A pregnant New Jersey Transit commuter says she was kicked off a bus Thursday morning because the ticket app wasn't working and the driver refused to let her board.
NJ Transit first alerted its riders that the MyTix app was broken at around 10 a.m., tweeting that its team was aware of the problem and addressing it.
But NJ Transit employees apparently didn't get the message, and some riders said they were forced to pay the fare on board, along with the supplemental $5 on-board fee.
One pregnant woman was rejected altogether from riding a bus. She tweeted around 9 a.m. -- before NJ Transit alerted its riders on Twitter that the ticket app was broken -- "I am 7 months pregnant and the bus driver took me off the bus bc the app didn't work and I only had $3 on me instead of the $4.50."
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The agency replied to the woman, asking for the bus stop and bus number.
A spokeswoman for NJ Transit later told News 4 it was "totally unacceptable" of the driver to refuse to let the woman on and that the driver is being retrained.
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"Crews on both the bus and rail were instructed to honor whatever was shown to them" during the app outage, spokeswoman Nancy Snyder said, emphasizing that conductors and operators were proactively instructed to do so through an internal communication system.
Still, one rider tweeted, "I told the conductor and he said it's not his problem. What?"
Snyder says that any rider who had to pay on board because of the broken app can request a refund by calling 973-491-8810.
The app was functioning again by 11 a.m.
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NJ Transit riders have already been dealing with sporadic train cancellations due to a crew shortage as major repair work at Penn Station entered its second week.
A new NBC 4 New York/Marist poll found about a quarter of New Jersey households have been impacted by the work at Penn Station, which has cut schedules on some NJ Transit trains. Among those impacted, nearly 7 in 10 have had to budget more travel time to get to their destination, and about 4 in 10 have gotten significantly delayed or been late for work or an appointment; about 3 in 10 have had to change plans entirely.
Forty-one percent of New Jersey households impacted by the work say NJ Transit has done an excellent or good job keeping people informed of changes and delays. But fewer than 1 in 4 household affected by the work give NJ Transit above-average grades to the way it's handled compensation and accommodations for inconvenienced riders.
Overall, about 31 percent of New Jersey residents give NJ Transit a C-grade for the way they've handled the service disruption. A quarter of them give NJ Transit a B, and 9 percent give an A. Ten percent say NJ Transit deserves a D, and 8 percent give an F.
