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Discussion of the past and present operations of the Long Island Rail Road.

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 #1507935  by Marge s
 
I have a question, Does the RR call the employees and ask them to work OT? If so why should the employee be vilified?
 #1507941  by freightguy
 
Dogbert wrote,

The only reason these stories are *shocking* to anyone working in the private sector is because so many jobs don't have unions or overtime. They don't have rollover sick and vacation days. If everyone had these very basic rights, none of this would seem like some crazy alternate reality to anyone.

I agree this is today’s mentality, if I can’t have it either can you. I think activist investors and hedge funds have played a major role in this current climate

Article written for “Railway Age”

Much is being made in the railroad industry and transportation media about the Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR) wildfire sweeping from coast to coast. Proponents of PSR will tell you that it will prove to be the industry’s savior. But it also begs the following question: Just what does the industry need to be saved from?

The combined operating income of the Class I railroads topped $16 billion for the first half of 2018, based on company reports. The carriers are now well into their second decade of ever-increasing profits, setting new records virtually every year. So, why the stampede toward PSR? And what does PSR really mean for railroad workers, shippers and the nation as a whole? While there are many slightly different definitions of PSR, there are a couple of common threads in all of them.

The PSR crowd is in unanimous agreement that the process will be driven by maximization of every single asset. That includes even fixed-point shippers, as how Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific eliminated more than 425 domestic and nearly 100 international origin-and-destination intermodal interline pairs in just the first six weeks of the year.

As a result, hundreds of locomotives and cars already have been mothballed, and that number will increase into the thousands in the next few years. Dozens of shops and yards have already been closed or are slated to be shuttered.

And where a line doesn’t pass muster under the profit maximization test, it will be sold off or leased to some short line or regional.* NS did just that last year with an entire operating division, and CSX has been trying to do it with its main line along the Florida Panhandle since last fall.

While all this is unfolding, thousands of railroad workers already have been furloughed. For BLET members, there are signs beyond yard closures, demotions and furloughs. For example, increasing numbers of Distributed Power locomotives are used to run trains of dangerous lengths in order to eliminate road jobs, vastly exceeding the train lengths that current communication technology can manage.

Of even more concern is that many railroads refuse to consider the introduction of actual scheduling for our work shifts in road freight service.** There is no consistent “precision scheduled railroading” insofar as BLET members are concerned. Predictability for road freight crews on many railroads is all but non-existent, creating avoidable fatigue risks every day. And the carriers continue to complain about crew size even when a single crew of two is moving hundreds of truckloads hundreds of miles every day across America. All of this combined creates the potential for a much-less-safe workplace, all in the name of short-term profits.

What is the purpose of all this asset maximization? At its investor conference held in Atlanta in February, NS identified three key targets. First, it plans to reduce its operating ratio. The carrier’s operating ratio was 65.4% in 2018. NS vows to slash that ratio by more than 8% in just three years’ time. Second, NS plans a dividend payout ratio of 33%, where one out of every three dollars in profits will be paid to shareholders as a dividend. Third, NS plans to continue share repurchases using free cash flow and borrowing capacity. In other words, much of the two dollars in profit that are not paid out in dividends will be used to buy back stock, and if there isn’t enough money to do that, the railroad will borrow money for buybacks.

These financial goals reveal PSR for what it really is: a scheme to suck up as much of the railroad’s revenues as possible and distribute it to investors, particularly to the hedge funds that own an ever-increasing stake in the industry.

PSR is nothing more than what many industry observers call “vulture capitalism,” with good reason. Hedge fund investors swoop into a company and drive down operating costs in order to wring out every possible dime in profits, but don’t share those profits with the workers who created them. They buy back stock to pump up the price, and when they run out of cash, they borrow against the company’s assets to buy back more stock and pump up the prices some more. At the same time, operational downsizing cuts are removing much more than “fat.” They cut into the muscle and bone of the operation and are much harder to repair when the hedge fund investors move on to greener pastures.

What happens when this merry-go-round stops? Just ask the folks who used to work for Sears, Kmart, or Toys ‘R’ Us, to name just a few of the more recent victims of vulture capitalism. Their companies were cannibalized in the name of making wealthy investors even wealthier.

To be sure, it is very unlikely that CSX or KCS or NS or UP will disappear from the economic map the way those companies did. But history instructs us on what happens when vulture capitalist schemes like PSR have squeezed all of a railroad’s assets dry.

