Comments on: Inside the MTA Budget: Metro-North Railroad

By: Transit Cuts Would Impact Many. Bridge Tolls? Not So Much. « Mobilizing the Region

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 20:04:24 +0000

[...] virtually everywhere in New York City. In addition, broad cuts to Long Island Bus, the LIRR, and Metro-North (as covered in MTR) mean that if elected officials don’t act, transit riders throughout the [...]

By: Tom D

Tom D — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 11:53:26 +0000

Metro-North has tried to address crew sizes. That attempt resulted in a 6-week strike in 1983 (the first year of M-N’s existence).

Basically M-N wanted the ability to collect fares at stations by forcing riders to swipe fare cards at turnstiles both when entering & exiting. While this would result in fewer on-board crew, M-N promised there would always be at least one conductor on board and that no curent employee would ever lose his/her job because of this change.

Unless the public is willing to withstand a long, very nasty strike (and perhaps fire almost everybody currently working for M-N to bring in “scabs”) I don’t see this being resolved.

By: Phil G

Phil G — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 10:37:49 +0000

Why is it that No one talks about the major chunk of outgoing expenses the MTA has?? 6.2 billion in payroll!!
The biggest chunks are 3.8 billion in basic payroll, 480 million in OverTime, 617 million in Healthcare, 851 million in Pensions and 445 million in what they state as Other Fringe Benefits. I’d personally like to see how the salary and overtime breaks down. But almost half a billion in Fringe Benefits???? Whats that about? This company sounds worse than GM… maybe they should apply for some bailout money. Seriously .. it sounds like they need to do some serious UNION renegotiating… i think its time for them to make some major concessions like the auto unions.

By: Thomas Marchwinski

Thomas Marchwinski — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 17:29:15 +0000

The reason the MTA would save money by stoppping Port Jervis trains in NJ is that the Metro-North express trains are almost wholly funded by MTA, since they only make one stop typically in NJ for transfers, MTA pays the full cost for NJT to operate that train. I suspect what MTA will do is extend to Port Jervis existing Suffern Locals; by doing this MTA pays a proportional share of the costs of the train, partly based on ridership. So MTA saves money by converting weekend trains to locals.

Not sure what is going on with the PVL. This is a classic case of where a major capital expense, of about $25-$30 Million was done to provide midday off-peak and weekend service. But because of the extra operating costs, they will probably have to cut back service. Politicans like to cut ribbons for new projects, they do not want to pay the money to operate service.

The entire commuter rail services in NY/NJ/CT region need a re-look at crew sizes. Commuter rail is the only mode where it takes 4-6 people to run a train. Based on safety, you probably can get by with 3-4 person crews, 1 engineer, and 2-3 conducters/trainpersons. This isssue has been avoided for years because no one wants to take on union rules and crew sizes. Freight railroads did this, but commuter rail has not. Also, automated payment of fares, although difficult is another issue. We need to look at ways to keep operating costs down, in addition to getting more funding.