CooCoo on track to hit 100,000 LIRR users

By Monday, John Tunney figures there will be 100,000 CooCoos on the Long Island Rail Road.

That does not mean 100,000 crazy people riding the railroad. It means that Tunney's Huntington-based technology company, CooCoo - an open-platform text engine that brings free train and other information to any mobile phone without using the Internet - will have achieved the 100,000 mark in the number of LIRR users accessing the service.

Tunney, a Huntington restaurant owner, acquired an appetite for tech companies and launched CooCoo over a year ago. CooCoo has not yet made money, Tunney said, although he hopes eventually to profit from ads. He said he has a contract with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to expand the service to Metro North - the MTA operates it and the LIRR - and he has been in talks with the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, which serves the Philadelphia area.

Tunney said CooCoo is close to the 100,000 user mark and expects to reach it Monday. Users need to state their query - train information, sports scores, etc. - and send it to 266266 (CooCoo) to access the service. Tunney said he is not surprised by the number of users on the LIRR.

"In today's market if it's free and it works, people adopt it," Tunney said. "You need to be free, accurate and fast. Our plans are to go across the U.S. and then go global."

LIRR spokesman Joe Calderone said the CooCoo service has benefited the railroad and its riders.

Calderone said MTA chairman Jay Walder deserves credit. Before Walder took over a year ago, train data was considered proprietary to the LIRR. Walder said the data should be available to developers like CooCoo. "It all hasn't cost us a dime," Calderone said. "They've taken our data, put it into their black box and came up with this great service."