If I were dictator of NJ Transit, I would:

-Lower the prices by so very, very, much.

-Insist on a week-long orientation in public transit, during which commuters ride the NYC subways at peak hours, to learn that public transportation is not your own car. By which I mean, for example, that I'd...

-Ask that the passengers be just a little less vigorously flatulent in the mornings. I'm not a gastroenterologist or an expert in Central NJ dining habits, so I don't know exactly what's causing this epidemic, but seriously, folks. You're not by yourself, or with a forgiving loved one.

-Institute some kind of rhyme or reason to filing onto and off of the trains, so that this isn't a chaotic stampede every morning and evening. It should be clearly marked on the platform where the doors open, and there should be lines, first-come, first-served. And when you arrive in Penn Station, the escalator should work. And there shouldn't also be a train leaving from that platform or the one across from it, leading to stampedes in both directions, and making it so that a good portion of the commute, time-wise, is just getting from platform-level to station-level. 

-Make it known that the world will not end, non-black passengers, if you spend 30-90 minutes sitting next to a black person. Stop being such racists. I mean, I know, that black guy in a business suit going to work at 7:30 am looks soooo menacing. Ugh.

-Instruct passengers to - as the NYU posters advise - "cover your cough." Yes, that would be you, dude sitting across from me, showing your obvious concern for humanity by coughing in my face and littering below your seat. 

-Ban the sale of artificial-butter-flavored popcorn in the stations. It's currently all over NY and evidently Newark Penn Station. At the very least, ban its consumption on the train itself. This is the worst smell known to man and is actually - vindicated! - toxic. 

-Give people who can't get over the fact that Newark and New York both have train stations named Penn, or that the earth is round, a five-minute window during which they can express their wonder at the world, then they must find some silent (but not deadly) activity.

-Ban outright large groups that get on, read aloud the message about how you're supposed to "speak softly and be considerate," laugh and shout about how that's not their group, haha, oh no, then go on to shout at ever-louder volumes all manner of who knows, everything from football news to wondering aloud what 9/11 was (a terrorist attack, some of the older-and-wiser members of this group agreed, evidently committed by Muslim polytheists whose gods wanted it), to mocking New York accents in the form of incredibly exaggerated Chicago accents, to wondering aloud more loudly still, again again and again, why the train is moving backwards (helllloooo, that's how the seats are, that's how it goes on a train, live with it!, I did not say), to playing Britney Spears on a device without so much as a pretext of headphones. Let people constitutionally incapable of riding a train find some other route to the airport.