MTA Joint LIRR and Metro-North Committee Meeting Testimony- Open Waiting Rooms to Bring Back Riders

Good morning! I’m Kara Gurl, Research and Communications Associate at the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA.
I’ll start with the good news: congratulations on the recent announcement that the LIRR has the best on-time performance in modern history. It’s promising that delays are going down and riders are getting to their destinations faster. But it’s hard to use on-time performance as a metric for good service when ridership and frequency are both at low points. We hope that you can tout this on-time performance as a way to entice riders back on board and that you can maintain such good metrics when ridership does bounce back. The best way to show riders who return to the railroads that they made the right decision is to give them a safe, fast, reliable, and pleasant ride.