Well, it's been a summer to forget for New Jersey Transit and its riders a fair hike combined with severe delays and disruptions.

The rail agency is hoping to make it up to commuters with a three week of service starting today.

But it does come at a cost.

A loss of about $19 million in ticket sales, with no details yet on how New Jersey Transit plans to recover from that financial hit.

Ted Goldberg spoke to passengers taking advantage of the fare holiday about the free ride and their NJT wish list.

The dawn of a week long fare holiday for NJ Transit riders has drawn rave reviews.

Awesome.

I mean, this is great, right?

Especially today.

That was the day that I was going.

To New York.

I was going to drop her in the airport like Newark Airport.

But since I found out, okay, it's free, so let's make a use of it.

We will have some quality time to spend there.

We figured it out like last week, Right.

And we didn't believe it.

It's good.

It's good.

Yeah.

I didn't know.

Actually, st before you told me.

I was real happy.

But at the end of the day, it should have been longer because we pay all this money for these busses and trains and we only get a week.

But it's good.

Free for riders and an estimated price tag of $19 million for NJ Transit.

I got to run.

That's less than 1% of their operating budget for the year, but it's a nice chunk of change for passengers.

I'm happy about obviously saving because I'm a low income student, so being able to see that money.

I had an opportunity to take a train on the end of June and it was severely delayed due to problems.

So I think it's good compensation.

$19 million is a lot of money.

Any way you slice it.

But in terms of the overall budget for NJ Transit, I do feel confident they will be able to make this up.

Zoe Baldwin works with the Regional Plan Association.

She says NJ Transit will have to get creative to make up that deficit.

The agency has previously said it would look for offsets to do that.

There's not a lot of wiggle room in that agency's operating budget, as we saw with the last state budget process in which we saw a full court press to get meaningful, sustained funding for the agency.

This goodwill comes at a time when NJ Transit could use some.

The summer saw a 15% fare hike and widespread issues from aging infrastructure.

I've had many issues with NJ Transit over the years.

Stuck in tunnels stuck at Metro Park.

I feel bad for the commuters.

I think it was the summer from hell.

Michele Sick Circa leaves the New Jersey Business and Industry Association.

She says the fare holiday is just the state looking for good PR as New Jersey's biggest businesses begin paying a corporate transit fee of two and a half percent.

We heard when we grow our next 100 or 1000 jobs, they're going to be outside the state of New Jersey.

We heard companies that were looking to bring newer operations into New Jersey as part of an already existing company here.

But those were revenue generating positions that they'll now be paying taxes on.

Commuters enjoying the free rides told me what kind of fixes they'd like to see from NJ Transit in the future.

Some of the gaps are too long, like 30 minutes, 40 minutes, especially on the weekends.

That's too long of a gap to wait for transportation.

A lot of times there's been issues and we haven't gotten proper announcements, so that's a big, big issue.

You end up finding out via social media or by some other means, another rider texting you saying, Hey, we got major issues going on.

In the meantime, passengers are encouraging people to try a bus or train this week.

Very.

They took everything you can do places and we got a pay so it should be two weeks.

NJ transit officials have previously said they're searching for offsets to cover the lost revenue, but they did not answer our questions today about what that might look like.

For NJ Spotlight News, I'm Ted Goldberg.