MTA Chairman Pat Foye: “In some ways, a worse storm than Superstorm Sandy, that appears to be the case on Long Island, but this was a wind event. I'm happy to report that on the subway service has been restored on all lines, great work by Sarah Feinberg and her team. I want to give a shout out to workers at subways, buses, Metro-North, Long Island Rail Road and Bridges and Tunnels who have been working through this and have done extraordinary work.”

MTA Chairman and CEO Patrick J. Foye appeared live on WCBS 880 with Kevin Rincon to discuss the impact of Tropical Storm Isaias on the MTA’s service region.

A transcript of the interview appears below.

Kevin Rincon: The cleanup and power restoration well underway throughout the tri-state, hundreds of thousands waking up without power, and the commute a bit of a nightmare on mass transit. It will be a couple more hours before NJ Transit service gets back underway, PATH cross-honoring. Here in New York, Metro-North, LIRR, limited service at the moment. On our Newsline, MTA Chairman Pat Foye. We talked on Monday about this storm, there was a focus on the potential for flooding along the subway system, but that's not quite how this storm played out.

Patrick J. Foye: No Kevin, this was a wind event. In some ways, a worse storm than Superstorm Sandy, that appears to be the case on Long Island, but this was a wind event. I'm happy to report that subway service has been restored on all lines, great work by Sarah Feinberg and her team. I want to give a shout out to workers at subways, buses, Metro-North, Long Island Rail Road and Bridges and Tunnels who have been working through this and have done extraordinary work. So subways, service restored on all lines. Buses, regular service. Staten Island Railway, running with 30-minute headways, no express service. Our bridges and tunnels are open, HOV lanes are open, no delays. On the Long Island Rail Road service has been restored on the following branches: Port Washington, West Hempstead, Long Beach, Far Rockaway, Babylon and Hempstead. We expect to restore service on the Ronkonkoma Line, which is one of our busiest, later this morning. There was extraordinary damage done on, to the Long Island Rail Road system. About 100 trees down in over about 30 to 40 locations, across tracks, taking wires down, etcetera, that's great work by Phil Eng and his team. And then on Metro-North, the Hudson Line is running regular weekend service. On the Harlem Line we're running Grand Central to North White Plains. There are some lines down, power lines down south of the Mount Kisco station that we're dealing with. And we expect on the New Haven Line that will be running Grand Central to Stamford later this morning, we'll be updating the public and the media. That's really an extraordinary recovery. We experienced from a wind point of view and a tree point of view more damage, for instance, on the Long Island Rail Road than we did during Sandy. This was a very extreme storm, power--sorry, wind surges on our bridges up to 75 miles an hour on the Cross Bay Bridge yesterday, 71 miles per hour on the Verrazano. Very little flooding but substantial wind, downed trees, downed power lines down, downed poles.

Rincon: You mentioned some of the damage and some of the, you offered the timeline on restoration. Any area in particular that might be of a bigger concern beyond today?

Foye: Well, look, I think the New Haven Line suffered substantial damage. The fact that Cathy Rinaldi and her team are going to be able to bring back Grand Central to Stamford service later this morning, and then there'll be additional service restorations that we'll be reporting, is really extraordinary work. They, Metro-North, had 300 to 400 track workers, technicians out on the system. Long Island Rail Road similar amounts if you include station personnel, and really but on the Metro-North, to answer your question, the New Haven Line hardest hit.

Rincon: That's MTA Chairman Pat Foye on the Newsline. Thank you.

Foye: Thanks. Bye.