LIRR unveils performance improvement plan

MTA Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) on Monday shared details of its performance improvement plan.

The plan outlines nearly 60 actions the railroad will take to boost service reliability, seasonal preparedness and customer communications.

As part of the plan, LIRR will take steps to maintain and upgrade critical infrastructure, such as signals, switches and track. For example, the railroad will increase frequency of rail flaw detections and improve the quality of track inspections by reducing the length of track inspected per tour.

"This plan lays out the steps toward doing everything we can to prevent incidents that can impact service and when incidents do occur, to recover service faster by improving our response times to the issues impacting us and our customers," said LIRR President Patrick Nowakowski in a press release.

To improve seasonal preparedness, LIRR will increase vegetation management in the spring and summer. For winter weather, the railroad will acquire switch snow covers, more snow fighters and additional third-rail heaters.

On the customer communications front, LIRR plans to hire a "chief customer advocate" who will report directly to Nowakowski. In addition, the railroad plans to conduct market research and hold focus groups to enable staff to better understand rider expectations and perceptions about existing customer communications.

It will cost the MTA $15 million to $20 million to implement the plan, Newsday reported.