Usually at the start of each new year people put together a list of “New Year’s resolutions”—things they would like to change about themselves or bad habits they’d like to break—and try their best to stick to them going forward in the new year. It seems “running on-time” was something that didn’t make it onto the LIRR’s list of “New Year’s resolutions” for 2018, as LIRR riders have had to deal with a particularly bad spate of service disruptions and delays in the first few weeks of this year.
Through just the first 14 days of this year (the only period for which the LIRR has released late train information), there have been 2,248 late, canceled, or partially canceled trains, compared with only 919 late, canceled, or partially canceled trains for the same period in 2017, an increase of 145% year-over-year.
Since the beginning of November, there have been no fewer than 22 broken rails at various locations around the system. Cancelations and delays due to equipment trouble happen multiple times a day, on average (laying aside crowding due to rampant short trains for the moment). Issues in and around NY-Penn Station, while not nearly as common as the first half of last year, still happen (and at the end of the day are still the LIRR’s fault, as conflicts between LIRR and Amtrak are vendor issues and not the customer’s problem).
Despite the unrelenting service issues, LIRR officials have been silent on why on earth the problems have been so severe and what they’re doing to stop the bleeding. There hasn’t been a single formal acknowledgement or explanation from railroad officials about what’s been happening and when riders can expect a return to “normal”.
Tomorrow is the January meeting of the MTA Board’s LIRR Committee Meeting, what’s typically one of the few, if only, occasions each month where railroad officials provide information about what’s going on in public. Will officials present a reasonable, coherent, and aggressive path forward to improve service, or will they sit there and play the blame game?
If past performance is any indicator of what will happen next, we are more likely to see the latest round of the blame game than anything else. In the past, the most common response to poor service during the winter months have been “it’s been cold”, or “it’s snowed”. “Winter sucks, right?”
I have had an increasingly difficult time accepting “it’s winter” as a valid excuse for service issues. The LIRR is currently in its 183rd year of running trains on this Island, and I’m not sure if it has come to their attention yet, but this is an area where it’s winter for one-fourth of the year, every year. If I still have to go to work and do my job in the winter, the LIRR should have to do so as well. It’s not the first time it’s been cold, or even cold for an extended period of time. It’s certainly not the first time it’s snowed a foot. I understand cold and snow bring operational and engineering challenges that can’t be overcome completely, but they should have a far better handle on things by now.
And if dealing with all of the late and canceled trains isn’t bad enough already, communication during the last few weeks has been far worse than usual—and there’s little excusing that. The LIRR can try to point fingers and place blame for the actual cause of service issues, but the buck stops with them when it comes to bad communication. As just an example, on January 10 riders on some Brklyn-Atlantic Terminal bound AM rush hour trains were brought into Jamaica and told to get off, being told service to Brooklyn was suspended due to a fire on the tracks. However, it took more than 20 minutes—in the middle of rush hour, where every minute counts for people trying to get to work—from the time the first train was affected for the LIRR to even acknowledge there was a problem. And during all that time, all the service status box online said was “Good Service”. In the early morning hours on January 7 the LIRR replaced all trains between Jamaica and Babylon with diesel trains to make repairs to some electrical infrastructure, however nobody thought to tell the passengers of the change or update the official TrainTime app ahead of time… Instead as the electric trains arrived Jamaica people were told to get off and stand out on the platform (in 7 °F weather) for as long as 15 minutes until the diesel train showed up, all the while riders had no clue what was going on.
Lately the LIRR’s official TrainTime app has had the tendency to be wrong more often than it is right during disruptions as the railroad hasn’t been keeping on top of making sure it shows the right information. Instead, issues where canceled trains have been showing as on time, late trains don’t show as late, trains that are actually running show up as canceled, or the app just doesn’t work at all have been rampant. During planned service disruptions, the official TrainTime app doesn’t even show departure and arrival times at all, instead just listing “train” which is super helpful (except when it’s not actually a train, and you have to take a bus!).
It’s difficult for passengers to give the LIRR any latitude during even genuinely uncontrollable service disruptions when they can’t handle the basic task of communicating with their riders effectively. If there are problems and the LIRR communicates them in advance, then riders who have the flexibility to take another train or use another branch can do so, but instead the LIRR waits until the very last minute to communicate problems—if they do so at all—and you’re left to stand out on the platform in the cold and hope a train shows up soon.
To add insult to injury, many of the trains that do run have been short of cars. For the last six or seven weeks now short rush hour trains have been a chronic problem. According to the LIRR’s operating report for the month of December there were an average of 1,200 standees per day west of Jamaica, which 255% more than December 2016, almost quadruple the number of people standing. And the LIRR significantly underreports their standee figures (they said during the summer NY-Penn Station trackwork there were only 221 standees per day systemwide in July, which is about as many as were on one single train), so you can only imagine what the real numbers are…
Most of the equipment shortage seems to have stemmed from some late-season “slip slide” issues in early December. “Slip slide” is another one of those perennial weather phenomenons that always seems to take the LIRR by surprise… whether they were applying their normal “slip side” mitigation measures all the way through the beginning of December or if they took their eye off the ball is a mystery. Instead of being upfront and transparent with customers about the source of these short trains and cancelations due to equipment shortages, what they’re doing to combat the issue, how many cars are out of service, and when conditions would be back to normal, railroad officials didn’t say a word to the thousands of people squished into trains without seats.
The LIRR knows how many cars it has available for service everyday, but instead of communicating in advance which trains will be short or canceled (so you could take an earlier or later train if you could help it), they say nothing and leave people to run down the platform like idiots when they see a train arriving with the red marker lights on. The LIRR knows how many cars each train has at or before departure time (it gets entered into their TIMACS train control system), but instead of showing how many cars a train has on the platform signs (like other systems in the US do) or showing it in TrainTime so the information can be useful to people, they hide it from view.
Problems happen, and people can understand that to an extent, but there’s zero excuse for the lack of communication, the lack of transparency, and the lack of honesty from LIRR officials. On a per-mile basis LIRR fares are the most expensive in the western hemisphere…if people are forced to pay top dollar to get to work, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect a level halfway decent level of service and prompt, honest communication when issues do happen. But if recent history is any guide, there will of course be no consequences for rampant issues and poor communication, and tomorrow’s MTA Board LIRR committee meeting will be a lot of finger pointing and shoulder shrugging, and service will only continue to get worse.
