I was chatting with Saugatucker about the merits of biking to the train recently. Sure, it’s a few minutes of misery on those 20 degree mornings. But we agreed there’s something about driving to the train that just feels like the ultimate suburban cliche…wait, the image of the angry commuter chipping ice off his windshield before driving to the train would be the ultimate suburban cliche.

Saugatucker carves almost three miles through the Westport terrain each morning on his bike, a much lengthier jaunt than mine. We mentioned the quiet delight we experience when seeing neighbors climb into their cars around the same time we set out on our bikes, both looking to make the same train, but only one of us having to navigate the labyrinthian misery of the commuter parking lot.

Of course, on those bleak wintry-mix mornings when I set out on foot, I’m all too happy to have those neighbors give my sorry ass a ride to the station.

So I was torn between walking to the train and riding the trusty steed this morning, with all the precipitation nonsense that fell yesterday. I was fearful of the dreaded black ice this morning, but also tired of all the walking to the station I’ve done of late due to all the snow. So I decided to set out a few minutes early and bike cautiously.

At the end of my driveway, I saw my neighbor T climbing into the passenger seat of her car, with stone-faced husband D at the wheel. Young V was in tow too–heading to the city with mom due to winter break from school.

The roads were fine and I resumed my normal speed after descending Heartbreak Hill to Memorial Drive. I pulled into the station parking lot just as the stone-faced D was dropping off T and Little V–chalk another one up for the bike guys.

My morning momentum was short-lived, however, as the 8:16 was late. At 8:22, the loudspeaker crackled to life.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the 8:16 is running 10 to 15 minutes late,” it said.

Us platform pigeons performed a collective exhale to show Metro-North our displeasure, and sought refuge from the morning chill in the plexiglass shelter.

At 8:29, the 8:16 rolled in. No explanation for the delay was forthcoming, and the 8:16 pulled into Grand Central at 9:13, a full nine minutes late. That’s even late by Metro-North’s generous 5:59 rule, which says trains arriving up to six minutes late are, in fact, on time by the railroad’s standards. In fact, the latest issue of MNR mouthpiece Mileposts said the Harlem Line was “on time” 98.6% of the time in 2009–meaning us poor suckers on the so called “8:16″ this morning were privy to something that only happens 1.4% of the time.

How special! Perhaps I was better off riding the bike to the city.  

Halloween.

The season of ghosts, goblins, children dressed as CC Sabathia, and other scary things.

It’s also the season of the dreaded slippery rail–the oily leaf residue that sticks on train tracks in the northeast and causes all sorts of havoc on trains.

I first encountered its tyranny shortly after moving to the burbs exactly three months ago. Eight car lines were reduced to 6…5…4!! as cars skidded through the oil, flattened their wheels and were taken out of service.

It was awful.

Last year, Metro-North finally got the upper hand, as an initiative dubbed “Water world” sprayed water and sand onto the tracks just before the wheels rolled over them. It was actually a very successful program, and commuters barely even noticed it was fall last year.

Well, Wednesday’s mad winds brought down lots of leaves prematurely, just as another gossamer object floated from the sky–the new issue of Mileposts.

“We’ve reprogrammed the software of our M7 fleet to allow the braking sytem to adjust to slip-slide conditions. And we have instructed our engineers to report slippery conditions immediately to our Operations Control Center. We have also trained them how to operate through these “slippery” areas.”

The railroad is also reducing trains’ speed as they go through the extremely leafy areas, to minimize skid. We seemed to be doing this yesterday morning, just about crawling through the ‘dales, Eastchester and the North Bronx.

“We can reduce the incidents of slippery rail, but we cannot eliminate them,” said Mileposts, while urging patience.

Speaking of patience, those poor fools on the New Haven Line were rewarded for theirs by finishing second (as in, not last) in the August On-Time Performance race, its 97.5% total nearly a point ahead of the Hudson’s 96.7%.

This is like Teddy Roosevelt winning the foam mascot race at Washington Nationals games. Or, for that matter, the Nationals winning at Nationals games.

[image: letteddywin.com]

First it was the mating turtles causing delays at JFK, and now it’s those pesky shelled reptiles clogging up the Metro-North train tracks.

Yes, the new Mileposts, your source of monthly breaking Metro-North news, reports that a large number of wood turtles have been expiring on the tracks on the Upper Harlem Line.

