(The following article by Joie Tyrrell was posted on the Newsday website on January 30.)
NEW YORK — On-time performance, the measure of how many Long Island Rail Road trains arrive on schedule, dropped slightly in 2005 to 92.2 percent, according to a LIRR report, the third consecutive year of decline.
In 2004, 92.7 percent of the LIRR’s trains arrived on time. The railroad posted its best on-time record in 2002 when it reached 94 percent overall and 93.2 percent for rush-hour arrivals.
The railroad did see some improvement this year in its morning rush-hour on-time performance, which rose to 91.1 percent compared with 89.4 in 2004. Evening rush-hour service remained the same as 2004 at 89.8 percent.
“We can do better and we make it a primary focus,” LIRR Transportation Chief Ray Kenny said last week. “We know through our customer satisfaction survey that the customers place this at a high value.”
This year’s goal is 94.3 percent. A train is considered on time if it arrives at its destination within five minutes and 59 seconds of its scheduled arrival.
Faring the worst was the Greenport/Ronkonkoma line, which was on time only 86.9 percent of the time last year. The West Hempstead line had the highest on-time record at 95.8 percent.
Much of the Ronkonkoma line runs on a single track where one small problem can lead to multiple delays, railroad officials said.
Also, there have been problems on the Ronkonkoma line with crowding during off-peak periods and on the weekends. Kenny said relief is coming in March when the railroad adds weekend service from Huntington. That should take some pressure off the Ronkonkoma line, which is often used by Huntington riders west of Hicksville.
Kenny said that weather played a part in a number of delays last year. Still, commuters said the railroad can do better.
Gerry Bringmann, chairman of the LIRR Commuters’ Council, who rides to Penn Station from Patchogue to work every day, called December’s numbers “abysmal.” That month, only 80 percent of the Babylon trains arrived on time in the morning rush, and on the Montauk branch 83 percent arrived on time in the morning.
“What’s the excuse for December?” Bringmann said. “The weather was not that bad. There were no storms or anything of that nature.”
Railroad officials noted that an Amtrak signal problem led to 125 delays alone and the railroad also had to deal with three broken rails that month.