The accident occurred during the morning rush hour, at one of the busiest transportation hubs in the New York metropolitan area.

Entering the Hoboken terminal around 8:45 a.m., the train went over the bumper block and through the rail concourse, coming to rest at the wall right before the station's waiting area.

[13][14] The victim was identified as attorney Fabiola Bittar de Kroon, 34, a married mother of one and native of Brazil who had recently moved to Hoboken.

[24] The day following the crash, investigators retrieved one of the two train event recorders (black boxes) from the wreckage, but it was unusable.

[27] On October 4, 2016, FEMA claimed responsibility for what appeared to have been a hijacking of Utica, New York TV station WKTV foreshadowing the disaster, which was under independent investigation by Snopes.

The chosen verse from Green Eggs and Ham and its proximity to Hoboken was purely coincidental, and FEMA had no culpability in the train crash.

[30] In November 2016, attorney Jack Arsenault said his client, the train engineer Thomas Gallagher, suffered from severe sleep apnea which was undiagnosed until after the crash.

NJ Transit has a sleep apnea screening program but, despite that, a physical exam in July 2016 had cleared Gallagher for duty.

Gallagher, aged 48 and with 18 years experience as a train engineer, said he had no memory of the crash and was lying on the cab floor when he woke up after the impact.

Contributing to the accident was NJ Transit's failure to follow their internal sleep apnea screening guidance to find at-risk workers and refer them for testing and treatment.

NJ Transit failed to identify end of track collisions as a hazard despite numerous previous accidents.

[32][33] The FRA exempted NJ Transit from installing positive train control (PTC) at Hoboken Terminal.

[41] In a February 2019 statement, NJ Transit stated that permanent repairs and renovations will begin in March and last for approximately one year.

[22] Another similar incident occurred at Hoboken in May 2011, involving a PATH train which failed to stop at the end of a platform.