By and large, the MTA’s commuter rail trains are the model of on-time performance for North American trains. At 98 percent, Metro-North, in fact, has the highest percentage of on-time trains in the country, and the Long Island Rail Road is on time over 92 percent of the time. Yet, the two rail agencies also suffer from some very regularly delayed trains, and in today’s Wall Street Journal, Andrew Grossman explores those frequently late routes.
Using data on delayed and late trains the MTA made available on its website, the Journal explored which peak-hour routes are often behind the schedule. For its part, the MTA defines an on-time train as the national industry does. “A commuter train,” the authority says, “is considered On Time if it arrives at its final destination within 5 minutes and 59 seconds of its scheduled arrival time. Only trains that are canceled, partially canceled or arrive at their final destination 6 or more minutes behind schedule are listed on the website.”
Grossman found that the least reliable train is the LIRR’s 4:39 p.m. into Penn Station from Babylon. The train has a scheduled arrival time of 5:53 p.m. but frequently misses that deadline. Between July and the end of September, the train was late 32 times by an average of 13 minutes and 12 seconds. Grossman offers more:
Overall, LIRR trains suffer more-frequent delays than those on Metro-North, and almost one-third of LIRR trains delayed were running at the busiest times, compared to 27% of Metro-North delays. All except for one of Metro-North’s 12 most-frequently delayed trains were off-peak trains, which tend to carry fewer passengers than rush hour trains. That wasn’t the case on the LIRR, where trains carrying commuters home from the city in the evening—such as the 6:25 p.m. to Port Washington—were among the most-often delayed.
The LIRR is older, larger and more complex. Long Island riders have also had to deal with a string of incidents this summer that led to hundreds of canceled and delayed trains, including a signal fire. “The Long Island Rail Road has had a challenging couple of months,” the Long Island Rail Road’s president, Helena Williams, said last week.
Some of the oft-delayed trains have recurring problems, such as track work, crowding that makes stops take longer or train traffic. Others seem to be just unlucky. There was no pattern to the problems on the 12:07 p.m. from Grand Central to New Haven, MTA spokeswoman Marjorie Anders said. One of the train’s 10 delays was because the devices that connect the train to overhead power lines needed inspecting. Another was because of track work and a passenger needing help boarding the train.
Despite these findings, it’s worth repeating that only two percent of two percent of Metro-North trains are late. Underground, meanwhile, the MTA’s on-time performance has declined lately. Transit says its weekday on-time performance was down to just 86.3 percent in July 2010, a twelve-month low. Right-of-way delays, overcrowding and the presence of track workers accounted for 67.2 percent of the 21,076 delays reported that month.
7 comments
Metro-North has total control over its terminal – and it’s a terminal. LIRR is a tenant in Penn Station, a through station, and shares the East River tunnels with Amtrak and NJT. Not to mention it has more lines, too.
The issue isn’t that Grand Central is a terminal. It’s that it has nearly ten times more tracks than it needs, allowing Metro-North to park trains there for an hour without creating capacity issues.
Yeah, I know it’s more about the capacity of trackage than thru vs. terminal. I meant that it is essentially a storage yard during the day that only Metro-North uses, as opposed to Penn, where NJT sends trains to Queens to lay up, which adds to the traffic thru the East River.
Of course, Penn being a station could actually be an asset if NJT and the LIRR ever decided against all odds to work together on through-running, but never mind that.
Bear in mind that “on time” means “late by 5 minutes or less.” It doesn’t actually mean “on time.”
Great point and those “on time” numbers are written in pencil! The register sheets are official documents yet they are only filled out in pencil, which is unheard of unless they want them to be altered which is exactly what they do on a daily basis.
In order to determine On-Time Performance, you really must look at the schedules. Many railroads “pad” their schedules with extra time between the last- and second-to-last stop to increase their OTP performance. I don’t know if it’s still the case, but I remember once reading how NJ Transit schedules showed a ridiculous amount of time between Hamilton and Trenton, the last two stops on the Northeast Corridor, so that trains arrived in Trenton on time. (They must add the cushion to the last stop, so you don’t have trains leaving intermediate stations early where passengers want to board)