The fire that disrupted last night’s Metro-North commute played havoc again today. Delays may continue for 24-48 hours.
Train riders have tried many alternatives. If you’ve got a solution — or want to offer, or seek, riders for your drive to and/or from work — click “Comments” below.
If appropriate, please offer “06880” readers a way to contact you.
And as always, mind the gap.
Johanna Rossi took this photo this morning. “40 minutes and counting,” she said.
The ticket machines on Metro-North’s New York-bound platform are quick and convenient.
According to one “06880” reader, they’re also a death trap.
She writes: “2 ticket machines are positioned so closely to the open track that if the line exceeds 2 people (as it often does), the 3rd person stands at the edge of the track. Quick purchase of a ticket is also impeded because sunshine obscures the screen.”
She proposes a “no-brainer” solution: moving the machines inside the waiting room.
Oh yeah — one more thing. Our safety-first writer says, “Directly adjacent to the ticket machines is a high-voltage pillar.”
All the more reason to have that 1st cup of coffee before you get to the station!
On March 1, Westporters living near the railroad tracks — and even not so near — started hearing train horns. Loud horns. And lots of them.
Several readers did the natural thing: They asked “06880” what’s up. I contacted my go-to-guy — MTA spokesman and 1994 Staples graduate Aaron Donovan — who reported that it’s part of a Connecticut Department of Transportation project to replace all New Haven Line overhead wires, first installed in 1907.
For the safety of personnel who are on or near the tracks, trains must sound their horns when approaching work zones. Work will continue through September 2017.
Well, at least we knew…
The other day though, an alert — and very frustrated — “06880” reader emailed me. Though no work was being done near Hillspoint Road, equipment had been left near the tracks. For quite a while, engineers had been honking for no reason.
Engineers were honking at this — with no workers in sight.
The reader had called the police, fire department and Metro-North. But the horns kept blaring.
I told her to contact Aaron.
He gave her a number to call — with step-by-step instructions for navigating the dreaded phone tree. Aaron assured her she’d wind up in the right hands.
She did. The Hillspoint resident reports today that the weekend was quiet.
And though work resumed today, things are much better than they were. And she says, “for the first time, they were very helpful.”
Count your blessings. And count the days — just 810! — until September 2017.
Posted in Organizations, People, Staples HS, Transportation
Tagged Aaron Donovan, Metro North, MTA
The other day, an alert (and noise-sensitive) “06880” reader asked:
Do you have any idea how long the trains are going to blasting their horns through Westport? It started before we went away March 1st. I’m sure they must be getting a lot of complaints.
Though I live a couple of miles from the tracks, I’ve actually heard the horns myself. Well, maybe they’re car horns from drivers trying to navigate the increasingly chaotic Playhouse Square parking lot. Whatever.
I sounded out (ho ho) Aaron Donovan. He’s an MTA spokesman, and — because “06880” is “where Westport meets the world” — a 1994 Staples graduate.
He reported back:
This is a result of the Connecticut Department of Transportation’s long-term project to replace all the New Haven Line overhead wires, which were first installed in 1907. These original wires use antiquated “fixed termination” technology, which unfortunately allows the wires to sag ever so slightly during periods of high heat (it isn’t visible to the naked eye) or contract during periods of extreme cold, causing operations problems for trains. The DOT is updating the wires, more formally known as catenary, with a state-of-the-art “constant tension” system that will better accommodate the extreme temperature that can impact our region.
The good news is that this is the very last leg of the project. The DOT recently completed the section between Southport and Bridgeport, and are now turning attention to the section between Norwalk and Southport. In the current phase of the project, DOT’s contractors are out on the tracks digging holes to sink foundations for the gantries from which the new wire system will be suspended. For the safety of all personnel who are on or near the tracks, trains are required to sound their horns when approaching work zones.
The project is scheduled to be completed in September 2017.
Thanks, Aaron! That’s a lot more information than those signs that say “Good Service”!
(To learn even more about the DOT project, click here and here.)
It’s easy to mock Metro-North for those “good service” messages — when, clearly, it’s not, even if the entire East Coast is reeling from one meteorological catastrophe or another.
Today was different.
