Metro-North adjusts spring schedule to improve reliability, safety

MTA Metro-North Railroad on Monday announced new timetables for the Hudson, Harlem and New Haven lines, effective May 11, that are designed to improve reliability and accommodate new safety measures.

The schedule changes account for actual operating conditions and new mandatory speed restrictions, and will be more reliable for riders at intermediate stops as well as at final destinations, Metro-North officials said in a press release.

While some trips will decrease and others will increase, all will be more predictable, they said.

"We have analyzed train performance with an eye to bottlenecks, permanent speed reductions, actual running times, customer requests and the need to provide sufficient time to allow ongoing track and infrastructure improvements. We believe the new schedule will result in substantially improved performance," said Metro-North President Joseph Giulietti.

The new timetable also re-establishes traditional morning peak arrival times at Grand Central Terminal in New York City. Schedule changes made last summer resulted in many trains arriving later and customers shifted to earlier trains. The new timetable will undo those changes.

In addition, the schedule removes extra running time that was added last summer to accommodate emergency trackwork and will better reflect the impact of slower operating speeds at many locations as directed by the Federal Railroad Administration in its Emergency Order No. 29 issued in December 2013. The net impact of those two changes is that most people will have shorter trips, Metro-North officials said.