In 1968, the Pennsylvania and New York Central railroads merged to become Penn Central. When it became apparent that the two operations were not a good match, a system-wide cannibalization and liquidation of assets began so that stock prices could be maintained and dividend payments continued. Penn Central’s shippers and workers were mere afterthoughts. Less than two and a half years after the merger, the Penn Central became the largest corporation in U.S. at that point in history to declare bankruptcy … and the carcass of the railroad was dumped on the nation’s taxpayers to rebuild.***

Significantly, BNSF, which is the only privately owned Class I railroad in the country, has said “thanks, but no thanks” to PSR. Perhaps BNSF understands this history, or maybe it knows that short-term gain for a few ultra-wealthy investors at the cost of long-term pain for everyone else is not a plan for long-term success.****

Former Republican President Theodore Roosevelt said in 1913, four years after he left the White House, “Of all forms of tyranny, the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of a plutocracy.” Time will tell if PSR is what the railroad industry needs. Unfortunately, much harm could come to the nation’s railroad infrastructure by the time that question is answered.- Dennis Pierce head of Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers Union( throughout US)
 #1507951  by BuddR32
 
Head-end View wrote:LOL! What they will probably find out is that all the overtime that was earned was in accordance with contract provisions that the MTA previously agreed to. Then what? :-D
NY POST's Nicole Gelinas wrote about those very same contracts which send the OT soaring. The excerpts from the contracts are just enough to incite rage from the readers because they don't have a clue of the operation or history of those same agreements, which can be renegotiated and changed every few years, but arent.

https://nypost.com/2019/05/05/heres-how ... %20buttons" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
 #1508001  by ExCon90
 
Ms. Gelinas lost me at "when the LIRR was part of a highly lucrative private railroad, benefiting from subsidies from long-distance travel." What railroad was that again?
 #1508027  by rr503
 
Wholeheartedly agree that NYPost's salary shaming is...gross (to put it lightly), but to deny LIRR's productivity problem (which, to be sure, goes far beyond this issue of overtime) is also a bit off. OT is supposed to be used to limit headcount, right? How does that mesh, then, with a railroad whose staffing numbers are up significantly over even 2010 when service provided is about flat?
 #1508057  by Kelly&Kelly
 
The railroad's management staffs and assigns overtime. Management alone determines headcount. Management alone, often through agreements which it enters into with labor, decides the staffing needed for each job. When management decides to fill a position, management can often choose to fill it at straight time or at overtime. Normally it is filled by a straight-time employee.

If none are available or if management chooses to specify a particular individual it is sometimes possible to pay overtime for the position. If no qualified straight-time employees are available, the position goes to an overtime employee chosen through often-complex and changing lists and agreements. Sometimes management may choose to permit a job to be "blanked" or go unfilled. For obvious reasons, this isn't always possible.

Much of management is chosen politically, with no regard to competence, training, education or experience. Efficiency of labor is not necessarily a priority. Safety, timely operation and political appearance trump efficiency. The LIRR is a government-owned and operated utility organized to specifically preclude it from civil service or budget oversight. It operates inefficiently because that inefficiency and lacking oversight benefit its political leaders through patronage, spoils and spending directed to favored vendors.

It's only natural that the perspicacious employee sees the money being frittered away and says, "I want mine".
 #1508125  by ExCon90
 
expbusop wrote:Pennsylvania RR if I remember correctly.
I was wondering which "highly lucrative private railroad" was benefiting from subsidies from long-distance travel. It certainly wasn't the PRR.
 #1508172  by Kelly&Kelly
 
Miss Gelinas' New York Post missive only proves that the LIRR's problems pale in comparison to the New York Post's problems.
 #1508339  by Absolute-Limited Advance-Approach
 
rr503 wrote:Wholeheartedly agree that NYPost's salary shaming is...gross (to put it lightly), but to deny LIRR's productivity problem (which, to be sure, goes far beyond this issue of overtime) is also a bit off. OT is supposed to be used to limit headcount, right? How does that mesh, then, with a railroad whose staffing numbers are up significantly over even 2010 when service provided is about flat?
Right now the roster is being inflated to compensate for East Side Access service changes and the large wave of retirement that will be in full swing around completion time. This has to be done now otherwise we'll be getting the NJT special.

