00:00Are you and your team worried about major breakdowns just because of the
00:05harshness of this or is it just an emergency as usual?
00:10You know Tom, it's an interesting point. Rob was talking about
00:15the advances in forecasting. The advantage of that is it allows us to do a ton of preparation.
00:20And 15,000 MTA workers labored over the weekend and
00:25into today to make sure we could put on service and we were able to maintain.
00:30Bus and subway and Metro North and Long Island Railroad commuter service.
00:35Right through the storm with delays, with imperfections, but we were able to opt
00:40to cooperate, which is not always the case in the past. And that's because of preparation.
00:45And, you know, our concern now is we're operating a
00:50full Monday morning commute, which is amazing. But, you know, the
00:55obviously with a risk of thaw and icing that presents new problems.
01:00So we're moving on in how we manage the impacts of the storm.
01:05Just as you suggest.
01:06General, give us the status of the subway and the bus.
01:10System as it is right now and kind of how you think it might play out over the next 24 hours.
01:15Well, here, the bottom line is we're operating service on all subway lines, on all
01:20bus lines. There are some delays because partly because we have.
01:25Crews that live in New Jersey, they're not able to get in because New Jersey Transit is out of
01:29business for today.
01:30Oh, shade there in New Jersey. A little bit across Hudson River.
01:35No, but listen, everybody's different. We were able to survive this storm with.
01:40As I said, 15,000 people doing a ton of work. But the bottom line is.
01:45We're running, we're running every line. Metro North is running, you know, 550 trains.
01:50Today, Long Island Road running 750 trains, both of them on kind.
01:55Of robust holiday schedules or weekend schedules. Check your if.
02:00If you're listening, MTA commuter, check your train time app or your MTA.
02:05website, MTA.info for specifics, but we're running service.
02:10And we're ready to, we're ready to keep that going as we go forward.
02:15General, persistent cold is in the forecast here.
02:20We've heard from Rob Carolyn, maybe for the week, maybe two weeks of well below average temperatures.
02:25What impact your system?
02:27Listen, you know, when you're ice is a.
02:30Is the enemy of good service on rail, right?
02:33So you have to have run your.
02:35territorium públicos and it's gonna be seriously closed on our events.
02:36Oh, thank you very much for your time.
02:37That's right for us.
02:38I think you, guys, all the other, the great our achievements who are.
02:39And you, guys, all the
02:47big welcome and enjoy these things.
02:49We're looking forward to talking about people what we paid off.
02:53through the system. We got the snow off of the third rail. We've been maximizing
02:58our use of diesel engines on the commuter rails which don't depend on the
03:03third rail and we're going to keep at it. So those are their new challenges brought
03:08on by icing especially for the bus system which is a hundred percent chain that all the
03:13wheels are chained but but we're going to keep managing through. Can I ask one nuns
03:18storm question? Sure. Yeah. What is what is so fascinating is you've been very vocal
03:23in your support of our new mayor and you've also said that we need a lot of study.
03:28of free buses. Give us an update on how close we are.
03:33to free bus service of the MTA. You know today is today.
03:38Today is really about the muscling through the storm honestly Tom. Sure.
03:43But but you know I'll just say this is that the mayor the new mayor Mamdani is.
03:48very pro-transit and I welcome that. I've also made clear that.
03:53you know if we're going to talk about something as radical and as as impactful as.
03:58making a whole section of our system free. We need to do a ton of.
04:03study and it's not a flip the switch type thing. So we'll.
04:08I'm sure that you know the governor who is leading you know the with.
04:13state of the state message making a lot of investments but also mindful of.
04:18the we've brought the MTA back to financial stability under Hochul's leadership.
04:23leadership and we don't want to mess with that. So we'll be moving methodically under governor.
04:28Hochul on addressing this idea.
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