The costume only works if you can sing.
For four years, the BOMA Transportation Report (September 2026 BOMA Transportation Report versions are here: New Jersey Edition – BOMA Transportation – September 2026 and New York Edition – BOMA Transportation – September 2026 ) has mostly been about the substance: trains, tunnels, bridges, buses, congestion, construction, airports, budgets and the endless question of whether major projects actually get finished.
But something else has become increasingly noticeable.
Transportation and Transit Agencies developed personalities.
New Jersey was an early example. Its highway signs stopped sounding like highway signs and started sounding like somebody with a sense of humor was writing them. The messages were funny, memorable and occasionally controversial, but people noticed them. They talked about them. They shared them.
Now that approach is everywhere.
NYC DOT jokes with riders and sports fans. Transit agencies make videos, quizzes and memes. Elected officials turn pothole repairs, bike rides and bus trips into highly visible moments. Public agencies that once communicated almost entirely through press releases have discovered that personality can help explain complicated issues and capture the public imagination.
That stood out to me because transportation has always had an attention problem. Most people are not going to read a capital plan or spend their evening studying a busway proposal. If a little showmanship gets people to notice the work, that can be useful.
And that is where Lady Gaga became more than a convenient local connection.
Twenty years ago, long before the stadiums and costumes, a 19-year-old Stefani Germanotta was getting off a bus on Route 46 and walking down New Road to work with producer Rob Fusari at a studio just yards from Bell Environmental’s Parsippany office.
Maybe she even heard Roscoe providing some unsolicited backing vocals along the way.
The look became bigger. The personality became louder. Lady Gaga emerged.
But the reason the whole thing worked was that underneath the spectacle were the chops.
She could sing.
Gaga could sit at a piano. She could sing jazz and standards with Tony Bennett. She could write songs, act and continually reinvent herself. The spectacle got people’s attention, but the talent gave people a reason to keep paying attention.
Transportation agencies face the same test.
A clever road sign can get attention. A great rendering can create excitement. A funny social-media post can make a bus lane part of the conversation.
But none of it means much without the performance underneath it.
Or, borrowing from a standard Gaga performed with Tony Bennett, it doesn’t mean a thing without the swing.
For transportation, the “swing” is the considerably less glamorous stuff: engineering, maintenance, funding, staffing, management and projects that actually work.
The costume only works if you can sing.
That became the theme of the September 2026 BOMA New York and BOMA New Jersey Transportation Report.
So Who Can Sing?
We decided to put some of this summer’s transportation stories to the test with our first Transportation Style vs. Execution “Gaga Matrix.”
Some of the contenders fit pretty neatly.
🚍 NYC DOT showed that personality and actual transportation policy can coexist. A social-media post showing Knicks fans celebrating outside Madison Square Garden declared, “I’ve never seen so much excitement for bus infrastructure.” It was funny, but the joke pointed people toward an actual transportation initiative.
⚽ NJ Transit successfully moved enormous World Cup crowds through the Meadowlands. The special operation cost the agency roughly $4 million, but it also demonstrated what the system can accomplish when the stakes are high. Now comes the encore: can everyday riders get some of that same performance?
🏗️ The Park Avenue Viaduct offered perhaps the summer’s cleanest example of pure execution. A major project carrying Metro-North trains into Grand Central was completed five years early and nearly $200 million under budget.
No sequins required.
🚆 Penn Station, meanwhile, continues to generate renderings, proposals, political fights and plenty of attention while everyone waits to see what ultimately gets built.
And continuing disputes involving Amtrak and NJ Transit demonstrate what happens when organizations responsible for critical infrastructure cannot get onto the same stage.
Style can help. But execution still gets the applause.
It Was Also a Very Busy Summer
The Gaga theme gave us a way into the September report, but there was an enormous amount of actual transportation news after a three-month summer break.
Among the stories:
⛽ Diesel and gasoline prices reached record levels around Labor Day, putting additional pressure on drivers, trucking, construction and businesses dependent on freight transportation.
⛈️🌪️ Flash flooding, pop-up storms and even tornadoes again demonstrated how vulnerable transportation across New York and New Jersey can be when severe weather arrives quickly.
✈️ Airline passengers may be stuck with high fares even if fuel prices eventually decline.
🚆 Penn Station, Gateway and the Northeast Corridor remain caught in political, engineering and institutional battles even as major construction continues.
⚽ The World Cup provided an enormous real-world test of regional transportation. NJ Transit moved the crowds, and the $100 million MetLife Transitway is now sitting there waiting for its post-World Cup purpose.
And the Park Avenue Viaduct reminded everyone of something worth celebrating: major public infrastructure really can finish early and under budget.
And Then Things Got Weird
Three months of transportation news also produced an unusually impressive collection of stories in the category of hard to believe, but true.
Among other things:
🦑 More than 20 tons of squid spilled onto a Rhode Island road.
🧀🍝 Mac and cheese covered a highway in Quebec.
🐖 Fifteen pigs escaped onto a New Jersey roadway.
🐭🥊 Two mice were caught on video apparently boxing in the street.
🐔 A moving truck was robbed of more than 100 kilograms of frozen chicken.
🌳👮 New Jersey police disguised an officer as a shrub to catch distracted drivers.
🕳️ And New Yorkers kept climbing into manholes, for reasons authorities could not entirely explain.
And that’s only the road list. Strange things were happening aboard airplanes, at airports and throughout the animal kingdom as well.
Sometimes the hardest part of writing a transportation report is convincing people that the stories are real.
Read the September Transportation Report
The full September report includes Top 10 rundowns covering national, regional, New York City, New Jersey, railroad and subway, and street, bike and curbside transportation news.
There is the Gaga Matrix, plenty of links for anyone who wants to dig deeper, and enough strange transportation news to make squid on a highway seem almost normal.
And for anyone who reads all the way to the end, there is one last after-credit scene. I’m not spoiling it!