The surplus in the roster gets used to compensate dor PTC training, M9 training and continual retraining. The remainder get sent on jobs that get a lot of overtime. So the extra crews are typically sent out to keep everyone elses OT down. The staffing surplus isnt at a reliable level to accomplish all of those things and keep a constant service on the schedule, so its a liability. That and the service can only realistically run in the midday since 90% of the cars are already needed to rush hour, those midday trains carry a lot of air and I dont see that changing since the island is a relatively low ridership base once the daily commuters are out. Management would surely see it as cost effective to just leave the extra guys on OT killers instead.
 #1508356  by rr503
 
Absolute-Limited Advance-Approach wrote: Right now the roster is being inflated to compensate for East Side Access service changes and the large wave of retirement that will be in full swing around completion time. This has to be done now otherwise we'll be getting the NJT special.

The surplus in the roster gets used to compensate dor PTC training, M9 training and continual retraining. The remainder get sent on jobs that get a lot of overtime. So the extra crews are typically sent out to keep everyone elses OT down. The staffing surplus isnt at a reliable level to accomplish all of those things and keep a constant service on the schedule, so its a liability. That and the service can only realistically run in the midday since 90% of the cars are already needed to rush hour, those midday trains carry a lot of air and I dont see that changing since the island is a relatively low ridership base once the daily commuters are out. Management would surely see it as cost effective to just leave the extra guys on OT killers instead.
Interesting details, thank you. I wish this sort of nuanced discussion had made it to yesterday's meeting, rather than all that performative nonsense.

It's funny you should mention off peak ridership, though. Studies have shown that if you increase off-peak commuter rail service to 20 or 15 min headways in areas with reasonable-enough population density, you actually induce sizable ridership gains. The barrier on Long Island? Labor costs; while the rest of the world has moved to proof-of-payment ticketing and limited on-train staffing, we still use conductors, meaning the marginal cost of adding service (as well as the amount one has to pay for said service) is extraordinarily high. People are really barking up the wrong tree when it comes to efficiency, it seems.
 #1508365  by Absolute-Limited Advance-Approach
 
rr503 wrote:
Absolute-Limited Advance-Approach wrote: Right now the roster is being inflated to compensate for East Side Access service changes and the large wave of retirement that will be in full swing around completion time. This has to be done now otherwise we'll be getting the NJT special.

The surplus in the roster gets used to compensate dor PTC training, M9 training and continual retraining. The remainder get sent on jobs that get a lot of overtime. So the extra crews are typically sent out to keep everyone elses OT down. The staffing surplus isnt at a reliable level to accomplish all of those things and keep a constant service on the schedule, so its a liability. That and the service can only realistically run in the midday since 90% of the cars are already needed to rush hour, those midday trains carry a lot of air and I dont see that changing since the island is a relatively low ridership base once the daily commuters are out. Management would surely see it as cost effective to just leave the extra guys on OT killers instead.
Interesting details, thank you. I wish this sort of nuanced discussion had made it to yesterday's meeting, rather than all that performative nonsense.

It's funny you should mention off peak ridership, though. Studies have shown that if you increase off-peak commuter rail service to 20 or 15 min headways in areas with reasonable-enough population density, you actually induce sizable ridership gains. The barrier on Long Island? Labor costs; while the rest of the world has moved to proof-of-payment ticketing and limited on-train staffing, we still use conductors, meaning the marginal cost of adding service (as well as the amount one has to pay for said service) is extraordinarily high. People are really barking up the wrong tree when it comes to efficiency, it seems.
I wouldn't be so quick to point the finger at the Conductor; I'm not fully convinced that the studies account for human behavior, numerically there may be people who could ride the train but the likely destinations are not near to the lines. This railroad was designed to service freight and long distance travel (in the context of 1870) not intra island travel, as such there is an enormous last mile problem, for that matter it has an enormous FIRST mile problem. Using the LIRR for all practical purposes requires a car so the calculation that someone has to go through is do I A: Drive to the station (pray there's parking after 715am), wait 10-20 minutes for the train get to the station and take then take a cab to my final destination or B: Drive there. If you're poor or very young you may need a bike and carrying your bike on the train is a pretty big hassle, we'll leave that can of worms closed. Most stations don't exist in an area that would even allow midday parking to any practical level, so riders will struggle to use the train even if the nominal trip pairs COULD use the system even if they were somehow able to resolve the last mile problem. People going into The City could possibly be attracted