Alert “06880” reader John Hartwell reports:
It’s just after 10 a.m. I’m taking the train to New Haven to avoid I-95. The platforms are clean and snow-free, and the trains are running on time. We all like to complain about Metro-North, but I’m glad it wasn’t my job to be up early this morning shoveling snow!
(Photo/John Hartwell)
Posted in Places, Transportation, Weather
Tagged Green's Farms train station, John Hartwell, Metro North
Bruce Kasanoff is a Westport-based ghostwriter and former Planning & Zoning commissioner who works with entrepreneurs. He is also — most importantly for this story — a Metro-North rider.
Well, he rides when the trains are running. Which is not as often as he — or the rest of us — would like.
Yesterday, Forbes.com published his opinion piece: “Fix This Bridge, Or Connecticut Dies.” Bruce began:
Bruce Kasanoff
I’m a big fan of bringing out the best in others, but even an optimist like me knows that when people act like they have rocks in their heads, to make progress you might have to bang some heads together.
Commuters who live in Connecticut and work in New York City are all in favor of banging some heads together. Most depend on the Metro-North train system to bring them in and out of the city. Over the past two years, service has gone from pretty good to consistently horrible – and it’s about to get worse.
Bruce described the issues, like fatal accidents that led (via additional safety requirements) to longer train rides and the stuck-twice-in-8-days South Norwalk bridge. He continued:
Connecticut Governor Dannel P. Malloy was outraged by the latest failure, which I know because his office immediately issued a press release that said, “Let me be clear, this is outrageous.”
The problem is, Metro-North doesn’t own the bridge. Connecticut does.
The infamous South Norwalk bridge. (Photo courtesy of Forbes.com)
The governor blames Metro-North. The train system blames Connecticut. Connecticut blames the federal government. Yadda, yadda, yadda.
By the way, the repair tag for that bridge is somewhere around $465 million, according to ConnDOT, but my guess is someone just made that number up.
Meanwhile, hedge fund executives ride that train. Asset managers, too. The people who fund half the world, ride that train. If no one can figure out how to keep the infrastructure working between here and New York City, how good a job do you think we are doing keeping bridges and trains and highways safe in Nebraska and Florida and Arizona… and where you live?
Here’s a hint: walk, it’s safer.
The truth is, we stopped paying for our infrastructure decades ago, in favor of a higher standard of living. Now our infrastructure is falling apart, and it’s going to cost a bloody fortune to replace it. Get used to it. Our standard of living is going to go down a bit, and we are all going to have to tighten our belts.
Personally, I don’t care whether we pay for new infrastructure via taxes or tolls. It doesn’t matter to me whether private industry or government solves the problem. But if it becomes impossible to get from the Connecticut suburbs to Manhattan in less than two hours, the value of every property in southwestern Connecticut will plummet by 50% or more. Add up the cost of that decline, and it will dwarf $400 million.
By the way, I’m almost certain that you have similar problems wherever you live. The blame-the-other-guy virus has spread around the world.
Bruce is not impressed with Metro-North’s responses. But he is not letting anyone else off the hook either. He concludes:
It’s time for actual leadership – not just bluster and empty words – from everyone: state and federal politicians, business leaders, private companies, even commuters. If we can’t keep the trains running on time, then we might as well abandon all pretenses of living in a modern civilization.
To read Bruce’s entire piece, click on Forbes.com.)
Posted in Organizations, People, Politics, Transportation
Tagged Bruce Kasanoff, Forbes.com, Metro North
For decades, it’s been an enduring image of suburbia.
The business executive lingers over a 3-martini lunch. Later, he (it’s always a man) boards the train to Connecticut, heading straight to the bar car. In Westport he steps off the platform and rolls into Mario’s.
You can still order 3 martinis at lunch (unless you have a job). Mario’s will be here forever (we hope).
But — as of Friday — the bar car is gone. It’s joined the coal car and steam engine in that great switchyard in the sky.
Bar cars in 1968 (left) and 2010. (Photos courtesy of the New York Times)
Metro-North‘s bar car — part of the commuting experience since the 1930s — fell victim to (of course) progress. Their design was incompatible with the railroad’s new M-8 cars, which have gone into service at the same time Metro-North has done 2 things previously believed impossible: take longer, and be less reliable.
Yesterday’s New York Times assured readers (and riders) that drinks will still be available at Grand Central, via carts near the tracks.
