Brian Ler on WNYC, we have some notable New Jersey news this morning.

If you haven't heard it yet, Governor Murphy has announced a week of free rides,

a fair free week on NJ Transit to compensate riders for all the troubles the system has seen this summer.

And he has now announced who he's appointing to fill out the term of Senator Menendez, who resigned for the rest of the year.

It's George Helmi, not a household name, but a former chief of staff

for the governor, I believe, and a former chief of staff for Senator Cory Booker. As it happens,

Murphy was on the station last night for his monthly Ask Governor Murphy call-in, hosted by WNYC's

Nancy Solomon, who joins us now with clips from last night and analysis of this morning's

breaking news. Hi, Nancy. Happy morning after. Hi, Brian. We'll get to the Senate appointment,

but let's start with the thing that will more affect people day to day and right away.

They're calling it a fair holiday, free rides on all NJ transit systems from August 26th through Labor Day, September

2nd.

Why are they doing this?

Because it's been a summer of hell.

So there are heat-related problems that occur on the Amtrak lines that are owned and operated by Amtrak, but those are the train lines that

New Jersey Transit uses. So it's shared infrastructure. And when the heat gets above a certain point,

I'm not exactly sure whether that's 90, 95, I think it's probably somewhere around 90. The catenary wires sag from the heat, and that basically messes up service.

So there's been a bunch of problems.

Governor Murphy got a call about it last night, and he didn't mention the fair holiday, much to my chagrin,

but he did say that by the end of the summer, he'd be doing something for New Jersey transit riders.

He doesn't know the courtesy tradition of breaking news on the monthly call-in show.

No, he didn't.

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