By Hank Russell
LIMBA (Long Island Metro Business Action) hosted Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) President Rob Free at its meeting at the Candlelight Diner in Commack on February 7. During his presentation, Free discussed the improvements being made to the railroad to keep riders happy and what challenges they are facing.
The capital budget is currently being reviewed by the state Legislature, Free said. “Trying to get [the budget] approved is vital to our service and to the region.”
He tells his employees “not to look at your job based solely on responsibilities” and says the workers “bring thousands of passengers” to and from Long Island “safely and reliably.”
LIRR is “a branch service,” Free said, servicing five western terminals: Atlantic Terminal, Penn Station, Grand Central Madison, Hunterspoint Avenue and Long Island City. “No other [rail system] does that.” But to do that, “we had to make an unbelievable amount of schedule adjustments, strategically and methodically.”
Over the past five years, approximately $17 billion in investments have been made in the LIRR, such as the Ronkonkoma station’s double track, the Main Line Third Track, Grand Central Madison – which was named “Best Interior” by Invesco — and the UBS Arena stop at Elmont, which was its first new station in more than 50 years.
The latter station is “incredibly convenient” for those who want to go to UBS for a sporting event or a concert than in the past, when passengers had to go to the Jamaica station then take a shuttle bus. “Depending where you’re coming from, you have direct service,” he said. In addition, Free said, the LIRR provides service to Barclays Center, CitiField, Madison Square Garden and Forest Hills Stadium.
“With those venues, it’s great for ridership, but it presents challenges … of having to stop and people disembark, but, at the end of the day, it’s a very convenient service.”
These investments, Free said, resulted in a 40% increase in service, while other transportation agencies were cutting back their services. In addition, reverse peak service went up 56%. “For the business community, that’s very important,” he said. “Because that opens up a larger labor pool from the western territories and even from upstate New York to come down to Long Island into work.
According to Free, reverse peak ridership went up 10% year over year, most of which was from the PM (evening) service from last year. Last year, the LIRR operated the most ever trains at 316,280 — 13,000 more than the previous year. Between 2022 and 2023, the number of trains in operation went up by 77,000.
When Free became president in 2023, he began to implement five strategic priorities. Those were operating a safe service, improving customer service, building a better railroad system, running a railroad efficiently — which he said was “very important” — energizing and developing the workforce, “mak[ing] sure the workforce is well-trained and [enthusiastic], that they want to be there and improve the service.”
Because these priorities were implemented, Free said, the LIRR made tremendous improvements, including an on-time performance of 95.65% — the highest recorded performance (outside of the COVID lockdown).
“We achieved that record number” with the opening of Grand Central Madison, Free said. “I cannot stress enough how much of a dramatic change that was to our service.”It completely changed everything we do.”
The LIRR also prioritized fixing switch failures. Instead of hitting the goal of reducing switch failures by 6%, the agency reduced failures by nearly 30%. “We are laser-focused on shoring up our infrastructure,” Free said, “and that has a direct result on our reliability.”
His additional goal was to increase customer satisfaction by 5%. “Everyone thought I was nuts,” he said. Last year, customer satisfaction was at 76% — six percentage points higher than the previous year and the highest ever among all other MTA agencies. They also scored an 86% satisfaction rate with safety and an 82% satisfaction rate with reliability.
Ridership, as a result, “is absolutely exploding,” Free said. Last year, the LIRR had 75.5 million customers, compared to 65.5 million in 2023. According to LIRR data, non-commutation, off-peak and reverse commute peak ridership exceeded that of 2023 and pre-pandemic 2019:
- There were 47,303,611 non-commutation riders in 2024. That is greater than in 2019, when there were 40,524,254 riders. In 2023, that number slid to 39,522,972.
- In 2024, there were 31,981,289 off-peak riders, which was higher than it was in 2019 (24,723,493) and 2023 (24,875,059).
- The number of reverse commute peak riders last year was 5,607,726. That is higher than 2019’s number of 5,246,800 and in 2023, when 5,327,400 riders were on board.
Free was also asked about the proposed Yaphank station and the electrification of the Port Jefferson line. He said the LIRR will move the Yaphank station towards the William Floyd Parkway, which would be “a stone’s throw” from Brookhaven National Laboratory and relieve overcrowding at the Ronkonkoma station. “That’s in the beginning stages,” he said, adding that the station would have “tremendous potential.”
As for the electrification of the Port Jefferson line, he said that it’s “very exciting,” but “very expensive.” with a price tag of $3 billion. “The technology is in its infancy.”
“At the end of the day,” Free added, “it’s all about customer satisfaction.”