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That still doesn't really explain Gallagher, who ran the buses. Unless it's just that "the guy we're tossing hired her."

I am thinking the fu*cked up job they did during super bowl Sunday when folks were chanting New Jersey Sucks!!!!!

Hrm... I guess I can see tossing some of the rail management after Sandy happened, but over a year later? And Gallagher apparently did a good job, and is still getting the boot?

Smells like Christy Cronyism may be afoot....

The shakeup of NJ Transit?s upper management is becoming a clean sweep.

In the same week that Jim Weinstein?s four-year tenure as NJ Transit?s executive director officially ended, his directors of rail and bus operations, Kevin O?Connor and Joyce Gallagher, are being forced out, said sources close to the agency.

Just like that, the top boss at NJ Transit and the top officials in the rail and bus divisions of the statewide transportation agency are gone or going.

Ronnie Hakim, the former New Jersey Turnpike Authority executive director and an ally of state Transportation Commissioner Jim Simpson, took over Saturday as NJ Transit executive director.

NJ Transit officials declined comment, and Simpson said O'Connor and Gallagher were still working at the agency.

But several sources said it was a matter of semantics, and the pair of high-ranking officials close to Weinstein have been told to resign because NJ Transit was "going in a different direction."

O?Connor, vice president and general manager of rail operations for the past three years, oversaw the best year for on-time performance in NJ Transit history in 2012, with 96.4 percent of trains arriving within the standard industry measure of 5 minutes and 59 seconds of the scheduled time. But that year also ended with hundreds of trains and locomotives being damaged after an ill-fated decision to leave them in rail yards in Kearny and Hoboken that flooded during Hurricane Sandy.

About three months after Sandy, O?Connor got into a testy exchange with Joe Clift, a former Long Island Rail Road director of planning, about NJ Transit?s preparations for Sandy. Clift during a breakfast business meeting distributed copies of questions asking whether O?Connor would ?accept responsibility for the decisions that led to $100M in damage.?

?No, I am not going to resign,? O?Connor said at the time.

Last week, Simpson told reporters the rail cars "should have been moved to higher ground, and they weren't."

"What I've been told is basically what you've been told: there was a decision made to leave the rail cars, because their SLOSH (Sea, Lake, and Overland Surges from Hurricanes) maps or their forecasts only showed a 20-percent likelihood of the yard flooding," he said. "To me, if that's the case, 10 to 20 percent, that's a risk that I wouldn't take. But obviously we didn't find out about that until afterwards, so Monday morning quarterbacking is not a good thing."

O?Connor, 54, who made $185,000 annually, joined NJ Transit 12 years ago and previously served as deputy general manager of transportation and general superintendent of New York Penn Station, North America?s busiest transit hub. Before that, he spent more than 20 years at Amtrak, working his way up from train attendant to general manager of the national railroad?s Philadelphia line.

What was supposed to be a summer job in June 1977 ? one week after his high school graduation ? launched a career. O'Connor was hired as a coach and sleeping car attendant with Amtrak. He worked primarily on sleeping cars and coaches on long-distance trains out of New York, traveling to such cities as Miami, Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City and New Orleans. On the "sleepers," he made up rooms for customers, dropped beds out of the wall, assisted with luggage, provided information, brought customers food and drink from the dining car and made sure they were awake and ready to get off at their destination.

Gallagher, vice president and general manager of bus operations for the past two years, was praised for getting buses back on the road within 48 hours of Hurricane Sandy ? even before traffic lights were restored in some towns ? and providing a much-needed symbol of normalcy after the most damaging storm in New Jersey history.

Mike Frassinelli/ Read More Here