You can”™t get there from here, the old adage goes, but maybe not for long.
Metro-North Railroad President Howard Permut journeyed to Orange County July 1 to discuss Metro-North initiatives and services in the region.
Appearing at the Sugar Loaf headquarters of the nonprofit Orange County Citizens Foundation, Permut outlined the many improvements that Metro-North has provided for riders on the Port Jervis line west of the Hudson River, with $300 million invested over the last 15 years to upgrade tracks and locomotives and buy new passenger cars. The Port Jervis line now has the most modern stock of rail cars of any of Metro-North”™s three other lines, with newer cars than the Hudson River, Harlem or New Haven lines.Â
And he said buses must fit into the transit equation since rail rights of way are expensive to buy and develop for far-flung locales.   Â
Permut has been president of MTA Metro-North Railroad since July 2008. He is only the 4th President in the railroad”™s history and was part of the original team that created Metro-North out of the Conrail commuter operations in New York and Connecticut in 1983 and been at the forefront of expanding service and ridership ”“ both East and West of the Hudson River.
The numbers reached 8.4 million riders annually, an all time high in 2008, but the increase in ridership has leveled in the recession, and even declined this year by 2.4 percent. But demonstrating the increasing importance of trains in the valley”™s transportation options, the decrease has been in the commuting rider population, while the weekend and excursion riders”™ numbers have held steady.
On-time performance has been achieved nearly 98 percent of the time, he said, with more trains and more cars on the trains making for a better, more reliable service on the Port Jervis line to Secaucus, where riders then take the NJ Path train to Manhattan.
Football fans in Orange County will be cheered to hear that a new service to the Meadowlands is “fairly imminent,” Permut said, meaning that upstate riders can avoid the horrendous traffic jams associated with Giants and Jets home games.Â
He said the future is potentially bright, but definitely uncertain. Among the big-ticket items Metro-North is involved in planning is a rail link between Stewart Airport and the Port Jervis station, which would provide a reliable mass transit option that could potentially make the huge airport busier with greater flight options. Such a change would also spark the economy in various ways.
Permut said Metro-North is also involved in revamping the Tappan Zee Bridge, along with partners headed by the state Department of Transportation. The plan du jour calls for a new bridge built for some $16 billion, plus an additional roughly $5 billion in debt service. That structure would be completed without rail service, but would contain the necessary infrastructure to allow it be “transit ready” so that it could accommodate trains.
“If you do not make the new bridge transit ready when you build it, you preclude it from ever happening,” Permut warned. He said realization of the “one seat” dream of rail access from the Hudson Valley to Grand Central Terminal in New York City would be an economic boon. “People could get to and from the Hudson Valley that can”™t do it today,” he said.
Permut said that Metro-North is constantly assessing ways to expand commuter and mass transit service and said that in many cases buses are a better option than trying to acquire the right of way and pay the construction costs for additional train service, especially to locales away from major population centers.
He extolled the success of the ferry service across the Hudson River from Newburgh to the Beacon station on the Hudson line and said that if the numbers show a demand, the service could be upgraded.
Parking at the stations is a problem, he conceded, but said that many of the parking lots are not owned or controlled by Metro-North, but by the municipalities where they sit. Still, he said the railroad looks to upgrade parking wherever possible.
