Metro-North makes headway with repair projects
NEW YORK – In the two years since the Federal Railroad Administration faulted Metro-North for putting on-time performance ahead of adequate maintenance, the railroad has moved aggressively to overhaul tracks, ties, switches, bridges and crossings.
“We’re doing what we should have been doing all along, and we’re going to keep on doing it,’’ said Glen Hayden, who returned to Metro-North as vice president of engineering two years ago.
The railroad, for example, has gone from rebuilding zero grade crossings a year to rebuilding between 16 and 20 a year, a pace that Hayden’s crews will continue until all of them are improved.
“We’re not going to slack off,’’ Hayden said. “When we get everything in cycle, we’re just going to keep on doing the same thing but at a slightly reduced rate.”
The maintenance-of-way budget has climbed from $74 million in 2014 to $92 million last year to $100 million this year, and crews have met or exceeded goals two years running in virtually every category.
They have also mastered new automated equipment that inspects the tracks for flaws in joint alignment, metal fatigue and load strength.
Last year, crews installed 38,901 ties, almost all of them on the Port Jervis and Hudson lines, replaced 12.6 miles of continuous welded rail, resurfaced 138.8 miles of track, renewed 49 switches and welded 1,428 joints.
The timbers on the Moodna Viaduct’s deck were replaced, overhead and undergrade bridges were repaired and culverts were rebuilt. Renewal of five bridges on the Port Jervis line will be completed this year.
“We’re close to being in cycle on the Port Jervis line,’’ Hayden said. “The rail is much younger and in much better shape than it is on the rest of our lines, in part because of Hurricane Irene.”
When Hayden reported this progress at December’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority meeting, the first question was whether the track work was finally done.
“No,’’ said Joseph Giulietti, Metro-North’s president. “We’re still two years away from cycle maintenance.”
The prospect generated a grimace or two, but members of the board have generally stopped pressing Giulietti about the impact that the work has had on train schedules and the fall-off in on-time performance: longer trips, inconvenient busing, unexpected delays and repeated timetable changes.
Emphasis on safety
The FRA, in its review of the railroad’s operations following a string of accidents in 2013 that left four people dead and 59 injured, found that Metro-North had repeatedly failed to give crews sufficient time to perform routine track maintenance and, as a result, had an infrastructure that fell short of meeting federal standards.
The culprit, the FRA concluded, was the railroad’s desire to keep its on-time performance statistics in the high 90 percentile. The criticism didn’t extend to the Port Jervis line, which NJ Transit operates for Metro-North, but the emphasis on rebuilding the infrastructure has been system-wide.
Giulietti, who marked his second anniversary as president on Feb. 1, said when he returned to Metro-North after a 15-year absence that his overarching challenge would be to overcome “the disbelief that safety is our No. 1 priority.”
Since then, his message to employees, customers and the MTA’s board – as well as his charge to Hayden - has been: “A safer railroad is a reliable railroad.”
The announcement last week that Metro-North’s ridership hit an all-time high in 2015 prompted him to take a little victory lap.
“We think,’’ Giulietti said, “it indicates that our attention to safety and improved reliability are encouraging more customers to ride the train.’’
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