Pragmatic considerations to the ridership is, that if the railroad needs 90% of equipment to pass inspection to make rush hour, sending trains down the road carrying a few dozen people (and hoping that there is no incident and hoping they get back to NYK to make rush hour) those trains become nothing but a risk. It's that much longer that a mechanical issue goes unaddressed and its that much longer that train goes without a required inspection increasing the risk that something will need to be canceled during a delay. The other consideration is that Passenger rail, isn't profitable. The only thing that helped with fares in the past was the Freight business which, like anything profitable the government had, was sold to a contractor so they can cut costs and gain a layer of deniability. Which brings us around to your claim of P.O.P being what's in the way since other places do it. Someone did the calculation and the train crew represents about $2.60 of the ticket price. Meanwhile MTA support staff and administration account for 50% of the cost and Debt for the department at large (including PD) at 27%. The amount of farebeating that occurs on a daily basis with current inspection is already at a disturbing rate, every day there are plenty of delays "Conductor requested police account fare dispute train operated 8 minutes late"; I can only imagine how much farebeating there would be if people thought they had a decent chance of not having their tickets checked for an extended period of time. To get up the level of fare inspection to the rate that it discourages extensive farebeating would likely not reduce cost at the ticket level more than a few cents. The systems that are used in the US are generally in effect on low ridership or low milage routes so ther cost benefit calculation can work out. Either way you will have hundreds of people roaming around punching tickets, and the Engineer will need to work that much harder doing things on their own during a disruption such as making reverse moves or brake tests etc.

Now why is it different in other places, the answer is the social safety net, in other countries you have less to worry about on the health care and general welfare front. In the US...not so much, so the Union will hold on to those jobs for dear life, as they should. There is definitely an economic consequence to liquidating several thousand good paying jobs, and it far outweighs a $2 benefit on a ticket for a railroad that people are riding because their communities don't have enough to offer them.
 #1508371  by rr503
 
Absolute-Limited Advance-Approach wrote: I wouldn't be so quick to point the finger at the Conductor; I'm not fully convinced that the studies account for human behavior, numerically there may be people who could ride the train but the likely destinations are not near to the lines. This railroad was designed to service freight and long distance travel (in the context of 1870) not intra island travel, as such there is an enormous last mile problem, for that matter it has an enormous FIRST mile problem. Using the LIRR for all practical purposes requires a car so the calculation that someone has to go through is do I A: Drive to the station (pray there's parking after 715am), wait 10-20 minutes for the train get to the station and take then take a cab to my final destination or B: Drive there. If you're poor or very young you may need a bike and carrying your bike on the train is a pretty big hassle, we'll leave that can of worms closed. Most stations don't exist in an area that would even allow midday parking to any practical level, so riders will struggle to use the train even if the nominal trip pairs COULD use the system even if they were somehow able to resolve the last mile problem. People going into The City could possibly be attracted
This breakdown is more complicated. While about 44% of riders do indeed park at stations, 24% of LIRR riders walk to the station, 23% are dropped off, and about 7% use buses or taxis. I'd imagine that during the off-peak, those figures skew much more strongly towards modes that aren't as parking intensive. (If I may, I think this is also an excellent demonstration of why we need to prioritize dense development around stations over sprawling park-and-rides in some areas. TOD has been shown time and again to be a more effective trip generator than park and ride facilities, and also happens to be a more efficient and attractive means of living.)

Leaving the world of conjecture, let's look at ridership trends: both on MNR and LIRR, off-peak ridership has been *the* driver of growth over the past 30 or so years. Commutation travel on the LIRR is actually off 3 percent vs 1988, whereas non-commutation is up 71%, making for a total ridership gain of 19%. Over on MNR, where since 2012 some incremental improvements to off-peak service have been introduced, this trend is even more pronounced. From 1988, Manhattan commutation rides have increased by 23%, while non-commutation has gained 96%, and intermediate station travel 150%. For whatever it's worth, this trend carries into the subway, too: the number of people entering Manhattan's core has decreased by more than 20 percent since the 1970s, with massive gains in off-peak ridership being the driver for the significant total ridership growth in that period. This isn't of course to say that the peak is unimportant, just that the off-peak harbors a hell of a lot of pent up demand.
Absolute-Limited Advance-Approach wrote: Pragmatic considerations to the ridership is, that if the railroad needs 90% of equipment to pass inspection to make rush hour, sending trains down the road carrying a few dozen people (and hoping that there is no incident and hoping they get back to NYK to make rush hour) those trains become nothing but a risk. It's that much longer that a mechanical issue goes unaddressed and its that much longer that train goes without a required inspection increasing the risk that something will need to be canceled during a delay. The other consideration is that Passenger rail, isn't profitable. The only thing that helped with fares in the past was the Freight business which, like anything profitable the government had, was sold to a contractor so they can cut costs and gain a layer of deniability. Which brings us around to your claim of P.O.P being what's in the way since other places do it. Someone did the calculation and the train crew represents about $2.60 of the ticket price. Meanwhile MTA support staff and administration account for 50% of the cost and Debt for the department at large (including PD) at 27%. The amount of farebeating that occurs on a daily basis with current inspection is already at a disturbing rate, every day there are plenty of delays "Conductor requested police account fare dispute train operated 8 minutes late"; I can only imagine how much farebeating there would be if people thought they had a decent chance of not having their tickets checked for an extended period of time. To get up the level of fare inspection to the rate that it discourages extensive farebeating would likely not reduce cost at the ticket level more than a few cents. The systems that are used in the US are generally in effect on low ridership or low milage routes so ther cost benefit calculation can work out. Either way you will have hundreds of people roaming around punching tickets, and the Engineer will need to work that much harder doing things on their own during a disruption such as making reverse moves or brake tests etc.
More off-peak service isn't a 'tomorrow' proposal, and current fleet woes shouldn't be used to justify ignoring this potential. That said, it's completely possible to run intensive peak and off peak service with a low spare factor and presentable reliability: the subway was doing it for years before issues of managerial competence overwhelmed us.

