Just a week after a fire crippled LIRR service east of Jamaica, the railroad announced last night that service on Monday morning will run as scheduled. The LIRR completed repairs and testing at the 90-year-old Hall signal tower by 4 p.m. on Sunday and is now prepared to see their 700 trains pass through the switch on Monday.
“I appreciate the challenges our customers faced during the past week and I thank them for their patience during what has been a difficult time,” LIRR President Helena E. Williams said in a statement. “I would also like to thank the hundreds of railroad employees who worked around the clock to put the damaged signal and switch system back together while keeping service going and assisting our customers throughout the week. Once again, they demonstrated their dedication and commitment to our customers.”
The fire on Monday knocked out a signal tower that will be replaced by a $56-million computerized control center in the fall. During the outage, the railroad had to use a manual switching system that led to rampant delays, canceled trains and missed connections throughout the week. Still, the LIRR managed to run between 60-75 percent of trains last week. Yet, by the end of the week, it was clear that the problem could have been avoided had the switch system been replaced on time and on budget. “While the new systems are a big improvement, more needs to be done to replace and update some of our old technology throughout the LIRR,” Williams said. “That’s why we need a fully funded, five-year capital program.”
2 comments
The LIRR employees that worked around the clock all weekend to fix this problem were on over-time!!
True, but if there is a justifiable reason for overtime, this is it. Should they have had employees scheduled to work this time, sitting around doing nothing, waiting for the rare even of a fire igniting in a signal tower?
Now, seeing how much it cost to fix this, compared to the amount of money saved in service cuts, will be interesting. I wonder if those savings, and then some, were nullified over the past few days.