Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: I made a joke earlier to Paul Sweeney, how are
Speaker 2: you getting home on Tuesday? How do you get picked
Speaker 2: at work? And I got silence from Paul. You don't
Speaker 2: really know right now?
Speaker 3: I don't In New Jersey, Transit will wait on them,
Speaker 3: but I suspect I'll be spending another evening in the metropolis.
Speaker 2: We will get an update now from a gentleman with experiences.
Speaker 2: This a legit major storm experience. General Lieber joins us
Speaker 2: now with the MTA Jenna. What's your biggest headache right now?
Speaker 1: Listen? We got service running. You know, the challenges are
Speaker 1: are well known. We got to keep our snow fighting equipment.
Speaker 1: We got jet engines, snowblowers operating on the subways, literally
Speaker 1: on clearing the tracks, especially in the outdoor areas. The
Speaker 1: challenge of you know, buses moving around is the same
Speaker 1: as any vehicle. But we are meeting the challenge, Tom, Paul.
Speaker 1: We are. We're running subway service, albeit on a little
Speaker 1: you know, reduced frequencies. We got buses out there. Metro
Speaker 1: North is operating on a reduced schedule. The one piece
Speaker 1: of our system that is on suspension is the Long
Speaker 1: Island Railroad. It's no secret that Long Island's getting hammered,
Speaker 1: and that wasn't the same place to operate. But otherwise subways, buses,
Speaker 1: commuter rail operating, how does.
Speaker 2: The wind play into it? I mean, I'm calling it
Speaker 2: a snow it cane. I get the temperature, snow is snow.
Speaker 2: But like the wind on the various trunks that you have,
Speaker 2: I mean underground, it doesn't affect it. But how do
Speaker 2: you adapt to the wind?
Speaker 1: Generallyver the issue with wind mostly is actually the impact
Speaker 1: it has undrifting. What you know when you have for example,
Speaker 1: we have some areas in the subway system that are
Speaker 1: what we call an open cut that's like a little valley,
Speaker 1: a depressed area below grade, but it's still open to
Speaker 1: the sky, and snow tends to accumulate, and the wind
Speaker 1: pushes the snow into those areas. The drift on the
Speaker 1: commuter railroads sometimes we'll cover the third rail our source
Speaker 1: of power. So that is and obviously for people who
Speaker 1: are driving buses and even trains, the visibility issues associated
Speaker 1: with wind. That wind is the dominant factor in determining
Speaker 1: when we can bring back Long Island railroad service at
Speaker 1: the east end of our system.
Speaker 3: So what is the latest thinking, John about the Long
Speaker 3: Island Railroad here, because, again, as you've mentioned, and we've
Speaker 3: heard from the weather folks, that's really bearing the brunt
Speaker 3: of the storm.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, we did an orderly shut down last night
Speaker 1: at about one am. The goal is always to get
Speaker 1: everybody home. We did that last night with some extra
Speaker 1: service late late, and now we're going to be focused
Speaker 1: on orderly resumption of service, hopefully in time to operate tomorrow,
Speaker 1: when you know, the world will will be getting a
Speaker 1: little bit back to normal. So that's the approach that
Speaker 1: we take, say fifty first, you know, and taking account
Speaker 1: of where the snow accumulations and the drifting may have
Speaker 1: impacted on service. You know, one thing to bear in
Speaker 1: mind is in our big train yards, that's where we
Speaker 1: tend to get you know, the biggest drifting issues, and
Speaker 1: you know sometimes that inhibits your ability to put cars
Speaker 1: into the system into service. So we'll be digging out
Speaker 1: from in the yards and making sure that again the
Speaker 1: third rail and the tracks themselves are clear of snow.
Speaker 2: We continue with General liber MTA share quality time from
Speaker 2: his crisis center, Paul Sweeney, General liber Jenna.
Speaker 3: So all your personnel, the critical personnel of the MTA,
Speaker 3: how do you manage getting those folks to where they
Speaker 3: need to be, because, boy, they have to get there
Speaker 3: just like the rest of us.
Speaker 1: It's part of the deal when you sign up to
Speaker 1: work for the MTA that you may have to come
Speaker 1: in under extreme circumstances. When the rest of the world
Speaker 1: is being told to stay home, our workers are being
Speaker 1: told to come in, and they do. They they worked
Speaker 1: through the night, They worked heavily. Yesterday we got seventy
Speaker 1: thousand employees at the MTA. Thousands of them have been out.
Speaker 1: Many of them have slept in you know, in bus
Speaker 1: garages or in rail the rail control center where our
Speaker 1: head of Subways spent the night at the bus command center.
Speaker 1: It's part of the deal working for the NTA. And
Speaker 1: you know, I talked to Governor Hokel in the last
Speaker 1: you know, in the last hour or two and uh
Speaker 1: and and she's really focused on on you know, a
Speaker 1: tip of the hat to the to the workforce.
