(The following article by Joie Tyrrell was posted on the Newsday website on August 18.)
NEW YORK — Sharon Feig, of Plainview, sat frustrated for hours inside a stalled Long Island Rail Road train not knowing when she would get home.
“They gave us wrong information. They made it seem like any minute now they would be on their way,” Feig said yesterday, recalling the nearly four-hour delay west of Woodside in March. “They didn’t explain anything and it was hours and hours and hours stuck on the train.”
So it was no surprise when Feig learned yesterday that a commuters’ advocacy group found that the LIRR falls short in communicating with customers during emergencies. The Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee, the coordinating body for the LIRR Commuters Council, concluded that the LIRR and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority must improve its communication with customers and develop precise procedures for staff to deal with customers during times of trouble.
“Ignorance is your enemy,” said James Blair, first vice chair of the advisory committee. “By going through a review like this, it may motivate the agencies to put communication higher on a priority list.”
After a review of policies and training practices, the group found that the LIRR has developed plans for emergencies, but its communication procedures are not blended seamlessly into these plans. For example, one plan for employees lacked sequenced page numbers and an index, making information difficult to find.
Some of the emergency plans are specific to weather-related problems and should be expanded in scope, it said, and the railroad should provide train crews with announcement information for customers during emergencies.
The report noted the LIRR does coordinate well with emergency responders, it conducts many emergency drills, and also has decommissioned railcars for use in emergency training.
Overall, the MTA should oversee all of its agency’s emergency plans, the group said. It should improve its Web site for better clarity and navigation, and it should establish formal procedures for performance evaluations after emergencies, it said.
The report, a year in the making, was researched and largely prepared prior to the London Underground attacks. The group examined the policies and instructions given to each agency’s operating employees.
MTA Executive Director Katherine Lapp said in a letter to the group that she has requested a review of communications policies.
“While the MTA has successfully responded to recent weather and power outage emergencies, this review can only serve to reinforce our best policies while refining others that could be improved,” Lapp said.