(Newsday posted the following story by Joie Tyrrell on its website on October 6.)
NEW YORK — A year after the Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced a historic reorganization that included merging the Long Island Rail Road and the Metro-North Commuter Railroad, some local leaders and transit watchers are wondering where the plan has gone.
“The thing is we haven’t heard anything from the MTA in almost a year,” said Tom Dunham, an aide to Sen. Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre) who sits on the MTA Capital Review Board. “As far as we’re concerned, the proposal is either dead or it’s on its last vestiges of life support. Either way it does not appear to be a high priority for the MTA at this time.”
The proposal called for one of the most significant changes in the history of the LIRR — consolidating it with Metro-North into one company called MTA Rail. It would create companies for subways, buses, bridges and tunnels and a new company to oversee all major building projects. Plans also called for merging all MTA-run bus operations into one, MTA Bus, which would include all bus service in New York City and Long Island. MTA officials said last year the proposal would be in place by 2004.
Despite requests over the past year for details from the Long Island state delegation, the MTA has not spelled out the specifics of what a merged commuter rail system would look like. The LIRR, created in 1834 and part of the MTA since 1968, transports an average of 290,000 riders each weekday, more than any other commuter line in the nation. Metro-North, which stretches north of the city and into Connecticut, transports about 250,000 riders each weekday and joined the MTA in 1976.
Part of the plan was implemented this past year when the MTA Board created a company called MTA Capital to oversee all capital projects, including East Side Access, which would give LIRR riders direct access to Grand Central Station by 2011.
MTA spokesman Tom Kelly said “the whole plan is still there.”
“The status is we are still working on it,” he said.
Kelly said there is no timetable for the proposed merger of the railroads.
“I don’t think at this point they have it nailed down to each specific item,” he said when asked for details of the plan.
The MTA did implement some small policy changes to align the two railroads over the past year, such as eliminating the LIRR’s forgotten ticket policy where monthly ticket holders received a refund if they forgot their ticket and had to buy a daily fare. Metro-North had no such policy.
The MTA also submitted a 200-plus page bill that included other provisions for the merger.
But the legislation failed to find a Senate sponsor. The bill included changes to the funding formula, essentially giving the MTA Board control over the distribution of funds, a move that the Long Island Association, the region’s largest business group, is against.
“At the moment there is a specific statute … in relation to the distribution of TBTA [Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority] funds — most of that money goes to mass transit, not to the bridges. The MTA wants to repeal that and make those decisions themselves,” said Mitch Pally, vice president for government affairs for the Long Island Association.
Some transit watchers say the LIRR and Metro-North already share some attributes, including the procurement of new cars and ticket vending machines. Perhaps a substantive merging of the two railroads is not necessary, they said.
“If one railroad does something better the other railroad should follow suit,” said Beverly Dolinsky, executive director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee, the coordinating body and funding mechanism for both the LIRR and Metro-North-riders councils. “I don’t think each railroad should reinvent the wheel every time.”
MTA officials said at the time that the consolidation would save $30 million but never spelled out how.
“One of the real problems I have with this legislation is nobody has ever quantified that,” Dolinsky said. “Maybe they would have had a better shot if they quantified the savings.
” … As far as I know it’s not going any place … A lot of people said it was dead on arrival in Albany,” she said.
Also, the unions had requested a briefing on what a merged system would mean to them but were never told.
“They never explained anything to us,” said Michael J. Canino, general chairman of the LIRR’s United Transportation Union.
It was also unclear whether the new agency, expected to be called MTA Rail, would retain its own president. Just last month, the MTA named James Dermody president of the railroad.
Still, there could be benefits to merging the two, said Peter Haynes, president of the LIRR Commuters Campaign.
“If they get all the bus systems for the city and Nassau under the MTA, they can coordinate schedules and make it a true mass transportation system for the region,” he said. “There is a lot of potential to do some good things, whether or not that will become reality is another story.”
Pally said the MTA could revive the plan at any moment.
“I never assume anything is dead where there is a live bill,” he said. “And at the moment there is a live bill.”