Speaker 2: A General Lever. I love artificial intelligence. It can ruin
Speaker 2: your day. General, you gotta help me here with the
Speaker 2: one point eight million dollars per inch? Myth Now, this
Speaker 2: is a department of sanitation. Did every inch of snow
Speaker 2: costs one million dollars? What's your every inch of blizzard
Speaker 2: that costs the MTA? Do you have a number? Even
Speaker 2: if you don't tell me, do you have a number
Speaker 2: in your head?
Speaker 1: I'll tell you the absolute truth. I have no idea whatsoever.
Speaker 1: It's that you've given me new metric. We use analytics
Speaker 1: here like crazy to evaluate how well we're doing, hopefully
Speaker 1: to operate more efficiently every day. You know revenue you
Speaker 1: know costs per car mile, cost per revenue mile for
Speaker 1: its subway and bus and commuter rail. You've given me
Speaker 1: a new metric to study. But right now I have
Speaker 1: no idea what to say to you.
Speaker 3: John Old. This is the second big, big winter storm
Speaker 3: of the season. It's arguably one of the biggest storms
Speaker 3: we've had in decades in this area. How's your system
Speaker 3: kind of holding up? Is there a cumulative effect where boy,
Speaker 3: we can't We really don't want to have a third
Speaker 3: or a fourth storm this season.
Speaker 1: Honestly, the challenge is is you know the same every time,
Speaker 1: which is you have to get the snow off, You
Speaker 1: have to make sure you have enough people to operate fully.
Speaker 1: You have to chain all the buses, you have to
Speaker 1: move car you know, subway cars around and put them
Speaker 1: in the tunnel, store them in the tunnels. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not that we we we every storm makes it harder.
Speaker 1: To the contrary, you know, for better where we're getting
Speaker 1: better at preparing for these because we've had repetitive storms
Speaker 1: and we're going to continue to try to get better.
Speaker 1: In the air of climate change, we're dealing with all
Speaker 1: kinds of extreme weather events. You know, right now we're
Speaker 1: forgetting about torrential rainfall and and uh and rising sea levels,
Speaker 1: but those are issues for the MTA as well.
Speaker 2: What does the morning look like, let's say four or
Speaker 2: five a m. Tuesday morning. Mister Lieber, can you say
Speaker 2: back to normal?
Speaker 1: I don't know about normal, but listen, our friends in
Speaker 1: at the Department of Sanitation are clearing not just the
Speaker 1: streets but the bus stops. That's really important, something that
Speaker 1: I know the Mayor wants to do better at compared
Speaker 1: to the first time around, so that our bus people
Speaker 1: who depend on buses will be able to get on
Speaker 1: and off them without having to climb climb over a
Speaker 1: four foot mind of snow. Who shot that's an important issue.
Speaker 2: That's brilliant. Who actually picks up, shovel and shovels a
Speaker 2: bus stop? Who is that person?
Speaker 1: Well, it's a lot of it's it's folks who work
Speaker 1: for the Department of Sanitation. They're supplemented. This is City
Speaker 1: of New York as opposed to MTR but they're supplemented
Speaker 1: by Parks Department workers. And they're actually hiring folks off
Speaker 1: the street for extra shovelers this time around. So I'm
Speaker 1: very hopeful that that particular challenge will be addressed, and
Speaker 1: we're we're gonna be clearing not just the tracks, but
Speaker 1: also our yards as I mentioned, which is where trains
Speaker 1: tend to get stuck. Uh And and there are you
Speaker 1: know a lot of complex switches that can inhibit things
Speaker 1: if they're not properly in order.
Speaker 2: One more question, Paul, you were you were impressed by
Speaker 2: the buses.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just walking to work this morning, I saw some
Speaker 3: of the buses here. Talk to us about the buses
Speaker 3: because boy, there, I haven't seen too many snowplows out
Speaker 3: yet because the storm is still raging here. How do
Speaker 3: the buses adapt here?
Speaker 1: It's it's old fashioned stuff, Paul. It's we put chains
Speaker 1: on every on the tires of every bus, and that
Speaker 1: that that gets done in the days leading up to
Speaker 1: the storm, when we know it's coming. You know, forecasting
Speaker 1: is getting better and better, we chain the entire fleet,
Speaker 1: and we take all the articulated buses, which are you know,
Speaker 1: tend to move around a little more in slippery conditions.
Speaker 1: We take them out of service, and we make plans accordingly.
Speaker 2: General, thank you so much for taking precious time this morning.
Speaker 2: This is the MTA of New York City as they
Speaker 2: deal with the storm, as I'm sure we're seeing in
Speaker 2: Philadelphia and Boston.