New Jersey's very bad week: A screeching rail system halt and airport meltdown plague the state

New Jersey’s beloved musical bard Bruce Springsteen promised Wendy in his breakthrough hit “Born to Run" that some day “we’re gonna get to that place where we really wanna go, and we’ll walk in the sun.” But in recent days, keeping that promise to Wendy — and to everybody else trying to get in and out of the Garden State — has gotten a whole lot harder.

New Jersey’s beloved musical bard Bruce Springsteen promised Wendy in his breakthrough hit “Born to Run" that some day “we’re gonna get to that place where we really wanna go, and we’ll walk in the sun.”

But in recent days, keeping that promise to Wendy — and to everybody else trying to get in and out of the Garden State — has gotten a whole lot harder.

Springsteen's song was released in 1975, well before congestion pricing jacked up the cost of driving into New York City; well before air traffic controllers began losing radio and radar contact with the planes they were guiding into Newark Liberty International Airport; and well before the New Jersey Transit engineers walked off the job just after midnight Friday for the first time in 40 years.

The latest in that trifecta of travel challenges left some 100,000 NJ Transit train riders wondering Friday how they'll make their commutes to work.

"I have no idea, honestly," said Julia Slaby, who lives in Lyndhurst and was trying to get to Manhattan for her last day of classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology. "Maybe I'll take the bus."