An OTP grace period is an additional period of time beyond the scheduled arrival time that a train can be late and still be counted as "on time". The LIRR for a long time has clung tightly to the 5 minute, 59 second grace period, which meant that your train could arrive at its destination five and a half minutes late and still be considered "on time". The long grace period has been a point of criticism for many over the years as being too generous and not reflective of real conditions, but the railroad has stuck to this definition, citing it as an "industry standard" (though until now there was nothing carved in stone saying they had to use a particular grace period).
In March 2016, I wrote about different ways of calculating OTP, many of which provide a more reflective evaluation of passenger experiences (included in that analysis was two-minute grace period performance, or 2GP). Two-minute grace periods are more the standard on European rail systems, and a two-minute grace period was recommended by the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee (PCAC, the parent organization to the LIRR Commuter Council) in their 2011 Minutes Matter report. The legislation also stipulates that a train cannot have skipped any of its planned stops to be counted as on-time...this is a change for the LIRR, which currently counts trains that bypass stations as "on time" if they still arrive at their destinations within the grace period. I have long held that trains that skip scheduled stops should be considered partially canceled, not on time.
The reporting change—which must be put into effect no less than six months from when the law is signed—will result in a big hit to the LIRR's performance figures, as the railroad struggles to reign in these 'close' delays. The graph below shows delays by duration for the first eleven or so months of last year, from the LIRR's GTFS-RT feed. The old format of the LIRR's GTFS-RT feed was very poor at conveying information and was incomplete in a lot of cases, so this is hardly a complete picture, but it's the only data made publicly available, so it is what it is:
The legislation is not totally clear at what exactly the grace period is to be, (i.e. does "2 minutes" mean "2 minutes, 0 seconds", or "2 minutes, 59 seconds"). My reading of the wording ("no more than two minutes late, and has not skipped any planned stops") suggests the grace period should be 2 minutes, 0 seconds, since a train that is 2 minutes, 1 second late is more than two minutes late. If the grace period is set at 2 minutes, 0 seconds, the LIRR's on-time performance would be 46.6%, markedly lower than what they report now.
Part ZZZ, supbart A of the "big ugly" general state budget revenue bill (S1509C/A2009C) creates a new §1276(f) of the NYS Public Authorities Law that defines a number of new performance metrics, including:
- additional platform time: the average added time that customers spend waiting on the platform for a train, compared with their scheduled wait time.
- additional train time: means the average additional time customers spend onboard the train due to various service issues.
- customer journey time performance: the percentage of customer trips with an estimated total travel time within two minutes of the scheduled total travel time
- elevator availability: percentage of facilities that require the use of stairs and have an operational elevator
- escalator availability: percentage of facilities that require the use of stairs and have an operational escalator
- excess journey time: comparison of measured journey time compared to scheduled and standard journey times
- journey time metric: the times of each component of a trip including access, egress, interchange, time in queue for tickets, time on platform and time on train. Journey time and its components may be based on a manual or an automatically generated sample.
- major incidents: incidents that delay twenty or more trains
- staff hours lost to accidents: staff hours lost due to accidents or illegal activity per billion passenger journeys
- standard journey time: means the ideal journey time calculated by the metropolitan transportation authority for a particular journey
- terminal on-time performance: means the percentage of trains arriving at their destination terminals as scheduled. A train may be counted as on-time if it arrives at its destination early, on time, or no more than two minutes late, and has not skipped any planned stops.
Additional metrics like additional platform time, customer journey time performance, and excess journey time will also be a welcome addition to the LIRR's reported statistics, as they will be more representative of overall travel conditions than endpoint OTP, the only figure reported now. NYS Senator Todd Kaminsky told Newsday that the new requirements are an attempt to prevent the railroad from "putting out statistics that don’t bear any resemblance to reality".
The new legislation also requires the MTA and its agencies to measure and report these figures on a weekly basis, which is a much shorter lag time that what it currently takes now. Presently, performance indicators for a month aren't made available until just before the MTA Board committees meet on the third week of the following month. Being able to see updates on a weekly basis will help riders get a more real-time estimation of performance.
While the new legislation defines new metrics that the MTA must report, I think it would still be valuable to continue to report the old metrics for the sake of comparisons (as the MTA is trying to claim that service is improving...it's impossible to justify those claims without being able to quantify the improvement off of some sort of baseline). The agencies can report multiple metrics...nothing in the new legislation prohibits continuing to report legacy indicators, it only sets minimum standards for what must be reported.
Overall, these changes, if implemented according to the law, will be a big improvement in what data the MTA reports to the riding public, and be much more representative of what quality of service passengers experience on a regular basis than what we have now.
