Cuomo, Lhota Take Victory Lap As 'Summer Of Hell' Nears End

NEW YORK CITY, NY – As the "Summer of Hell" comes to a close, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and MTA Chairman Joe Lhota are taking a victory lap – saying the secret of making the two months of maintenance work at Penn Station relatively painless was good planning.

Long Island Rail Road service was better in July than any other month so far this year, with more than 90 percent of trains arriving on time, Lhota said on Wednesday. Meanwhile, there was one derailment, involving a NJ Transit train, at Penn Station during the repair work.

“We’re proud to say that we achieved our goal of minimal rider disturbance” on LIRR lines, Lhota said in a conference call with reporters.

He and Cuomo pointed to the MTA’s efforts to accommodate passengers while the Penn Station work forced LIRR to reduce the number of trains running to the hub by about 20 percent. Those measures included discounted fares and alternative routes like buses and ferries.

"We said this summer had the potential be the 'summer of hell.' It did. It was prevented by the preparation, communication, and execution of our mitigation plan,” Cuomo said in a Wednesday statement.

With Amtrak expecting to finish the work at Penn Station this weekend, regular weekday service for LIRR and NJ Transit is scheduled to return on Sept. 5.

Lhota said the MTA will apply lessons learned during the summer as the authority struggles to deal with the beleaguered subway system, which has seen chronic delays and other problems in recent months.

“The lessons learned are really, really an exercise in good management – how to make decisions quickly, how to coordinate communication with our customers,” Lhota said.

He noted that the MTA’s “action plan” to turn around the subway system includes regularly staffing a war room to deal with crises and streamlining the decision-making process.

With Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio at an impasse over funding the action plan, the MTA boss took a dig at the mayor, who’s refused Cuomo and Lhoto’s request for the city and state to split the roughly $800 million cost.

Lhota said the mayor shouldn’t “put silly advertisements on his website, but actually do the right thing for the people of New York City, and that is help our subway system.”

Lhota also discussed the authority’s “genius” competition soliciting ideas on modernizing the subway system. He said the MTA has received 400 applications.

“I am more than pleasantly surprised at some of the ideas that have come forward – all types of things to modernize the subway system,” he said.

“We’ve gotta retool all of these proposals and then figure out which ones we want to implement.”

Lhota said that on-time performance for LIRR trains in August is on track to surpass that of last year at this time, and might be better than July, too.

“I think when we put our mind to doing something here at the MTA, we can get it done,” he said.

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Lead image of Joe Lhota on July 18 by Shant Shahrigian/Patch.