Need to Know
The Delco Lead project for New Jersey Transit will create secure, storm-proof storage for rail cars.
By 2025 there were more than 245,000 accidental utility outages due to ground work in the US.
It remains unclear why a construction crew accidentally cut a buried fiber optic cable used by federal air traffic controllers, in New Brunswick, NJ, Sept. 22, disrupting air travel to parts of the northeastern U.S. Workers had been building a New Jersey Public Transportation Project.
Federal transportation officials used the crash, which caused the cancellation of hundreds of flights, to call for more funding for air traffic control infrastructure. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy wants Congress to approve $30 billion to modernize aviation infrastructure, including billions for the Federal Aviation Administration to replace outdated air traffic management systems.
While fiber-optic cable is gradually replacing copper cable in the air traffic system, “we’re replacing the same network we’ve used for 40 years,” Duffy told a Fox News television interviewer. “We want to have a whole new network where this never happens again.”
The New Jersey Transit project, known as Delco Lead, involved the creation of a flood-resistant yard that will provide safe storage for New Jersey Transit railcars and locomotives during extreme weather events. According to New Jersey Transit, a key contract had been awarded to Howell, NJ-based George Harms Construction.
It is unclear whether George Harms Construction or another contractor’s crew accidentally cut the wire. The company could not immediately be reached for comment.
According to the Common Ground Alliance, there were 245,000 damage incidents during ground work in the US by 2025. The main causes included failure to contact a One Call Center, failure to maintain clearance of verified marks, and missing or incorrectly made marks.
State laws lay out the duties of both excavators and facility owners before any excavation begins, according to the Burke Moore Law Group.
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In many of these cases, fault for the error and potential liability for costs rests on the accuracy of the floor markings.
At the New Brunswick job site, “preliminary information indicates the crew was operating approximately 10 feet from the utility marks,” New Jersey Transit said. The transit agency added that it was “determining whether it was Verizon or the contractor that made the service markings at the site.”
The root cause of the outage is still being resolved. The cable connection was vital to Northeast air traffic control and required most of the day to repair. In a statement, New Jersey Transit stated that the cable “served as a backup to a primary circuit system that failed,” NJ Transit said. But even that is not certain. The Federal Aviation Administration stated that the switch to the safety fiber-optic cable was made in error.
