After December’s derailment, the FRA promised a thorough investigation into Metro North to determine what problems existed at the agency and what should be done to fix it. In the intervening months, things haven’t particularly improved, as my previous posts have noted. The report came out, and it’s pretty damning.

The FRA “deep dive” determined that Metro-North cultivated an agency more concerned with on-time performance than safety, leading to the problems encountered last year. Of course, in the aftermath of everything and now the trains taking much longer to get in and out of New York, it almost feels like now we get neither.

Metro-North’s new president has continued to speak publicly about the problems and that he will put a renewed focus on safety. As I mentioned before, I hope this isn’t just lip service, and so far he seems to be saying the right things, but we’ll have to see if things rebound in the coming months and years or if a combination of lack of resources and lack of focus lead to continuing problems for the railroad.

In the meantime, I’ll take advantage of the longer morning commute times to take a nap, as there’s really no reason to stay mad; there’s not much that can be done until the agency addresses the issues.