ISSN 1052-7524 Proceedings of the Transportation Research Forum Volume 7 1993 35th TRF Annual Forum New York, New York October 14-16, 1993 298 Proceedings of TRF, Vol. 7, 1993 The Growth in Regional Passenger Rail Service' Philip M. Ryan Senior Engineer Metro North Commuter Railroad There have been many developments in including systems planning, capital commuter rail throughout North programs, operations, and labor America over the last several years. A relations. He has previously worked for recent article in Progressive Railroading Conrail's metropolitan region in New magazine stated that commuter rail is Jersey Transit. Mr. Waldron's last alive, well, and growing. The article assignment was Director of Operations discusses the growth that is occurring for the successful new start-up of the and the new opportunities that regional Virginia Railway Express. commuter rail service is having through- out North America today. Next is Mr.Jack Kanarek. Mr.Kanarek is currently Senior Director for Project We are fortunate to have a panel that Development for New Jersey Transit. represents a broad cross-section of the He has a B.S. degree in civil engineering regional passenger rail industry. Our from the University of Buffalo and an first panelist is Mr. Donald Nelson. Mr. M.S.degree in civil engineering from the Nelson is President of Metro North University of Pennsylvania. He has Commuter Railroad here in New York. previously worked for the New Jersey Mr. Nelson has a BA.in economics from Department of Transportation and has the University of Washington. He has been employed in the last 12 years by served in the U.S. Marines. He has over New Jersey Transit, where has worked 30 years experience in the railroad on a variety of engineering and planning industry. He served with a number of projects. rail systems including Great Northern, Central New Jersey, Conrail, and Our last panelist is Mr. David Beatty. Indiana Harbor Belt. He has been with Mr. Beatty is General Superintendent Metro North since 1983 serving as Vice for Commuter Services and Transporta- President of Operations, Executive Vice tion Development for Amtrak. He President, and since 1991, as President. attended the University of Virginia and Wisconsin and has more than 30 years Next is Mr.Tom Waldron. Mr. Waldron experience in the railroad industry. is currently Vice President of the Prior to joining Amtrak, Mr. Beatty engineering, design and consulting firm worked for the Chicago Northwestern Frederick R. Harris and Company. He where he was involved in the Chicago has more than 15 years experience commuter operation run by the Chicago working in all phases of transportation, Northwestern. He has also been 1 A grant from the UPS Foundation helped make this session possible. The Growth in Regional Passenger Rail Service 299 extensive4y involved with Amtrak's current recession over the past 3 or 4 Commuter operations, including serving years. Why, during a period when one as General Superintendent for Amtrak's might expect service cuts, have we Boston Division, where he is responsible continued to expand our service? for running Amtrak's New England coramuter and long distance service. It wasn't magic. It wasn't something we Most recently, he was involved in the did overnight. The success has taken development and start-up of the Los the entire decade, since 1983, to Angeles Metro Link rail operation. accomplish. We inherited a crumbling infrastructure and failing equipment. After the 4 presentations, the panelists We have been working toward providing are invited to comment on any of the our customers with a transportation issues raised by the other panelists. service of the highest quality. We Following these comments by the panel, realized we had to crawl before we could We will take any questions and walk, and with an 80% or less on-time comments from the audience. performance, obviously crawling was what we were doing. Donald Nelson Our first 5 years was a time of President rebuilding, and thanks to the first MTA Metro North Commuter Railroad capital program,1982-1986, Metro North received $897 million to begin rebuilding The topic I have been asked to address is within the state of New York. growth in regional passenger services. My comments reflect my personal Concurrently with that, we received Perspective, but also the experience we several hundred thousand dollars to have had at Metro North since we begin rebuilding in the state of started business at the beginning of Connecticut. We began with the basics: 1983. Much of our experience is similar track, signal control systems, rolling to experience by other commuter stock. We installed continuous welded operations, regional passenger rail. System-wide, we are not completely operations. CWR. Growth in regional passenger services We improved the cyclical maintenance requires something we have not seen for programs for our tracks and bridges. We a long time: new customers. In view of began modernizing our maintenance the economy and the loss of 395,000 jobs facilities, we built new shops and we in New York City over the last 4 years, rehabilitated existing shops. We many believe that it is easier to pull a designed and installed a modern signal rabbit out of a hat than to find a new and train control system, the last piece customer in the commuter rail system. of which went into full service two But, without pulling a rabbit out of a weeks ago. hat, we have accomplished some things that did not involve the use of magic. We purchased new rolling stock, and we established overhaul programs for the Metro North is a railroad that relies existing rolling stock for the first time in very heavily on the vitality of the Big 30 years. We inherited a fleet that the Apple and its customer base. Metro New York Central purchased in 1960. North has managed to maintain and The fleet had never been overhauled, so even increase our ridership during the we began an overhaul program in the 300 Proceedings of TRF, Vol. 7, 1993 mid4980's. In 1984, we completed the where they had never existed before,and electrification of the Upper Harlem line we began to increase our weekend from North White Plains to Brewster, a service. We did so while maintaining an a 34-mile double-track segment. That was on-time reliability performance level of a major and significant accomplishment over 92%. that would enable us to improve service to one of the region's fastest growing The end result of these efforts was that areas, Upper Westchester County. ridership on all 3 of our major lines (the Hudson Line to Poughkeepsie; the Our on-time performance rose from 80% Harlem line to Westchester, Putnam, to about 90% system-wide during the and Dutchess counties; and the New first 2 years. A year later, we began Haven Line) grew to 56 million. That operating above 92%. was the highest ridership since the hay- day of the New York Central and New As a result of these increases, our Haven Railroads, right after World War ridership grew quite rapidly. That growth was without any specific effort on our part other than rebuilding the If the 1980's taught us anything, the infrastructure and beginning to restore lesson was that word of mouth and good service. The year that we cracked the service were not going to be enough to 90% on-time reliability barrier, we also sustain this momentum. The 90's have saw our annual ridership grow by 5 seen us adopt a new strategy that percent to 52 million. includes marketing our service to the public and understanding the impact, It seemed to us that we were finally the message that we are receiving from giving our customers what they wanted our market research. We are trying to — a clean, safe, comfortable ride. We tailor our service to the needs expressed continued, therefore, to focus on in the market research rather than improving those things that made this simply going out and advertising what possible. we are delivering. By 1988, Metro North had replaced one- Our television commercials and radio third of its fleet. In order to ads are produced jointly with the Long accommodate a growing customer base, Island Railroad. This has been a we began to make other significant successful advertising campaign. service improvements. Apart from advertising, we continue to During the second 5 years, 1987 through focus on the basics. Good maintenance 1992, we focussed more on customer practices have enabled us to maintain needs, having already restored the high on-time performance results. We infrastructure and significantly reduced have even set record on-time deferred maintenance. We were performances: we are over 96% now for operating with a certain amount of the second consecutive year. We have reliability and we were able to focus increased our route from 13,000 miles in more of our time,both as managers, and 1987 (when we first started to measure) as front-line employees, on the needs of to 50,000 miles today. our customers. We listen to our customers through an In 1989, we began adding new weekday annual survey. We adapt to meet the trains. We started to add express trains needs expressed in the survey. For The Growth in Regional Passenger Rail Service 301 example, we now offer different types of year. It is a healthy gain considering tickets. These tickets are intended to the climate here. And, potentially attract families and off-peak riders, as significant, is the fact that many of Well as the daily commuter. The daily these gains are coming from non- cominuter continues, of course, to be our traditional places.