Lawmakers Vent At Metro-North Brass [Hartford Courant]

Article as it appeared in the Hartford Courant

Rep. Tony Guerrera: ‘What’s happened here has been appalling. It’s going to kill our economy …’
By DON STACOM, [email protected]

The Hartford Courant
7:29 PM EST, February 27, 2014

HARTFORD — Summing up the fury toward Metro-North that has spread far beyond its commuters, state Sen. Joan Hartley, D-Waterbury, angrily delivered a terse message to the railroad’s top executives Thursday: “You’re killing us.”

A dozen or so state lawmakers used a hearing at the Capitol to sound off about grievances against the railroad from its passengers, I-95 drivers, Fairfield County businesses, motorists in communities along the Danbury branch, and even real estate agents.

“When the railroad fails, it has such an impact on the [whole] region. There’s a trickle down,” Sen. Toni Boucher, R-Wilton, said.

“If it doesn’t work, it cripples the state,” declared Rep. Tony Guerrera, D-Rocky Hill, the co-chairman of the General Assembly’s transportation committee. “What’s happened here has been appalling. It’s going to kill our economy, and, more importantly, I don’t want to see any more fatalities.”

Newly hired Metro-North President Joseph Giulietti and his boss, Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chairman Thomas Prendergast, listened to a long list of complaints during a two-and-a-half hour hearing of Guerrera’s committee.

They assured legislators that the railroad management and its employees are committed to improving performance, but offered few specifics and resolutely steered away from discussing particulars of the recent catastrophic derailments that have killed four passengers and injured more than 100. They also had little to say about discipline of track crews caught filing phony timesheets and taking personal out-of-state trips on the railroad’s time.

Giulietti told legislators that he doesn’t want to say if the railroad is reinstituting a “secret shopper” undercover inspection program to see if employees are following rules.

“Most employees want to put in a day’s work for a day’s pay. It’s unfortunate some of these stories have come out,” he said.

Giulietti has made clear that he won’t publicly discuss any analysis of what’s been going wrong at Metro-North until the Federal Railroad Administration issues its own report, which is expected in mid-March. Following a horrifying 82-mph derailment in the Bronx on Dec. 1 that killed four people, the FRA assigned dozens of staffers to do a detailed analysis of every aspect of operations at Metro-North.

The nation’s busiest railroad had never killed a passenger before 2013, but in the course of a single year it sustained two severe wrecks, including the fatal crash in the Bronx, and lost a track supervisor when a trainee employee mistakenly cleared a train to run through a work zone.

At the same time, Metro-North has racked up a series of operational blunders while its on-time performance has plummeted. Prendergast has acknowledged that Metro-North had management failings in the past year, but hasn’t gone into any details. He also hasn’t said whether anyone has been disciplined or fired for a series of system meltdowns and botched construction jobs, or why he and the top MTA leadership didn’t intervene faster.

It wasn’t until January that the MTA announced Howard Permut was out as president of the railroad. By that point, Connecticut lawmakers had been openly discussing the possibility of firing Metro-North as the operator of its commuter rail system.

The state pays Metro-North about $70 million a year to run its system, including the New Haven line, which ferries thousands of riders a day between New Haven and Manhattan. Lawmakers and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy consider it an economic lifeline for the state, and Boucher emphasized that it serves more than just its riders. When a bungled construction job at a Mount Vernon power station stopped the entire railroad for more than a week in September, already severe highway traffic problems along the I-95 corridor got worse.

“It’s not just an inconvenience to our rail commuters — it brought I-95 to a complete halt,” Boucher said of the power failure. “That affects goods getting to stores, individuals getting to their own businesses.”

Connecticut is about halfway through a 60-year contract with Metro-North, but the deal offers no incentives for good performance or penalties for accidents, late or canceled trains, shoddy customer service or mismanagement.

State analysts reported last week that relatively similar contracts in Florida and California set performance standards and enforce them with penalties. That could give federal regulatory agencies the authority to order changes in the contract to give Connecticut more leverage, said Rep. Gail Lavielle, R-Wilton.

“Connecticut’s federal delegation should look into this issue,” said Lavielle, who asked for the analysis.

The contract has a renewal period every five years, and comes up again in 2015. Guerrera said performance standards and penalties need to be added then — or the state needs to terminate the contract. Guerrera said that he believes Metro-North now has the right senior management, but that the state still needs a better deal in its contract.

“It can’t go on like this,” he said.

“We are well past being patient about any of this,” Hartley said. “This body as a whole is positioning itself to have some options.”