LIRR weathered historic storm 'pretty well,' despite customer complaints, railroad's president says

On the first day that Long Island Rail Road ran its normal schedule since Saturday, the LIRR’s president said the railroad made it through the historic blizzard "pretty well," despite complaints from customers of overcrowding and insufficient service levels.

Speaking at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s monthly board meeting on Wednesday, LIRR president Rob Free expressed satisfaction with the railroad’s performance through "horrendous operating conditions," which necessitated a full service shutdown on Monday and limited service on Tuesday.

"I don’t think there’s anything glaring that really stands out that we could have done better," Free said in response to a board member’s question about lessons learned from the storm. "I think there’s little things we could have done better in terms of preparation. But I don’t think, ultimately, there’s something that stands out to say, if we would have done this, it would have made that much more of a difference in our service."

Free noted the historic storm was among the worst in Long Island’s history, with "hurricane force" winds blowing snowdrifts 8 feet high in some parts of the LIRR’s territory. Temporarily suspending service allowed railroad workers to focus on clearing the system without risking stranding trains with passengers on board, Free said.

Within hours of the storm subsiding, Free noted, the LIRR was up and running, and operated 450 trains on Tuesday.

But with service suspended on several South Shore branches, and some train cars still stuck in snowed-in yards, the Tuesday morning rush hour saw trains become so crowded that riders were unable to board at some stations and had to wait up to an hour for the next train.

Free said the LIRR, as directed by MTA chairman Janno Lieber, would conduct a formal review of its performance through the storm. Lieber said one challenge faced by the nation's busiest commuter railroad was the inability of some employees, including train operators living on Long Island, to get to work.

"We need to look at the manpower," Lieber said. "What are our plans for having a strategy for helping our workers to get in so they don’t have to call out in these circumstances?"

While praising the LIRR and other MTA agencies for their storm response, "it comes at a cost," Lieber noted. Although the MTA budgets for "a certain amount of snow," the intensity of the winter weather so far was likely to come with a hefty overtime price tag, he said.

The MTA last year spent a record $1.5 billion on overtime, and Lieber attributed some of that expense to emergency weather response.

"The MTA has to be able to respond. And our partners in the public sector need to understand that not all overtime is bad overtime," Lieber said.

Although some weather-related delays lingered into the Wednesday morning rush hour, commuters at Ronkonkoma station were eager to return to their trains. Many bundled-up commuters braced cold winds, walking over snow and ice in the parking lot while carrying briefcases or lunch boxes.

Denise Earl, 73, of Bayport, who was waiting for the 6:27 a.m. to Grand Central Madison, described her experience commuting thus far on Wednesday as "horrible." It took her a little while to find a parking spot in the station garage due to lingering snowdrifts.

"It’s crazy," she said about trying to find a spot in the garage. "They’re not clearing the spots ... and you got to just keep going down and down and down."

Upon walking to Track 2, she noticed the stairs were partially covered in snow. She was frustrated because she could find no one from the railroad to talk to about it, she said.

"I've been taking this train since 1972," she said. "Nothing has changed."