An LIRR M7 prepare in Queens in 2014.
Metropolitan Transportation Authority / Patrick Cashin
There’s nothing like the specter of a strike to remind us that transit is crucial. The work stoppage referred to as off final week by union officers would have worn out Lengthy Island Rail Street (LIRR) service for nearly 300,000 day by day riders, gut-punching the regional economic system within the course of. It might nonetheless occur in January and even subsequent spring after the clock runs out on the union’s requested federal mediation.
The MTA is able to negotiate. We agreed to binding arbitration months in the past and are open to discovering options that would ship a number of the additional wages the unions are looking for in change for extra environment friendly work guidelines – the exact same strategy that resolved the latest New Jersey Transit strike.
However to date, the unions have resisted modifications to their byzantine work necessities, that are among the many driving components behind LIRR’s hefty extra time spending. We have now already extremely paid engineers getting an additional day’s pay (or two or three!) in the event that they function a diesel and electrical locomotive on the identical day or simply transfer a prepare round within the yard on the finish of their shift. These loopy guidelines value taxpayers thousands and thousands of {dollars}, and we’re ready to purchase them out at a good worth to place an finish to that nonsense as soon as and for all.
Lengthy Islanders – in addition to our rising contingent of riders in Queens and Brooklyn – deserve higher, and we’re decided to ship. We’ve made unimaginable features in on-time efficiency (OTP) and total service for the reason that completion of Third Monitor and the opening of Grand Central Madison. OTP is persistently hitting 97% or increased, and final month the railroad reached its highest five-day ridership common for the reason that pandemic – greater than 288,000 riders.
And it’s not simply the LIRR breaking information. The subways – which had been so integral to our contingency plans for the potential strike – carried a post-COVID excessive 26.8 million passengers the week of September 8, with greater than 4 million riders each weekday. That hadn’t occurred since earlier than the pandemic. Doesn’t harm that final month was additionally the most secure August underground in recorded historical past.
We’re thrilled to be welcoming extra New Yorkers again to transit with robust service. For that to proceed, we have to give you truthful contracts for all of our LIRR workforce – contracts that gained’t power extra fare will increase down the road or ignite a labor relations free-for-all by undermining current agreements. I’m decided to get there.
Janno Lieber is the CEO of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
