HANK GROSS: I'm Hank Gross, Mid Hudson News dot com, and here's a special report with Metro-North Railroad President Cathy Rinaldi. The virus in addition to the human element to this is playing havoc with Metro-North and its services, isn't it?  

CATHY RINALDI: Well, it is. I mean, our ridership has really fallen very precipitously, you know, through the month of March. And we bottomed out basically down 95% overall which is, you know, obviously, unprecedented and nothing that we ever could have anticipated. 

GROSS: That's gonna be pretty tough, I imagine, to recoup once the virus is gone.  

RINALDI: Well, I mean, I think, you know, there's so much uncertainty in terms of how long it's going to take for us to recover. And, you know, I think what we're just gonna have to do is keep an eye on conditions in the field; see how many more people are riding and then you know, we'll layer service back in on an as needed basis, but we're just gonna have to keep in close contact with our field forces to keep an eye on, you know, what's going on on the train because it's obviously very important at this point in time to maintain social distancing onboard for those people who still have to ride. 

GROSS: Sure. And I imagine that the number of cars you're using on the trains are at a minimum now? 

RINALDI: Well, I mean, all the consists are eight-car consists that allows for plenty of social distancing. We're obviously in the process now of moving to a new schedule next Monday. We're going to be running straight hourly service throughout the day. You know, we had gone to a reduced schedule on March 27 and even with that reduced schedule our ridership is quite low. So we're further reducing schedule beginning next Monday, and we'll just keep an eye on things. We'll keep an eye on ridership and how that all works, once we take the schedule down even further. 

GROSS: And I know that you're promoting that it should be primarily for first responders and others who are going to work, but do you find that other people are also riding? 

RINALDI: Well, you know, we're not asking people why they're riding. But, I mean, I think so many people have been told to work from home to the extent that they can, that our perception is that the people who are riding are those who really don't have a choice. 

GROSS: I would imagine that you've gotten a number of cars sitting in the yard. So, is this a time when you're doing even more maintenance on them and then perhaps some upgrades? 

RINALDI: We're doing the maintenance we need to do. One of the other things that we've been doing, one of my objectives throughout this crisis, however long it lasts, is to create the conditions to keep my employees as healthy as possible. So one of the things that we're doing among our Maintenance of Equipment as well as our Maintenance of Way forces is to put together a rotational program where we've got people on call, you know, working at home or staying at home, and then other people working on site. And this is designed so, you know we'll have people who are on call from home, but they're isolated from the workplace, you know, with the view of keeping them as healthy as possible. And we can call them if we need to, depending upon you know, how the virus takes its course over the course of the next couple of weeks. So we're doing all the necessary work we can. We've got some special projects that we're working on during this time, but we are trying to help our workforce to keep them as healthy as possible during the crisis. 

GROSS: The engineers and the ticket takers on the trains, are they wearing masks and other protective gear? 

RINALDI: Yeah, we've made masks available to all customer-facing employees. We're strongly suggesting that they wear their masks. We're not requiring that they wear them, but we're strongly suggesting that they wear them. And at least the conductors on board the trains are for the most part wearing masks at this point in time. Yes. 

GROSS: And do you have a rough count as to how many of your folks have contracted the virus? 

RINALDI: Yeah, so I'll give you accounts as of like late yesterday. We have a notification of 66 positives. We have 505 people on quarantine. The good news is that 318 people have returned to work. 

GROSS: What's your total workforce on Metro-North? 

RINALDI: Well, you know, it's at 6,000-plus at this point in time.  

GROSS: The Newburgh-Beacon and the Haverstraw-Ossining ferry are also suspending service. Also because of the ridership being down? 

RINALDI: Well, the ridership is significantly down, right? So, we're down roughly 96% on the ferries. So, if you look at Haverstraw-Ossining, the total ridership since this whole thing happened is 15 to 20 every day, that's all day. So the maximum load has been about six people on boats and Newburgh-Beacon is down even further than that. So you're looking at potentially 11 people riding all day with a maximum load on any particular run of about five people. So the ridership is significantly, significantly down. So we're going to be offering substitute buses beginning next Monday. 

GROSS: I presume they'll be small buses, then. 

