Murphy announces $49 million to renovate New Brunswick train station

Gov. Phil Murphy (D-N.J.) recently announced that $49 million in New Jersey’s budget will be used to renovate the New Brunswick train station, according to an article by NJ Advance Media.

The funding is part of $814 million in the debt defeasance and prevention fund from Murphy’s 2023 budget that was allocated to repair train stations and comes a few years after Amtrak announced that it would allocate $31 million to renovate train stations across the state in 2019.

Murphy said that the new funding will be used to extend and replace passenger platforms as well as to revamp elevators and escalators.

In addition, new lighting will be installed, and air conditioning and heating systems will be upgraded, according to the article.

The project will be managed by the Middlesex County Improvement Authority, but the construction’s end date is unknown as of now.

The 119-year-old station was built in 1903, when Rutgers’ athletics teams were known as Queensmen instead of the Scarlet Knights, and is located across from The Hub, an in-construction project which will have medical research facilities.

“This station has lived through New Brunswick’s ups and downs,” Murphy said. “It has witnessed the buildings around it be demolished and replaced, only to be demolished and replaced again ... It can and it will again be a point of pride for the New Brunswick rising around us.”