This week has been a sobering reminder of the age and poor condition of the public transportation system on which our region depends. On Monday, a small fire crippled the switching system of the LIRR, forcing cancellations on nearly all lines; full service has not yet been restored. On the same day, all rail service on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor – including NJ Transit and SEPTA (Southeast Pennsylvania Transportation Authority) – was suspended for the second time in less than two weeks due to electrical problems.
As Newsday explains, the reason the LIRR disruptions have continued for so long is that the railroad relies on infrastructure from 1913. Aaron Rutkoff at the Wall Street Journal is right to ask, “is the subway due for a LIRR-style meltdown?” given that much of the behind-the-scenes signals and switches date from the same time period.
It’s a similar story of old, neglected infrastructure on the Northeast Corridor, where NJ Transit riders have experienced delays nearly every week in July and August. Amtrak says the Boston-Washington corridor needs $8 billion in maintenance to bring it back to a state of good repair.
In some countries, common failures of the nation’s busiest rail corridor and largest commuter railroad would be unthinkable. But here, lawmakers at the federal, state and local level have failed to find sustainable funding solutions to the country and region’s growing transportation operating and capital needs. Congress continues to punt on federal transportation reauthorization that would boost funding for capital projects, and has taken no action on a proposed $2 billion emergency transit assistance bill as transit agencies here and across the country raise fares and cut service. Albany legislators have not dealt with transit funding issues since voting to take $143 million from the MTA to close the state’s budget gap last December.
Steven Higashide contributed to this story.
The LIRR incident was an act of God and not due to poor maintainance However the AMTRAK incident was due to reduced maintainance AM%TRAK does not have the manpower5 available It also has not maintained the electrical equipment the way it should
LIRR problems are made worse by continuting NIMBY opposition in western Nassau County to adding capacity to the LIRR main line. How long will residents of Suffolk County and eastern Nassau suffer from this lack of track capacity? How many more people will die in train-auto crashes at the at-grade crossings which would be eliminated in the track capacity project?
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Having worked on enough projects in the subway I can tell you that actually the oldest signaling in the subway dates from the 30s, (parts of the IND) which is significantly more robust than that built in the ’10s. Still it is overdue for replacement. Under the original CBTC schedule that would be mostly done by now….but making a complex system like that work always takes longer than contractors promise.
The subway has had these problems too – Chambers St. fire, Bergen St. fire, are very similar. But once the crews get it fixed (working 24×7 in spite of the constant attacks they are lazy and overpaid) everyone forgets.