LONG ISLAND, N.Y. — The LIRR will merge with the Metro-North line as part of a sweeping restructuring of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority that could mean the end of the name that has graced Long Island rail cars for 168 years, New York’s Newsday reports.
MTA officials yesterday announced a corporate-style reorganization to create five companies, each with a single transportation mission, including a merged company over both commuter rail services called MTA Rail Road.
The new-look MTA includes companies for rail, subways, buses, bridges and tunnels and a new company that will oversee all major building projects.
MTA officials predict the mergers will save hundreds of millions of dollars without affecting service. Still, it was unclear yesterday whether the MTA will keep the LIRR name, although the agency’s news release did refer to the service as “formerly Long Island Rail Road.”
“The stabilization and expansion of the region’s economy requires a regional approach to the provision of commuter rail services and the new MTA Rail Road will provide that focus well into the 21st Century,” said MTA chairman Peter S. Kalikow.
Plans also call for the merging of all MTA-run bus operations into one, MTA Bus, including Long Island Bus in Nassau County.
The mergers are expected to be complete by 2004. Kalikow would not confirm if the LIRR name will change. MTA press secretary Tom Kelly said a decision has not been made.
The consolidation was devised by the MTA’s executive director, Katie Lapp, and the MTA staff after Gov. George Pataki issued a directive last year telling state agencies and authorities to look for ways to save money by making their operations more effective and efficient, according to Pataki press secretary Joseph Conway.
In addition to a merged commuter rail system, a new company called MTA Capital will handle all major building and expansion programs, including the LIRR’s plans for East Side access into Grand Central Terminal scheduled for 2011. “We didn’t quite have a place to put a project like that, and this capital company would solve that problem,” Kalikow said.
Projects could also include Metro-North’s entry into Penn Station.
Regarding the rail services, Kalikow said most rank-and-file transit workers will be unaffected as current collective bargaining agreements will remain in place. Kalikow said he did not know how many management jobs would be affected.
“We would hope we could do this on a very painless basis, and we think we can,” he said, with riders noticing only cosmetic changes, Kalikow added.
Union officials said yesterday that they were taking a wait-and-see approach. President Kenneth Bauer was not available for comment.
Some commuters waiting yesterday for LIRR trains were skeptical of the change.
“I have a feeling when things get bigger, they get less efficient,” said Dan McInerney, 24, of West Islip as he waited at the Babylon train station.
The LIRR, created in 1834 and part of the MTA since 1968, transports 277,200 riders each weekday, more than any other commuter line in the nation. Metro-North, which stretches north of the city and into Connecticut, transports 252,600 riders each weekday and joined the MTA in 1976.
Commuter advocacy groups reached yesterday were stunned by the news.
“Hopefully, it will eliminate any competition [for resources] between the two commuter railroads that had been there,” said Peter Haynes, president of the LIRR Commuters Campaign Inc.
“Wow,” said Barbara Josepher, chair of the Long Island Rail Road Commuter’s Council. “There should be cooperation among the agencies, and this will force it.”
But Larry Silverman, former chair of the council, questioned whether Long Islanders will get a fair piece of the MTA pie.
“The LIRR historically has received less in the way of resources and attention than Metro-North, which is undisputably a better-run railroad,” he said. “Who’s going to advocate separately for the needs of Long Island?”
In recent years, though, the LIRR has narrowed the performance gap. The latest figures show Metro-North with a 97.8 percent on-time record and LIRR at 94.7.
In other components of the plan, the MTA will create a company called MTA Subway, which will operate the city subway system and the Staten Island Railway, which serves 14,000 riders each day. The MTA Bridges and Tunnels entity, which currently operates seven bridges and two passenger-car tunnels, will retain its current corporate structure.
Scott Trommer, a director of public finance at Fitch Ratings, said the reorganization mirrors a recent consolidation of the MTA’s bond issues.
“The authority has been increasingly consolidating various functions,” he said.
The MTA plans to submit the plan to the state legislature by the end of this year, with a goal of implementing it fully by Jan. 1, 2004.