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Buses Replace New Canaan Trains

Posted by
on March 15th, 2018 at 1:44 pm

The MTA Metro-North Railroad has announced that buses will replace some New Canaan branch trains due to a switch upgrade. Here are the complete details via the press release I received:

MTA Metro-North Railroad announced today that Metro-North crews will upgrade a switch on the New Canaan Branch this Saturday night, March 17.

The switch upgrade will help keep the New Canaan Branch running reliably and safely. To accommodate this work, substitute busing will be provided between New Canaan and Stamford stations after 10: 50 p.m. Regular train service resumes on Sunday with the 6:28 a.m. train from New Canaan and the 6:53 a.m. train from Stamford.

Buses traveling to Stamford will operate 15-20 minutes earlier than scheduled trains. At Stamford station, customers will connect with continuing train service to Grand Central Terminal.

Service details are below:

Substitute Bus Service between New Canaan and Stamford

Westbound, Saturday, March 17

An 11:11 p.m. bus will substitute for the 11:28 p.m. train from New Canaan to Stamford, making all station stops to Stamford.  Bus service will connect with the regularly scheduled 12:02 a.m. train at Stamford.

Eastbound, Saturday, March 17

After 10:50 p.m., buses will substitute for all trains departing from Stamford to New Canaan.  Buses will depart from the Stamford station at regularly scheduled train times.

For a detailed bus schedule, customers may visit:

http://web.mta.info/mnr/pdf/NewCanaan_March172018.pdf

xoxo Transit Blogger

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MTA Bus Driver Busted For Being Drunk

Posted by
on March 5th, 2018 at 9:44 pm

This week’s winner of the “I Fucked Up Big Time” Award goes to 40 year old Derrick Sanchez, a MTA Bus driver who was busted for being drunk and sitting in his wrecked car. Adam Shrier of the New York Daily News has more:

Cops caught a drunken off-duty MTA bus driver idling behind the wheel of his wrecked car outside a Bronx mall late Saturday.

Mall-goers outside the Pelham Manor Shopping Plaza called police after seeing Derrick Sanchez, 40, sitting in the damaged 2013 BMW around 11:20 p.m., according to authorities.

Police suspect Sanchez crashed his car shortly before he was found.

Medics rushed him to Jacobi Medical Center where he was treated for his injuries and tested positive for driving while impaired, officials said.

Click here for the complete report.

I find it hard to believe he will be able to keep his job after this. While people do make mistakes as no one is perfect, it is hard to just sweep it under the rug that of all things, a bus driver was arrested for drunk driving.

xoxo Transit Blogger

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Paying More For Less

Posted by
on February 20th, 2018 at 3:45 pm

In a story that will anger NYC Subway riders more than they already are, a dirty secret known to most transit aficionados has come out showing that we are paying more in fares but getting less service compared to 10 years ago. Uday Schultz of Streetsblog NYC has more:

Subway service today is atrocious, that much is clear. During rush hours, crowding and delays have reached crisis proportions, and off-peak, the wait for a train can seem interminable.

There are a number of culprits, including the failure to adequately maintain and upgrade track and signals, and the profusion of unnecessary timers slowing down trains. But one simple factor doesn’t get mentioned enough: During off-peak hours, the MTA doesn’t run as many trains as it used to.

The service reductions mainly stem from the financial crisis of 2008, when MTA revenues nosedived. While Albany enacted an MTA funding package in 2009 to prevent a total collapse of service, the agency balanced its budget with a round of deep service cuts in 2010.

For subways, the cuts mainly affected off-peak service. It’s a logical way to allocate resources when budgets are tight, but those times are also when subway ridership has recently seen significant growth. Off-peak service still hasn’t been restored to its former levels, so more people are riding the subway at times when the MTA is running less service than it provided 10 years ago.

These service cuts are especially painful for people who work outside conventional office hours, including New Yorkers doing shifts on nights and weekends. Let’s look at a few examples to see how these systemwide service cuts have contributed to the diminished utility of the system.

Back in 2008, the midday A train came as frequently as every six minutes during on weekdays. Similarly, on Saturdays, going northbound, service every eight minutes began at 6:30 a.m. and lasted until about 5:30 p.m. That’s 11 hours of frequent, useful A service. On Sundays, too, the MTA delivered, with trains running every eight minutes in the late afternoons, getting people home promptly before the week began again.

Today, during weekday midday hours, the A runs a measly seven or so trains per hour — once every nine minutes. On Saturdays, the window of eight-minute headways lasts about nine hours, not 11. And on Sundays, service every 10 minutes is as good as it gets. Keep in mind that the A splits in two at Rockaway Boulevard, so what may be barely-adequate on the main line equates to 20-minute headways on the branches to Lefferts Boulevard and the Rockaways.

