New MTA chair hails LIRR East Side project

The MTA's new chairman calls the Long Island Rail Road's $7.4-billion East Side Access project a "game-changer" that will ease Nassau and Suffolk residents' commutes into New York City and "change the dynamics of the economy" on the Island.

"I think it's going to go a long way toward changing Long Island," Joseph Lhota said Tuesday of the plan to link the LIRR to Grand Central Terminal by 2018.

"It's going to change the real estate market," he said. "For the folks who work on the East Side of New York, if they're thinking about living in suburbia, they generally look north. . . . Now, it's going to give an opportunity for people who want to work on the East Side to think about Long Island as well."

Lhota, who grew up in Lindenhurst and worked for years on the Island, laid out his vision for the future of public transit in an interview on the day after the State Senate confirmed him as chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Key to that future is East Side Access, which he heralded as "something new and different." But the plan faces challenges from Amtrak's ongoing track replacement work in the same place where much of East Side Access' staging is going on.

The Amtrak work contributed to the MTA's recent decision to push back the East Side Access project's estimated completion date from 2016 to as late as 2018.

"I do worry about that project because of its complexity and because we don't control our own destiny," Lhota said. "So much of it involves Amtrak. So we keep constant vigil and care in looking at it."

SEE PHOTOSLIRR trains and commuters through the years

With Amtrak working to upgrade the infrastructure of four century-old East River tunnels, Lhota acknowledged that parts of the LIRR's system "need to be rebuilt and refortified."

He emphasized that the MTA has stayed on top of keeping the aging system in shape.

"The system is old," Lhota said. "The Long Island Rail Road is one of the oldest railroads in the country. And while the tracks are in the same place they used to be, it's been replaced. It's been repaired. It's been modernized."

The "single most important thing" that can be done to improve the LIRR's operation is construction of a second track between Farmingdale and Ronkonkoma, now a single-track area.

The MTA originally planned to begin that project during its current five-year capital plan, which expires in 2014. But funding restraints forced the agency to push it back until at least 2015.

Lhota said he is "committed to making sure it happens."

"We need to get the duplication, and in some cases the triplication, of the tracks so that when something happens, we'll be able to zip around it and not slow everything down," Lhota said.

Lhota's "triplification" remark was a reference to the LIRR's controversial plan to add a third track on its Main Line between Hicksville and Floral Park.

The $1.5-billion project, which would require the LIRR to build on some private properties, remains stalled by financial and political roadblocks.

"That one is a little bit more complicated," Lhota said. "In theory, I do support that project. It will help purely in the operation, and our riders deserve it. But I do have to be cognizant and aware of the issues and concerns of our neighbors."