CONRAIL’S CAST-OFF COMMUTERS: 1 30 YEARS OF METRO-NORTH
A Hudson Line train speeds along the Hudson River at Dobbs Ferry, New York, with the New York City skyline twenty miles distant.
of Metro-North
The Path to Public Ownership Entering its final bankruptcy in
1961, the New Haven petitioned the In- terstate Commerce Commission to dis- continue all passenger trains system wide in 1965 and again in 1967, but to no avail. This action prompted local au- thorities to begin looking into subsidy programs for the commuter trains. As the financial outlook for the railroads continued to worsen, New York Central merged with its archrival Pennsylva- nia Railroad in 1968 to form Penn Cen- tral (which a year later was force-fed the New Haven). Commuter operations continued to deteriorate as equipment and stations fell into disrepair. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) was created by New York State in 1968 in part to oversee an unprecedented $1 billion bond issue to rebuild and unify the region’s mass- transit system. In 1971, the MTA and CDOT acquired title to the former New Haven main line between Woodlawn, New York, and New Haven, Connecti- cut (the New Rochelle to New Haven segment remains the only portion of
the Northeast Corridor not owned or operated by Amtrak). In 1972, the MTA worked out a long-term lease of the Hudson and Harlem Lines, which Penn Central combined with the New Haven Line as the Metropolitan Region. A subsidy agreement was also made with NJDOT and Erie Lackawanna to fund the portion of the Port Jervis and Pas- cack Valley lines operating in New York State around 1974. As part of the new agreement, MTA took over the commuter fleet. Penn Central green was soon replaced by the MTA’s gray and blue as the state agency began assuming greater control over commuter operations. New paint wasn’t enough to reverse the fortunes of the ailing Penn Central, however. Conrail was formed by the federal government to take over the operations of six bankrupt northeastern railroads, including the Penn Central and the Erie Lackawanna. On April 1, 1976, Conrail found itself to be the second- busiest passenger carrier in the nation, inheriting
commuter operations in Boston, suburban New York and New Jersey, Philadelphia, Chicago, and
Cleveland. Tasked with rebuilding the freight network in the northeast, Con- rail asked for relief from the burden of operating these myriad commuter serv- ices, subsidy or not.
Setting the Stage for Metro-North With the Staggers Act of 1980 dereg- ulating the industry, Conrail was final- ly taking its first steps towards prof- itability. To further guarantee its success, Congress passed the North- east Rail Service Act in 1981 directing that all commuter operations operated by Conrail be transferred to a local op- erating authority by the end of 1982. For the lines operating out of Grand Central Terminal, that meant the MTA was moving from being a funding body to taking on the role of direct operation. The MTA had a little more than 18 months to set up the new railroad. It was around this time that many old la- bor issues started to come up to the sur- face. It was clear that the MTA was go- ing to demand a reduction in crew sizes in an effort to reduce costs in the wake
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