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MTA Metro-North Railroad Announces Service Initiatives for 2008
MTA Metro-North Railroad, with its ridership on target to set a new record of 79.5 million rides in 2007, is seeking new ways to improve service for its diverse and growing customer base.
The railroad continues to meet this challenge of providing more service in more time periods to more customers without significant staffing increases. For 2008, ridership is projected to grow another 2.4% to 81.5 million. To serve these additional customers, the number of trains operated in 2008 is projected at 204,437- an increase of 2,214 trains over 2007. Yet the number of employees, or operating positions, per million riders is projected to decrease to 70.8 positions, down 1.3% from 2007.
On the Hudson Line, on weekends, additional express service will be provided with three new round-trip trains on Saturdays and two on Sundays. The importance of off-peak and weekend service improvements is illustrated by this statistic: Today, just 49% of Metro- North's ridership is comprised of commuters traveling into Manhattan during the traditional morning commute.
The remaining 51% of Metro- North customers are reverse commuting out of New York City to suburban employment centers, traveling during midday, nights and on weekends, or taking day trips in the region without ever setting foot in Grand Central Terminal. This changing demographic makes Metro-North not just a commuter railroad, but a full-time means of transportation that is more vital to the region and its residents than ever before.
Metro-North is also seeking to improve its ability to sell tickets. To improve the efficiency of its on-board ticket sales, the railroad will purchase hand-held devices including wireless printers to issue clearly printed receipts. In addition to calculating all fares, the application allows conductors to download daily sales information to improve fare collection data and eliminate manual calculations and data entry. This information will help Metro- North to better forecast ridership and revenue. Metro-North is also spearheading the regionwide effort to create a one-ticket ride for anyone who uses more than one of the commuter railroads in the tri-state area.
Other improvements include rolling stock investments.
Metro-North Railroad has committed significant funding toward the continued revitalization of its fleet, purchasing new equipment and remanufacturing select cars, coaches and locomotives.
The overhaul of 140 M-3 electric cars for the Hudson and Harlem lines will continue through 2008 and be completed in early 2009.
The Hudson Line Stations Improvement Project Phase II will see inbound platforms at Irvington, Hastings-on-Hudson and Dobbs Ferry finished in 2008, completing renovations at those stations that also added elevators making them fully accessible to the disabled.
With those stations complete, reconstruction of the platforms and overpasses at Phillipse Manor, Scarborough and Ossining will begin, starting with the inbound platforms.
Construction of a new station at Yankee Stadium will continue through 2008 for an opening in the second quarter of 2009.
In Croton-Harmon, the replacement of 100-year-old facilities continues in 2008 with the construction of new Coach and Locomotive shops with completion in 2009.
A new Rail Impact Detection System will be purchased to measure the impact of a wheel to the rail. The railroad will use the impact detector to quickly identify and categorize damage to train wheels, which happens frequently during slippery rail season in the fall. Equipment will be removed from service based on severity of the measured wheel damage for correction. This allows the railroad to manage defects as they occur to improve equipment availability and reduce the number of "flats" in service.
Next year, Metro-North employees will install more than 35,000 wooden ties, resurface 200 miles of track, install 45 switches, and replace 35 miles of rail, in addition to installing 25,000 new concrete ties as part of its cyclical track maintenance program.
A major signal study that will help Metro-North design and start construction on a new signal system on all three lines in both New York and Connecticut will continue in 2008.
In 2008, construction will start on a new Operations Control Center to replace all control hardware. Software upgrades will provide for stateof the-art rail traffic technology.
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