[5] The River Line was constructed on what originally was the Camden-Bordentown section and the Bordentown Branch of the Camden and Amboy Railroad (C&A).

The second of these special studies examined the Bordentown Secondary, another Conrail corridor through Burlington County, the alignment of today’s River Line.

The parallel NJ Transit local bus on U.S. Route 130 was heavily patronized, and the corridor was ripe for economic development.

The draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) was completed in 1998, and the contract with SNJRG was finalized in 1999, permitting the system to open to the public on March 14, 2004.

[citation needed] Within a year of the River Line's launch, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) granted permission to adjust timesharing agreement (more technically, "temporal separation") terms.

Initially, these new periods allowed NJ Transit to deadhead equipment from Trenton to Bordentown and Florence at 5.45 a.m., to form the 6:08 a.m. and 6:23 a.m. northbound departures.

These early morning trains provide earlier connections at Trenton for NJ Transit's Northeast Corridor services to Newark and New York City than were available previously.

[16][17] NJ Transit has made some service improvements within the constraints of the timesharing agreement, with the construction of a mid-line yard in 2005 to permit later Burlington arrivals in the evening, and earlier departures after 6 a.m.

[18] Since the River Line opened, NJ Transit has made the service enhancements listed below (some of them subsequently reversed): There is no northbound late night service except on Saturdays due to budget cuts; the last northbound train leaves the Walter Rand Transportation Center at 9:38 p.m. Sundays through Fridays and goes only as far as the Pennsauken/Route 73 station.

[20] Most of the length of the project, except for street-running portion at the Camden end, is shared between non-FRA compliant light rail DMUs and heavy mainline freight trains.

The line, rebuilt under a design-build-operate-maintain (DBOM) contract, features mainline railroad signals with full centralized traffic control (CTC).

[21] Unused Newark City Subway and Hudson-Bergen Light Rail tickets can be used after validation at a River Line station[citation needed].

[23][24] The River Line fleet comprises 20 articulated Swiss-built Stadler GTW 2/6 DMU (diesel multiple unit) cars.

[26][27] At its northern end in Camden it will converge with the River Line, with which its infrastructure and vehicles will be compatible, and terminate at the Walter Rand Transportation Center.

The plan is part of larger expansion of public transportation in South Jersey that will include bus rapid transit along the Route 42 and Route 55, improvements to the Atlantic City Rail Line, and enhanced connections to the Atlantic City International Airport.

[28] The New Jersey State House is located approximately 0.8 miles to the northwest of the River Line's northern terminal at Trenton Transit Center.

While the line was being constructed, NJT studied an extension that would bridge this gap via a shared right-of-way on city streets.

Improving headways from the current peak level of 15 minutes would require either building additional passing sidings or removing one lane of traffic on certain local roads.