Winter Storm Quinn (3/7/18)

[Commuter X]

Any predictions for tomorrow -- besides 6 -12 inches of snow

[Commuter X]

As of 8:18 PM, only 8 branches show delays. Not sure if that's good or bad

Perhaps it's time for Mr. Nowakowski to find a smaller, simpler railroad to run

[Head-end View]

I'll second that. From what I've read on the SEPTA board, he had a bad rep with the operating personnel, especially the engineers, when he was running that agency.

[Morisot]

To be fair, the conditions deteriorated rather rapidly after 4:OOpm on Wednesday, March 7. The snow was extremely wet and heavy. (The branches in my yard were weighted down further than I had ever seen them.) There were quite a few power outages across the Island. I can imagine that a lot of trees came down (the railroad has some rather narrow right-of-ways.) And, the LIRR was, I believe (if you can trust the local news outlets), the only commuter route in the Metro area NOT running on a limited schedule all day yesterday.

[tahawus84]

It was kinda of a mess. I took the 340 from hunterpoint to port jeff and it was over an hour late. Perhaps its time they cut back some trees along the row as they were hitting the train the entire way. Also they had to stop at lots of grades crossing because of issues with the gates. Yes the snow was heavy but I find it pathetic that 1" of snow pretty much shut down the railroad.

[KT3]

Have to agree. It's been said here many times before with respect to the oft-used LIRR excuse of "slip-slide conditions" but somehow the LIRR consistently finds a way to deliver sub-par service in weather conditions that customers should reasonably expect it would have figured out how to work within over its 180 years of existence. Winters on Long Island, and snow on Long Island, are not a new phenomenon. Yet every snowstorm, just like every fall with the slip-slide conditions, the LIRR operates as though it has never encountered those conditions before.

[Morisot]

They are trying to address it. With grade crossing eliminations. Double-tracking. Third track. East-side access. And the funny thing about the trees--- when the LIRR cuts down trees along the right-of-way they get complaints (and have even been sued.) I don't know what the RR can do about the public utility power lines that come down (usually doing so during storms) and interfere with the track.

(And this is not meant to be snarky, but, would you really rather have been making that commute in a car in that weather yesterday? I saw where one car skidded off Wantagh Parkway and ended up in a pond. The driver was okay, other than some hypothermia! Do you really think that your regular commute would be faster if you made it by car everyday?)

[krispy]

Also not mentioned both storms had issues with powerlines. Not ours, but PSEG over the ROW and they can make to call to do total shut-down if they deem necessary, and then we're all at their mercy. Like suicides, there's no planning for this and all we can do is to wait for them to clean it up. In my +20 years on the RR I can count on 1 hand the instances where we had leaning poles/down wires, and then we have several in the past storm.

While it may be popular to dump onto the current President, one thing to his credit is that he has gone all out in MofW, setting a aggressive trackwork program that is unlike any I've seen in my time. The state of the system has got to be the best I've seen, proactive instead of reactive. Pile on top of this the HUGE capital programs, commuter rail getting brow-beaten in the press about PTC (which STILL hasn't been fully developed yet by anyone) and Amtrak's multiple failings in Penn, the guy is being seriously tested. I would've liked to have seen someone like RPK but this has been a tough time to be Numero Uno. And compared to the neighbors (MN and NJT), we're still ahead, albeit a little bruised...

[Head-end View]

Krispy and Morisot, your posts are well taken. I did not know about the maintenance program started by Mr. Nowakowski; only his past history at SEPTA. And someone said above that it was 1" of snow when in fact it was several inches of heavy wet snow.

Also as far as slip-slide conditions every Fall, that is a particularly difficult condition to deal with. Maybe they should have more sandite trains than they do but it becomes a question of cost effectiveness. How much scarce funding do you want to commit to equipment that only gets used maybe two months of the year when there is so much other necessary stuff to spend the money on (like PTC development). Even the smartest railroad president in the world would have a tough time making these decisions.

[mp15ac]

I was on the 5:13 pm to Babylon that afternoon (going to Lindenhurst). Left on time, with lighter than average crowd. Between Forest Hills and Kew Gardens train started going slow, finally stopping at Kew Gardens station. I check the TrainTime app on my phone to see what's happening, to read that PSE&G power lines have fallen across the tracks by Freeport. Sat at Kew for quite a while, debating whether to get off or not (a co-worker of mine on the train did get off and called his father to drive out to pick him up). I stayed, and finally the train made to Jamaica, where it sat a while longer. Finally arrived in Lindenhurst 70 minutes late (7:24 pm instead of 6:14 pm). However, this time TrainTime did report the status of our train (as opposed to Winter Storm Riley, where there was nothing posted despite it running 40 minutes late).

And at least I did make it home.

Stuart