While the MTA’s doomsday budget means that NYC Transit, LIRR, and LI Bus riders must deal with night and weekend station closures and total elimination of several bus routes, Metro-North’s riders are slightly better off. But riders will not escape service cuts and reductions in service quality, and the plan will severely impact customer service, one of Metro-North’s strengths.
Without additional transit aid, Metro-North riders would see their fares increase an average of 23% and would be paying more for less service. The railroad’s program includes:
- Eliminating one peak and seven off-peak weekday trains and one weekend train in the east-of-Hudson system. According to the railroad, this will increase travel times or reduce train frequency for 5,500 customers on the Hudson, Harlem, and New Haven Lines.
- Reducing Pascack Valley Line weekend service. Port Jervis Line express trains will also make local stops in NJ, increasing travel time (budget documents do not explain how this saves money, but presumably the trains will take on more passengers).
- Increasing loading standards — Metro-North currently keeps peak-hour trains between 87-95% occupied, off-peak trains about 75% full, and weekend trains 65-75% full (i.e. if a train is consistently “too full” Metro-North adds cars to it when it adjusts its schedule). The new standards would be 95% for peak trains, 85% for off-peak, and 75% for weekend, meaning trains would be more crowded.
- Cutting maintenance personnel, reducing planned purchases of maintenance equipment, and deferring some maintenance on locomotives, cars, and the restoration of Grand Central Terminal.
Metro-North’s cuts will have major impacts on customer service, including less ticket sellers, cutbacks on car and station cleaning, and delay of a program to allow riders to use credit cards to buy tickets on-board trains. The railroad will even eliminate its toll-free customer hotline and cut the number of phone representatives, meaning callers will be put on hold longer and pay for the privilege.
The program would save $35 million annually, with just under $14 million of that coming from administrative cuts. The plan would also save ConnDOT $6 million based on that agency’s agreements with Metro-North.
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.
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.
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.
[…] 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 […]
[…] east-of-Hudson system (Harlem, Hudson, New Haven Lines). Metro-North riders would also experience more crowded trains and rollbacks in customer service. There are no planned Bee-Line cuts, since the system is not run by the […]