Commuter Council Dissects Metro-North Bridge Fire Response

STAMFORD — A fire Monday beneath a railroad bridge that spans New York's Harlem River damaged cables but caused no structural problems, a Metro-North official said Wednesday.

Appearing before the Connecticut Rail Commuter Council, Susan Doering, senior director of customer service and stations, said cables carrying signal information and traction power had to be repaired following the fire, which interrupted train service to and from Grand Central Terminal for several hours on all three Metro-North lines.

The Park Avenue bridge carries rail traffic between 138th Street in Manhattan and Mott Haven in the Bronx. After the fire was extinguished, the railroad was quickly able to resume using two of the bridge's four tracks.

The blaze occurred in a wooden structure surrounding the bridge's west pier called a fender, which protects the pier from being struck by a boat.

Several members of the council criticized Metro-North for not providing timely information on when train service would be restored.

The railroad should have come out with more consistent "instant communications of what was actually happening," said the panel's vice chairman, Terri Cronin, "because I got more information on the news and watching it on TV then I did from Metro-North."

Doering replied that the railroad is reluctant to release information until its "one-hundred percent accurate and as complete as possible." Also, she said, incidents such as the bridge fire are dynamic, and information received from the field can change quickly.

Doering said that the greatest number of complaints the railroad received concerned delays in sending out email alerts but that the issue will be discussed at an upcoming post-incident review.

Doering added that temporarily using the new Yankee Stadium-E. 153rd Street station as the terminus for trains heading to Manhattan—and the starting point for trains leaving the city—"was a success."

Roughly 4,000 inbound and outbound passengers used the station that day, she said.

Council member John Hartwell said Metro-North should be at least "on par" with the media or ahead of them as far as disseminating information.

If the railroad falls behind the news media in releasing information, Hartwell said, "you're not relevant anymore. Nobody's paying attention to what you're saying because they've got all this other stuff coming in from other places."

The council members also talked about the confusion whether Amtrak was honoring Metro-North tickets for commuters who ride the New Haven Line.

Council member Sue Prosi, who is also the senior transportation planner for the South Western Regional Planning Agency, questioned why Metro-North has not established a formal agreement with Amtrak to cross-honor tickets when one of them has a service outage.

Service over the Park Avenue bridge Monday was suspended at about 11:45 a.m. and restored at 2:20 p.m., according to Metro-North.