NJ Transit fires manager of new Portal Bridge construction, part of Gateway program

NJ Transit's chief of construction management, who was overseeing the Portal Bridge project — the largest single project in the agency's history — was fired this week.

Mohammed Nasim, a licensed engineer who has more than 30 years of experience delivering large projects, said he was given no reason for his firing, except that he was an "at will" employee and was escorted out of the agency's Newark headquarters by police.

"It was a very unfair decision. Many people were shocked, including the FTA, the contractor," he said when reached by phone, referring to the Federal Transit Administration.

Nasim was hired by NJ Transit in 2021 after previously working at Amtrak as the project manager for the Gateway program.

NJ Transit spokesman Jim Smith did not answer questions posed by NorthJersey.com, including why he was fired, but confirmed Nasim's departure from the agency.

"We have designated an internal replacement from Capital Programs, and the transition will be seamless," Smith said.

Stephen Sigmund, a spokesman for the Gateway Development Commission, declined to comment.

The central project Nasim was overseeing while at NJ Transit was the $2.3 billion Portal North Bridge, a two-track, fixed-span replacement of the 113-year-old swing-span bridge, still in operation, which requires a sledgehammer to whack it into place after it opens. The new Portal Bridge is part of the first phase of the Gateway program, which involves building replacement train tunnels under the Hudson River into Manhattan.

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New Portal Bridge project on time so far

The Portal Bridge replacement project is on time and on budget, but Nasim said he warned the leadership teams at the FTA and Amtrak and those above him at NJ Transit that he had some concerns, including the need for support staff for the contractor and settlement issues from construction.

The latter, he said, could affect the track alignment at the old Portal Bridge and the structures that support the overhead wires that power the trains, which have led to work stoppages on the new bridge.

These concerns, Nasim said, were ignored, and on one occasion at a meeting where he raised them, he was told by an NJ Transit peer to "shut up."

"It was totally unfair. I don’t know why NJ Transit took such a drastic step. It was totally uncalled for," he said of his dismissal.

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Critical choke points along Northeast Corridor

The old Portal Bridge and the rail tunnels under the Hudson are the same age. They are critical choke points along the Northeast Corridor that can cause significant delays into and out of New York's Penn Station, the busiest transportation hub in North America.

Getting these projects off the ground has been challenging after they were stalled under former President Donald Trump. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie canceled the predecessor program, known as ARC.

For more than a year, the Gateway Development Commission — the new bistate agency overseeing the tunnel-related projects — has worked to prove to the Federal Transit Administration that it has the expertise and competency to manage the size and scale of the program.

Though NJ Transit is the primary sponsor of the Portal Bridge portion of the program, the cohesion of all the involved partners and agencies and their managers, working on the entire suite of Gateway projects, is critical to their success.

The Gateway Development Commission is still working to secure a $6.88 billion federal grant from the FTA for the tunnels program.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: NJ Transit fires manager of new Portal Bridge project