The Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) is celebrating its 16th year in a row with improved rail-car reliability, New York City's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) said this week.
Reliability is measured through the number of miles a rail car travels before breaking down and causing service delays, and this number's been rising annually since the dawn of the new millennium.
“There are many factors that can cause a train delay, from track conditions to problems at grade crossings to congestion from other trains,” LIRR President Patrick Nowakowski said. “I am pleased to report that the LIRR is doing a better job than ever before in neutralizing the category of potential train delays that we have the most control over: problems with the trains themselves. Our all-time high performance in terms of rail car mechanical reliability is a testament to the hard work that our employees perform every day to keep our rail cars inspected and maintained in top condition, even as the fleet ages.”
With the Reliability Centered Maintenance strategy, first implemented in 2009, all rail cars get scheduled maintenance and inspections based on the amount of time since their last checkup.
“We’re constantly monitoring failures and conducting trend analyses on components and subcomponents, and adjusting replacement intervals,” Craig Daly, LIRR’s acting chief mechanical officer, said. “Our replacement intervals are continuously evolving in a dynamic way in response to our updated observations.”
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