RINALDI: No, no. They're gonna be regular over-the-road coach buses run by Leprechaun, managed by Metro-North employees. So plenty of room for social distancing on the bus. 

GROSS: When things are all back to normal, there's been discussion around here - "boy we'd love to get the ferry here on weekends." Is that a possibility sometime down the road? 

RINALDI: Well, I mean, we've been working with local government on that. I mean, there's you know, it's a question as to whether it's justified by the ridership and the Metro-North ridership. So there are ongoing conversations about that with the local governments and we can certainly renew those conversations after the crisis has passed. 

GROSS: Because there's so much discussion about the tourism availabilities here. 

RINALDI: Right. Yeah. So that's why we were having those discussions before this whole thing happened. And, you know, my guess is we'll be picking up those conversations once the crisis has passed.

GROSS: Is Positive Train Control almost done? 

RINALDI: Yeah, it's going, actually, very well despite the crisis. So we're in full PTC mode on the Hudson and Harlem lines, as well as the New Canaan branch in Connecticut. So the last thing to be tackled is the New Haven line. I actually was just on a conference call this morning and despite the challenges posed by COVID-19, the progress is still very strong and we still expect to be able to comply with the December 31 deadline. 

GROSS: And Port Jervis? 

RINALDI: Port Jervis, yeah, the signal upgrade is done, and we continue to work with New Jersey Transit. So that's looking very positive as well. 

GROSS: Good. I know that the folks on the west side of the Hudson often complain about lack of service or unreliability. Has that been taken care of? 

RINALDI: So, you know, so few people are riding these days that it's, you know, it's obviously very different from when things are normally. New Jersey Transit had taken the service down a couple weeks back, and the service is, you know, reliable. I mean, it's interesting. I mean, the fewer people who ride the train, the more reliable the services is because a lot of the things that can contribute to unreliability of service like, you know, unattended packages and, you know, people refusing to pay the fare, a lot of the things, the little things that can cause service to be disrupted. You don't have those little things happening if you have so few people on board. So the service over the course of the last couple weeks, certainly east of Hudson, and I guess west of Hudson as well, has been quite reliable. Because the people who are riding are the people that, you know, that need to be riding, right? You're talking about medical professionals and pharmacists and grocery store workers and firefighters and other first responders. Those are the people who are riding now, and for them, I'm very happy that the service has been as reliable as it has been. 

GROSS: Work on facilities, such as the Beacon train station, has that come to a halt during this crisis? 

RINALDI: It really depends. That one particular project, I think the staircase work is done. I'll have to get back to you on that. But other projects are proceeding, right? I mean, we did some work on the Patterson Bridge project a couple weeks back. There's, as you know, a major renovation project at White Plains that's moving along well. So, you know, despite the slowdowns associated with COVID-19, and the social distancing that's been required as a result of the pause order within the state of New York, a lot of work is still going on. And the good news is that because we're not running so many trains during the week, we have a little bit more flexibility in terms of track outages and that sort of thing. 

GROSS: The federal government is going to provide a substantial amount of money to the MTA because of having these problems, but do you anticipate that when this is all said and done, you may have to hike fares to help compensate and make up for all this lost revenue? 

RINALDI: So this is the good news, as far as I'm concerned, is that that's the worry at HQ. MTA HQ handles all the budgetary issues, generally. And they will be managing, you know, the money coming from the federal government and how we're going to navigate through the difficult period provoked by the COVID-19 epidemic. So I'm not in a position to really speak to that. I hope not, but that's, you know, I run the service. The budget decisions are made by MTA HQ on behalf of all of the agencies of the MTA family. 

GROSS: And when you were in Port Jervis, two years ago in winter as we had discussed, that entranceway that day, the platform that you were going to build, is that all done? 

RINALDI: The mini-high is done. I would have to check on the status of other work at Port Jervis, but the mini-high platform is done. And I'm not sure of the status of the rest of the work at Port Jervis. I'd have to check on that.  

GROSS: This has been a special report on Mid-Hudson News dot com podcast. I'm Hank Gross, and we've been speaking with Cathy Rinaldi, President of Metro-North Railroad.