, updated throughout the day. Filter by source, line, direction, or category.

Interactive map — All five affected NJ Transit lines rendered on a map with station markers, key transfer points (Hoboken Terminal, Secaucus Junction, Newark Penn), and the Portal Bridge location over the Hackensack River.

Embed and share — Iframe embed codes, direct links, and instructions for newsrooms and publishers who want to republish any of these tools on their own sites.

Every tool page is available in 11 languages: English, Spanish, Chinese, Tagalog, Korean, Portuguese, Gujarati, Hindi, Italian, Arabic, and Polish. These aren't machine-translated afterthoughts — each language has its own set of pages with translated navigation, labels, descriptions, and metadata. Station names, line names, and place names stay in English because that's what's on the signs.

Why it's built the way it is

Reroute NJ is a zero-build static site. Plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. No frameworks, no npm, no build step. You can fork the repo, edit a file, and deploy it on GitHub Pages in minutes.

We wanted the project to be accessible to anyone who might want to contribute — journalists who can add articles to the coverage feed, community members who can report inaccuracies, and developers who can add features. Lowering the barrier to contribution matters more than using the latest technology.

Everything is client-side. No server, no database, no API keys. The data is bundled as JSON and JavaScript objects. The site is fast and works even if GitHub's servers are under load.

For newsrooms and publishers

We built Reroute NJ to be shared, embedded, and republished. If you run a local news site, a community blog, or a transit advocacy page, we want you to use these tools.

• Embed any tool on your website using our embed code generator. Copy and paste an iframe.
• Link to the tools from your Portal Bridge coverage. The URLs are permanent and have social meta tags for clean previews.
• Fork the project and run your own branded version. The code is MIT-licensed. Change the colors, add your logo, deploy it on your own domain.
• Add your coverage to our news feed. Open a GitHub issue or email [email protected] with your article links.

We're interested in hearing from local publishers and community news outlets who serve the specific towns affected by the cutover. Your local coverage is what riders need, and we want to help get it in front of them.

How you can help

This is a community project and we need community help:

• Share the tool. Text it to your train friends. Post it in your town's Facebook group. The more people who know about it, the better it works.
• Report inaccuracies. If a travel time estimate is wrong, or a schedule change isn't reflected, let us know.
• Suggest articles. Found good Portal Bridge coverage we haven't listed? Submit it.
• Contribute code. The GitHub repo is open. No build step, no framework knowledge required. If you can edit HTML, you can contribute.
• Help with accessibility. We want the tool to work for everyone. Screen reader testing, keyboard navigation improvements, and WCAG compliance review are all welcome.

The bigger picture

The Portal Bridge cutover is painful, but it's a good thing. The 115-year-old Portal Bridge has been the worst bottleneck on the Northeast Corridor for decades. Every time it gets stuck opening for boat traffic, cascading delays affect hundreds of thousands of riders. The new Portal North Bridge eliminates that problem.

This four-week disruption is the price of progress. When Phase 2 comes in the fall of 2026, we'll update Reroute NJ to cover that, too.

In the meantime, we hope these tools make the next month a little easier to navigate. Plan ahead, be patient with each other on the platforms, and remember: this is temporary.