Let's talk about the economics, though. The basic issue with your calculation is that you're treating all costs as scalable with service. This isn't the case. Just as you do not have to add cars to run more off peak service, you also do not have to add more managers, tracks (more off peak could actually mean smaller yards), or signals. The cost of off peak service thus becomes one driven largely by labor. Per another post from the same website ( https://www.thelirrtoday.com/2018/11/pr ... yment.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ), the current cost structure requires a marginal ridership impact of 127 riders per new off peak train -- a tall order, as the poster points out, for what may be an incremental improvement. Reduce that barrier, and all of the sudden the economics change. Hell, if you were willing to throw some subsidy in with this (or were aggressive about reducing expense levels overall) you could probably throw in a fare reduction too, which, beyond putting more money back in the pockets of riders, would have the potential to somewhat alleviate the 'tale of two cities' situation wherein the poor ride NICE/SCT for trips that could be done faster and at less overall cost to the government on the LIRR.

Finally, fare evasion: the current LIRR fare collection system is a driver of evasion, not a preventative measure. LIRR's evasion rate hovers around 8%, and its incorrect fare collected rate bounces around the 10-20% range thanks to the difficulty presented in having a human navigating crowded cars. On New York's Select Bus Service system -- which uses PoP, and, given shorter trip lengths and more crowded, less patrolled vehicles, would seem riper ground for evasion -- the evasion rate is about 3%.
Absolute-Limited Advance-Approach wrote: Now why is it different in other places, the answer is the social safety net, in other countries you have less to worry about on the health care and general welfare front. In the US...not so much, so the Union will hold on to those jobs for dear life, as they should. There is definitely an economic consequence to liquidating several thousand good paying jobs, and it far outweighs a $2 benefit on a ticket for a railroad that people are riding because their communities don't have enough to offer them.
I somewhat challenge the notion that this would lead to thousands of layoffs. There's certainly an argument to be made that reduced trip provision cost would lead to service increases large enough to significantly offset the loss of positions. Would the union fight this? Absolutely, and it is indeed their duty to do so. Still doesn't make it a poor idea.

Generally, we have to remember that transportation isn't a zero sum game. Making the LIRR more accessible may lead some group to lose their jobs, but it means that all island residents get better access -- not just to other parts of the island and to the city, but to jobs, entertainment, family. Those gains are worth a lot; it's pretty much universally held by advocacy groups that high-quality LIRR service is the key to attracting jobs and people to the island in the future (to say nothing of making the island a more sustainable place). If you can provide frequent, reliable, reasonably priced service, you're doing amazingly.

Now, I suck at formatting links but believe in citing my sources. So here goes:

LIRR station access:
http://web.mta.info/mta/planning/data/2 ... df#page=52" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
TOD and ridership:
http://onlinepubs.trb.org/Onlinepubs/tc ... yn_122.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
LIRR ridership:
http://web.mta.info/mta/news/books/docs ... pdf#page=4" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
MNR ridership:
http://web.mta.info/mta/news/books/pdf/ ... f#page=115" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Subway car assignments:
http://www.thejoekorner.com/carassignments/index.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
LIRR fare evasion:
http://web.mta.info/mta/news/books/docs ... pdf#page=7" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
SBS fare evasion:
http://web.mta.info/mta/news/books/docs ... pdf#page=8" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
LIRR (and commuter rail in general) accessibility impact:
https://indicatrix.org/how-transit-fare ... dc9237947f" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.longislandindex.org/category ... velopment/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.longislandindex.org/category/transit/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;