A group called FROGS (Friends of the Great Swamp…no, we’re not joking) was conducting research on these turtles in the Pawling-Patterson area when it pointed out to the railroad that the turtles were unable to climb over the rails after having climbed between them. They tend to nest in sandy soils, similar to the faux ecosystems found at track embankments.

Here’s the saddest sentence you’ve read all morning.

“The turtles were able to get between the tracks to begin their nesting habits, but could not get back out, so they wound up trapped, becoming exhausted and overheated, and eventually dying.”

The crack Track & Structures staff at Metro-North piled up rock ballast across the track bed and tapered it down over the rails to give the turtles a handy little ramp. A half dozen handmade ramps occur every 50 feet near where the tracks hit the Appalachian trail.

Apparently it’s working. Approached for comment, one wood turtle stuck his head in his shell and would not come out until a reporter had vacated the area.

[image: Examiner.com]

I tend to like the “Courtesy Corner” in each monthly edition of Metro-North mouthpiece Mileposts. Courtesy Corner offers suggestions for being a good train rider, as in, keep your cellphone calls quiet and keep your f***ing feet off the seat. Each time, the writer cushions the schoolmarmy lessons with some sort of timely and topical theme, like Christmas or spring or the Fourth of July.

The current edition, available on seats today, says:

During a professional baseball game…the team at bat may use courtesy runners for both the pitcher and/or catcher.

Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a courtesy commuter–unlike those highly paid athletes, you’ve got to go it alone and are responsible for your behavior.

CC then suggests a handful of tips regarding good train behavior.

That bit about the courtesy runner got me thinking. I know all about pinch runners–if you’re pinch-run for, you’re out of the game. But courtesy runners for pitchers and catchers?

It sounded fishy, so I consulted the Major League Baseball rulebook, which MLB handily offers on its Website.

Alas, it sounds as though the concept of the courtesy runner was done away with like a half-century ago, or just about when Julio Franco was coming up with the Rangers.

According to Rule 3.04 in the “Game Preliminaries” section of the rulebook:

A player whose name is on his team’s batting order may not become a substitute runner for another member of his team. Rule 3.04 Comment: This rule is intended to eliminate the practice of using so-called courtesy runners. No player in the game shall be permitted to act as a courtesy runner for a teammate. No player who has been in the game and has been taken out for a substitute shall return as a courtesy runner. Any player not in the lineup, if used as a runner, shall be considered as a substitute player.

Perhaps Mileposts should’ve consulted the rulebook before working that little metaphor into the Courtesy Corner.

We knew something was up just after we left White Plains at 8:28 this morning, the train positively crawling along as it quixotically (Editor’s Note: First time “quixotically” has ever appeared on Trainjotting) crawled toward the city.

We limped through Hartsdale and made our way toward its posher cousin Scarsdale, going about as fast as a septuagenarian on a bicycle. (Nope, not the first time “septuagenarian” has appeared in Trainjotting.)

At around 8:40, we got the first announcement, which was very faint and difficult to hear. I’m pretty sure the man said:

“Some broken tracks down in the Scarsdale area are causing a bottleneck.”

Things didn’t get much better for several minutes, and a second announcement came on about five minutes later. It featured a woman’s voice and you truly could not make out a word she was saying (yes, I’d taken off my sweet Bose headphones, putting Bob Marley’s “The Great” compilation on ice for the moment).

At 8:46, near the southern tip of Scarsdale and almost 20 minutes after we left White Plains, we finally got cooking, and pulled into Grand Central at 9:13. That’s nine minutes late–which happens just 1.9% of the time in the A.M., according to Metro-North mouthpiece Mileposts.

A special morning indeed.

A paper cup of champagne and hazelnut coffee never tasted so sweet.

Why the early a.m. potable? Trainjotting turns 2 today! Yes, it was exactly 730 days ago that we gingerly stepped into the blogosphere and posted a few thousand words from Engine Bob about why the crawl through Grand Central is so painstakingly slow, and another taking Metro-North to task for its dodgy “5:59 Rule” about what constitutes an “on-time train”–an issue that’s emerged as something of a leitmotif on these cyberpages.

