LIRR takes a hit on punctuality

The LIRR last year had its worst on-time record since 2005, as a signal fire and severe weather contributed to schedule disruptions, according to a new analysis.

The Long Island Rail Road 2010 operating report, due out Wednesday, shows that while trains were late more often in 2010, they broke down less frequently than in the previous five years.

The LIRR's on-time performance of 92.8 percent of trains fell short of the agency's goal of 95.1 percent, the report said. It was down notably from 2009, when the LIRR recorded its best on-time performance ever at 95.21 percent.

"There's no question that 2010 was a very challenging year," LIRR president Helena Williams said in an interview. "We are going to work very hard to get back to our record numbers."

The Montauk line suffered the most-frequent cancellations and delays, recording an 89.4 percent on-time performance in 2010. The best was the Far Rockaway line, punctual 96.3 percent of the time, the report said.

The LIRR's worst month for on-time performance came in August - during which a fire at a Jamaica signal tower caused more than 1,000 trains to be late in one week. Systemwide, the LIRR's on-time performance was around 89 percent for that month.

LIRR officials said severe weather, including the Christmas weekend blizzard and a September tornado in Brooklyn, contributed to the worst on-time figures since 2005, when 92.2 percent of trains were on time.

By industry standard, a train is considered late if it arrives at its terminal six minutes or more past its scheduled time.

Despite the poor on-time record, LIRR officials took pride in another measure of the agency's performance in 2010 - mean distance between failures. Those figures measure the average distance a train travels before it breaks down.

The 149,651 miles between failures recorded in 2010 was 7.4 percent better than in 2009 - and the best on record, the LIRR said.

Williams attributed the figures to the overall health of the LIRR's fleet, most of which is less than 10 years old. The LIRR's older M3-model cars, dating back to the 1980s, broke down about six times more often than the newer M7 cars, according to the figures. The LIRR hopes to replace all the M3 cars by 2016.

LIRR Commuter Council chairwoman Maureen Michaels said the figures don't offer an accurate picture of the reliability of the LIRR's trains. She noted that while trains may have broken down less frequently, deep service cuts last year also meant the LIRR ran fewer trains in 2010 than in 2009.

"It's not good enough," Michaels said of the agency's overall performance in 2010, a year of "unabated torture" for LIRR commuters. "The lack of an ability to get trains up and running is just dragging the whole system under."

LIRR 2010 delays report