Mon 2 Jul 2007
Metro-North Scoffs at Trainjotting Challenge
Posted by TJ under On-Time Challenge
Today is the first commuting day of July, which means:
1. You need a new monthly pass, and
2. It’s the first day of the Great Metro-North On-Time Challenge, where Trainjotting puts Metro-North to the test to see how often it’s on time (unlike Metro-North’s self-test, which allows a five minute, 59 second cushion–thus enabling those 99% “on-time” rates–we’re giving Metro-North 59 seconds).
And, wouldn’t you know it, Metro-North rubs it in our face by pulling in to Grand Central a full two minutes before it was due in this morning. (Granted, it was the slacker-friendly 9:16, when tunnel traffic is light, but still.)
It’s a heck of a start for Metro-North.
July 2nd, 2007 at 5:55 pm
As usual, the New Haven line didn’t fare as well…
It started OK. For the first time in two weeks, the 7:08 actually rolled in @ 8:24… As you can tell, I’m still shocked - it usually rolls into GCT around 7:30ish
Since my evening train is usually on time, I figured that the New Haven line had come out to play today.
Early into the 5:01 trouble struck. We pulled upto the platfor @ 125th and stopped. This train doesn’t stop @ 125 but I didn’t think much of it initially because it’s not all that uncommon that we stop there for 15 seconds or so. We must have had a new engineer today, because one of the conductors got on the PA to tell him that we don’t stop here. Still nothing. Another 2 minutes passes, and we’re told that there is a medical emergency at the rear of the train, and we’ll be moving shortly. It must have been a minor emergency, because we started rolling about 15 seconds later.
We ended up getting in to Fairfield @ 6:12 - even by MNRR’s standards, it was late
July 2nd, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Edit: I meant to say the 7:08 usually rolls into GCT around 8:30ish…oops!