Thanks to our intrepid correspondents over the past two years, including Straphanger Joe, Foot It Tim, Engine Bob, JerseyJim, PeterFromPort, Conductor Bobby, Saugatucker, CT Rider and G. Francis.

Year Three ambitions include a long overdue redesign, a correspondent who’s actually a female, and more rants about slow trains, literary critiques of Mileposts, and lonely dispatches about walking and/or cycling to the station out there in Car Culture.

[image: istockphoto.com]

Admit it. You see Mileposts, the Metro-North news rag you find on your seat each month, and you leaf through it. You check to see how your train line stacked up the previous month against the other two. You pump your fist gently if yours has won, and shake your head at the thought of those poor New Haven Line souls waiting in the freezing cold for a late train yet again.

Exactly who pens those witty little missives from Metro-North headquarters, you wonder. (OK, no one besides me in the 25-year history of Metro-North has ever wondered this.)

We’ll tell you who it is. It’s a man named Joe Antonacci.

We checked in with Joe, and here’s what he had to say.

I am a former reporter/copy writer/flak. Like you, I believe communicating the “picayune details” of commuting—new schedules, station renovations, whatever the heck we are up to at any given moment—doesn’t have to be a joyless undertaking for the writer or the reader. A little humor goes a long way toward getting people to read and remember your message. (And of course, I always work clean. This is a public agency.) 

The August issue of MTA mouthpiece Mileposts is the green issue, with a big recycling logo on the front and a series of articles about the railroad’s efforts to not screw up the environment.

Mileposts has a long explanation of the concept of sustainability, and proudly points out that the MTA “can serve as a national model and regional platform for sustainable growth in the 21st Century.” Nobel prizes, the railroad adds, can be shipped directly to the MTA box at 420 Lex.

Mileposts also points out that Grand Central now features energy-efficient CFC light bulbs, will reuse wash water at its new Car Appearance Facility, and is increasing its reliance on solar power for its switch machines.

Finally, Mileposts says Metro-North collected 642 tons of newspaper in its 90-plus recycling bins last year (note to the Binflint angrily grabbing at the papers people discarded on track 29 this morning–chill out, dude).

This year, Metro-North has collected 329 tons to date–the large majority of it issues of Mileposts that no one but TJ actually reads.

The latest issue of Metro-North mouthpiece Mileposts addresses, in light-hearted language, the matter of people taking their shoes off on the train. Mileposts‘ “Courtesy Corner” always admonishes, in a jokey way, its riders to be more considerate of fellow passengers. The July installment mentions how “foot troubles” did not exist in Biblical times, when people opted to walk around barefoot.

But alas, those days are long gone. “And that means you should keep your shoes on, and keep your feet off the seats when traveling on our trains….It’s the courteous thing to do, freeing up another seat for a fellow commuter and keeping our trains from smelling like a 2,000 year old locker room at the Coliseum.”

In other Mileposts news, the Harlem line continues to hurtle toward world domination, winning the May On-Time race with a 98.6% rate (”On-time” is of course defined as arriving within six minutes of the scheduled time–about as much time as is required to make one quite late.)

Perhaps the bigger story is the race for second. The dreaded New Haven line, home of the hapless catenary wires, pulled ahead of one-time Metro-North darlign Hudson, 98.3% to 97.4%.

Metro-North boss Peter Cannito uses the front page of the June Mileposts, out today, to bid farewell to the railroad. “I can’t begin to tell you how proud I am of the work that is done every day to serve you,” says Cannito, who then begins to tell us how proud he is of the work that is done every day to serve us.

“The performance improvements, the ridership growth, the innovations that we have made in technology, and the strategic planning we have undertaken for our needs now, in five years, and in 20 years were all done to make this railroad better for you,” he enthuses.  

What Cannito and the rest of Mileposts does not mention, but the NY Times does, is that Metro-North–and the NYC subway–may raise prices again next year, on the heels of the price hikes it instituted just a few months ago. MTA executive director Elliot Sander sounded a very despondent note when addressing the Authority’s budget woes, due primarily to thinned real estate tax revenue and of course gas prices.

“We’re going over the cliff,” said Sander, fairly ominously, about the MTA’s 2008 finances.

The last time subway fares went up in consecutive years were the dreary days of 1980 and 1981.

Sounds like Cannito is getting out just in time.

[image: blog.bibijon.org]