Westchester Woman To Head Metro-North Railroad

WESTCHESTER COUNTY, NY — A Westchester woman will head up the second-busiest commuter railroad in the country, Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chairman Joseph Lhota announced Wednesday. Catherine Rinaldi, who has served as acting president of Metro-North Railroad since July 2017, and previously was its executive vice president, now assumes the top spot.

Metro-North provides 86.5 million rides a year between Grand Central Terminal and 123 stations in nine counties in New York and Connecticut on the Pascack, Hudson, Harlem and New Haven lines.

Rinaldi becomes the first woman to serve as president.

“Cathy is the best person to continue to push forward the progress that Metro-North has made in renewing the railroad and enhancing the confidence of its customers,” Lhota said in the announcement. “She brings 15 years of dedicated service to the MTA, a disarmingly calm management style, a razor-sharp intellect, and an uncanny ability to break problems down into their component parts to quickly find a practical solution.”

She's replacing Joe Giulietti, who resigned last summer after three years of trying to get the operation back on track. Between 2013-15, Metro-North saw eroded commuter confidence in the face of derailments and deaths, excessive and relentless delays, constant electrical problems, a sharply-criticized communication structure and a culture that detractors said valued performance over safety. In that time frame, 14 people were killed while riding the Metro-North rails and more than 100 people were injured in Connecticut and New York.

Some of the incidents between 2013 and 2016:

• May 17, 2013--Two trains collide on the New Haven Line near the Fairfield/Bridgeport town line in Connecticut.
• May 28, 2013--Track foreman killed on the New Haven line.
• July 18, 2013--a train derails on the Hudson Line.
• Dec. 2, 2013--a sleepy engineer on the Hudson Line took a 30-mph curve at 80 mph, derailing in the Bronx, killing four and injuring 60.
• March 10, 2014--An MTA electrician was killed by a northbound train in Manhattan.
• Dec. 17, 2014--A Milford CT woman died after stepping between two Metro North cars at Grand Central
• Feb. 3, 2015--Six die, 16 injured when an evening express train on the Harlem Line collides with an SUV on the tracks in Mount Pleasant, NY.
• Sept. 29, 2016--One dies, 100 injured when Pascack Valley train crashes through barrier in Hoboken

Rinaldi was at the MTA through all of it. She served as General Counsel for the MTA between 2003 and 2007 before taking on that role at the Long Island Rail Road, through 2011. In that year, she became Chief of Staff for the MTA, a position she held until 2015, when she became executive vice-president of Metro-North.

"I’m honored and humbled to be offered this position and deeply appreciative of the confidence that Joe and Ronnie have placed in me,” Rinaldi said. “Since I came to Metro-North, the railroad’s dedicated employees have made me proud to be a part of their team. I look forward to working with everyone at the railroad to affirm and strengthen Metro-North’s commitment to safety and customer service.”

One of her top priorities will be implementing positive train control, which Metro-North and the LIRR have been working on since the 2013 crash at the federal government's increasingly sharp recommendation. The feds have set Dec. 31, 2018 as the deadline.

“Everyone who has had the good fortune of working with Cathy knows she inspires confidence in those around her through a mixture of leadership by example, even-handedness and commitment to core principles,” said MTA Managing Director Veronique “Ronnie” Hakim. “She never loses sight of concern for customer experience.”

Rinaldi graduated summa cum laude from Yale and earned her law degree from the University of Virginia. She was born in Brooklyn, raised in Huntington, Long Island, and now lives in Westchester County with her husband and son.

SEE ALSO:

• Deep Dive Report 'Confirms Our Worst Fears' About Metro-North
• Driver Of Car Probable Cause Of Deadly 2015 Metro-North Crash
• Deadly Train Crash Puts the Spotlight on Metro-North's Recent Woes
• One Year On, Metro-North Works on Safety, Ridership
• Feds Start Probe into Deadly Pascack Valley Line Train Crash