NEWARK, N.J. — The NJ Transit official who was fired last year from his job overseeing the Portal Bridge construction project claims in a lawsuit that the agency ignored his concerns about the bridge design, and that those concerns led to retaliation and discrimination.
Mohammed Nasim was fired in October 2023 as head of construction management on the $2.3 billion project to replace the aging bridge over the Hackensack River, a longstanding trouble spot for Northeast Corridor operations [see “NJ Transit fires official …,” Trains News Wire,” Oct. 16, 2023]. NorthJersey.com reports his suit was filed last month in Superior Court of New Jersey in Essex County. It says that within months of his hiring in 2021, Nasim began reporting “design defects including the dangers of track settlement and issues with construction work being too close to the existing corridor, and navigation issues in the river” — problems posing “potential dangers to rail passenger trains” including potential derailments.
Nasim — an engineer with 34 years’ experience, including time at Amtrak working on the Portal Bridge and other Gateway Project programs — said he raised this issues in meetings, as well as in emails and privately to his boss, Richard Schaefer, who at one time told him to “shut up.” Schaefer and NJ Transit are defendants in the lawsuit; an NJ Transit spokesman told NorthJersey.com the agency declined to comment on pending litigation.
Nasim said the design of the new bridge was “deficient,” and the suit says the project experienced “excessive track settlement” when construction began, “resulting in potential safety issues due to uneven track, waste of time and taxpayer money.”
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