On the R, weekend trains ran every eight minutes for 10 hours on Saturday, and six of Sunday in 2008. But today, the line runs no more than every 10 minutes on the weekends.

Most disturbing is the J. The 2008 version of J train service often arrived every eight minutes during off-peak hours. Today, the only time the J arrives more frequently than once every 10 minutes is during the weekday rush.

This is just a sample of the service reductions. While the MTA has restored some of the service cut in 2010, especially rush-hour service, off-peak service on most if not all subway lines remains below the level of 10 years ago. It has become the new normal.

Sadly the line in the article of service being below the level of 10 years ago equating to being the new normal is 100% accurate. It is quite pathetic that in this day & age as population increases dramatically throughout the system, the agency gets away with not only poorer service but less of it overall. A lot of this falls back on not only the agency itself but the politicians who purposely go out of their way to not properly fund the system.

xoxo Transit Blogger

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LIRR Meeting Equals More Of The Same

Posted by
on February 20th, 2018 at 3:10 pm

On the heels of the report coming out showing the MTA Long Island Rail Road had its worst month of on time performance in 22 years, the much maligned agency held a board meeting to discuss solutions. Unfortunately after hearing the suggestions put forth, it just sounded like more of the same.

Yes, the agency acknowledges the need for infrastructure upgrades such as signal & track work. However my biggest pet peeve is the whole call to action to improve communication with riders. LIRR riders have been hearing that same tired canned solution after every issue involving the agency.

While I acknowledge that they have improved in ways with communication, this is not what riders care about most, they just want reliable service without the daily barrage of mishaps. Every few years the fares get raised yet we get more inferior service with it which is a complete slap in the face.

xoxo Transit Blogger

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LIRR Worst Monthly Performance In Decades

Posted by
on February 20th, 2018 at 2:32 pm

Ladies and gentlemen, the MTA Long Island Rail Road train you are waiting for is delayed or the one you are currently on will be arriving to your destination late. This is an unfortunate song & dance that LIRR commuters are used to dealing with & if it felt like you did even more in January, you were not imagining things.

Last month was not kind to the much maligned agency as it posted its worst on time performance for a month in 22 years. Alfonso A. Castillo of Newsday has more:

The Long Island Rail Road in January posted its worst on-time performance in more than two decades.

The LIRR’s 83.9 percent on-time performance rate for the month — released to riders Friday morning in the agency’s monthly “Train Talk” newsletter — was the lowest since January 1996, when just 73.5 percent of trains were on time.

The release of the January on-time rate comes less than five months after MTA head Joseph Lhota promised that improved service reliability at the LIRR would be the “new normal.”

LIRR officials have suggested January’s bad commute — which included at least 21 times that service was suspended on all or part of a branch — was an anomaly caused by a number of converging factors. There was a shortage of train cars due to wheel damage caused by leaves on the tracks in early December; sustained arctic temperatures that caused rails to break, switches to freeze and various mechanical malfunctions on trains; the Jan. 4 “bomb cyclone” snowstorm, and several infrastructure failures at Penn Station, which is owned and maintained by Amtrak, the officials said.

But some riders said the on-time performance last month was the culmination of steadily deteriorating service and to some degree, statistics back that up. The LIRR’s on-time performance for all 2017 was 91.4 percent, the worst since 2000. Annual on-time performance has dropped in four out of five years since 2012.

The railroad considers a train on time if it arrives at its final destination within five minutes and 59 seconds of its scheduled time.

News of the historically low mark for January served to fuel calls from commuters, elected officials and MTA leaders for a major overhaul at the LIRR, the busiest commuter railroad in the United States, which last year tied its own modern ridership record by carrying about 89 million riders.

Lhota has recently expressed his disappointment with the LIRR’s woeful service, especially coming months after the railroad received praise for its performance during and in the months immediately following the “summer of hell” service disruptions caused by Amtrak repairs at Penn in July and August.

Lhota has criticized LIRR president Patrick Nowakowski and his administration for a “lack of urgency” in addressing recent problems, and has promised a shake-up. The railroad’s head of engineering, Bruce Pohlot, resigned last month.

LIRR officials have also said they are putting together an “emergency action plan,” similar to that recently adopted for the subway system, to reverse declining service.

LIRR’s worst on-time months over the last 30 years

1. January 1996: 73.5

2. February 1994: 77.4 percent

3. January 1994: 81.2 percent

4. November 1989: 80.6 percent

5. January 2018: 83.9 percent

Source: LIRR

Click here for the complete report.

As someone who has to deal with the LIRR, I can vouch for how horrible the service truly is. While the NYC Subway has its fair share of problems, riders of it exclusively have nothing on what we have to deal with especially at the prices that we pay. Just think about it next time you complain about a delay on a subway ride that cost you $2.75 albeit with options most likely available to get around the issue versus paying nearly $20 for a peak ride with no other realistic option of getting to your destination.

xoxo Transit Blogger

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