Why does it feel like as soon as NJ Transit announced a 15-percent rate hike, the trains literally came to a complete stop?

Last week, riders were once again stranded all along the commuting corridor we call home — one of the busiest in the nation.

NJ Transit is a mess. Trains rarely run on time, there’s always a signal problem, a wire problem, a train car problem. We get it — this is a complicated public-transit system that gets a lot of use, but unfortunately for our local commuters, you can’t ride a platitude to work.

The press conference with NJ Transit, Amtrak and Governor Murphy really just felt like an apology gone wrong, where everyone blamed everyone who came before them. And (un-ironically) an hour later, NJ Transit announced a 20-minute delay.

Then there are the trains themselves. Even if you do manage to catch one at the right time, chances are the cars will be loud, overcrowded and littered with trash. And for reasons no one can adequately explain, you can’t see out the train car windows thanks to a ghostly film that now covers them.

But in all fairness, we know that we can’t blame every recent problem on NJ Transit. Many of the tracks that their trains run along actually belong to Amtrak or Conrail, and neither agency seems to be doing a great job of maintaining them.

In other words, there is plenty of blame to go around.

But with $440 million from the state, $1.1 billion in revenue and $842 million from the federal government — the math is not mathing.

While our local politicians continue to advocate for a “one-seat ride” from our towns without a direct train into Manhattan, they should be advocating for major infrastructure improvements. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if you need to switch trains or not if you can’t get on one in the first place.

A crippled transit system can tank an economy, and it’s past time for the federal government to get involved, hold these companies accountable and make the trains run on time.