“It’s a rebranding,” said MTA spokesman Aaron Donovan. He’s a Staples grad (Class of 1994), so he may or may not have 1st-hand knowledge of the bar car.
But tens of thousands of Westport commuters do. Click “Comments” to share your memories. Due to the what-happens-in-the-bar-car-stays-in-the-bar-car nature of this topic, we’ll allow anonymous comments just this once.
Posted in Looking back, Organizations, Restaurants, Transportation
Tagged Aaron Donovan, bar car, Mario's Place, Metro North
Alert “06880” reader David Lehman II sent this report, while en route to New York aboard another Metro-North circus train:
The 7:22 “express” from Westport was 8 minutes late.
The normal 10-car train has only 8 cars — and one is a bar car.
The car we’re in has no heat.
And the icing on the cake: The doors opened at East Norwalk off the track! When Metro-North tells you not to lean in the doors, they definitely mean it.
Josh Prince is a Westport commuter.
He’s also a blogger.
Metro-North: Watch out!
His “Longitude & Gratitude” blog is a grab-bag of clever, cogent observations about life in the burbs. The other day, though, Josh’s general good nature gave way to venting about Metro-North’s piss-poor performance recently this winter for a long goddamn time.
Usually, Josh takes out his anger by tweeting. He tweets photos of delay signs. Leaking roofs. Crowded cars.
(Photo/Josh Prince)
This time, though, he had a few blessed days off the rails. He wrote: “I’ve tried to dial back my own vitriol by thinking about why Metro North yields such a level of rage in me and others, and by offering a few realistic, actionable ways the railroad might start to alleviate it.”
His 1st point was:
“Why does Metro-North make the average commuter’s head want to explode? In a nutshell, it’s the stark contrast in culture between the railroad’s ridership and its providership. ”
Josh said that many Metro-North riders work for companies that are performance-oriented. “We are held accountable for delivering, developing, growing, improving, innovating, and excelling,” he wrote.
Yes, that’s water leaking in a Metro-North car. (Photo/Josh Prince)
“This goes as much for interns and administrative folks as it does for mid- and senior-level people. We work all day (and often into the night) in competitive cultures with an underlying reality: if we don’t perform, there’s someone else hankering for the chance to do the same.”
And, he added, “most of our work cultures are customer- or client-centric. In order to survive, we have to understand what our customers want or need, and figure out how to deliver it better. What can we do better than our competitors to win the hearts and minds of our customers? What satisfies them and brings them value? How can we serve them better?”
Quoting a comment made at last week’s open meeting in Southport, Josh wrote: “If [Metro-North] was a restaurant, nobody would eat here, and if it was an airline, nobody would fly it. The real problem is that there is no responsibility being taken, and there won’t be any change until that happens.”
He challenged the new president, Joseph Giulietti: “Culture starts at the top.”
Change will take a while, Josh knows. But he offered a few smart ideas, which should not take long to put into place:
1) Use the digital station signs already. And have them show real information, including times. “Displaying the date at a train station is about as useful as showing altitude or windspeed,” Josh wrote.
(Photo/Josh Prince)
2) Offer refunds for genuinely disastrous service. Even credit for a future ride would go a long way to restoring good will, Josh said.
3) Join the 21st century and accept credit cards on trains. “Cash only? In 2014?” Josh fumed. “I can pay for my morning coffee at a tiny start-up coffee shop with Square.”
Josh also suggested fixing the TrainTime app, updating the website, and improving the PA announcements.
Reasonable points, I say.
Metro-North: What do you say?
(To read Josh Prince’s full post, click here. Bonus feature: For Newsweek’s rant about Metro-North, click here.)
The 1st-ever “Commuter Speakout” is still on for 7:30 tonight, at the Pequot Library in Southport.
Connecticut Department of Transportation commissioner Jim Redeker will be joined by Metro-North officials from Operations and Customer Service. They’ll discuss why rail service has deteriorated, offer proposed fixes, and answer questions from commuters.
Sounds great — and very important.
But — sorry, I can’t help myself — let’s hope the “Metro-North officials” drive there.
With today’s weather, if they take the train they may never arrive.
Comments Off on Weather Won’t Stall Tonight’s “Commuter Speakout”
Posted in Organizations
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