Engineers at New Jersey Transit went on strike early Friday, bringing trains on the nation’s third-largest commuter rail service to a halt.

The workers are striking because of a pay dispute: BLET argues NJ Transit’s wage proposal puts them below their peers at other passenger rail lines in the region, while NJ Transit argues the union’s demands are unreasonably high and would raise prices for commuters.

NJ Transit engineers are set to go on strike as of 12:01 a.m. Friday, the union says, bringing train service to a screeching halt. NJ Transit rail service will be fully shutdown, along with Metro-North's west of Hudson service. The strike is expected to inconvenience more than 300,000 daily commuters.