Long Island Rail Road President Phil Eng appeared on LI News Radio with Jay Oliver this morning to discuss the LIRR's ongoing response to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). The full transcript is below.   

JAY OLIVER: We have the President of Long Island Rail Road. He's been checking in with us the last couple of weeks. We appreciate that. His name is Philip Eng and nice to give us a couple of minutes here on a Wednesday morning. Phil, great to have you again.  

PHIL ENG: Jay, thank you for having me. You're sounding well.  

OLIVER: I feel pretty good. You sound good too. And now hopefully, hopefully we're seeing a little bit of light at the end of a dark Long Island Rail Road tunnel at this point in time. So that's always a good thing. You know, it's interesting. I always remember my rides in. You always knew when you were coming into Penn Station, you'd have about a minute and a half of darkness and everything else. That's what we've been in. And hopefully we're gonna see a little bit of that light as we make way for Penn Station. But that's all you can hope for at this point.  

ENG: Well that's so true. And when you come into that dark tunnel, you always do see the light at the end of that tunnel as you enter Penn, don't you?  

OLIVER: No doubt about it, I tell you. Good things for the MTA. I like what they did. For those who don't know, and we told everyone this morning Phil. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority lost around 60, I think it was 59 to be exact, of their own. And right now they're taking care of those families. I think it's a half a million dollars each; a great gesture by Pat Foye and company there.  

ENG: You know, our hearts have been breaking every day, as we've been watching, you know, the challenges that we're facing at the MTA, and the challenges that everybody's facing across the Island and across the country. Pat Foye, you know, it was the right thing to do, he said, and that's accurate. And it's one of those things that none of us wants to talk about, but at the same time, you know, the folks that have sacrificed the most, those families are being taken care of. And, you know, in addition to the $500,000 death benefit, you know, their beneficiaries will have health coverage for several years, so it's the least we can do. They make us proud every day - the workforce, my managers here at Long Island Rail Road are doing just that, day in and day out. And we can't say enough about how much they mean to this effort to fight the virus. And, you know, it's just an honor to be working alongside with my colleagues here.  

OLIVER: Great thing, first in the nation to do that, by the way. Talk to me, and we've been telling everybody regarding the railroads about the essential service. So what's happening in or around if you can just kind of recap for us where we're at presently with that?  

ENG: Well, we continue to run the Essential Service Plan. I'm proud to say that it's a robust plan, it's 70% of our weekday service, approximately 530 some odd trains a day compared to our normal 750 trains a day, but it's very robust, and we couldn't be doing that without our workforce. We couldn't be doing that without our managers. You know, recently we've been talking about them, they're heroes and they're their moving heroes, and we've kind of been out promoting the heroes moving heroes campaign because they deserve that. And the heroes that are on our trains, working in other fields deserve acknowledgement and something that we're happy to be doing. Tomorrow we're working with a number of Northeast transportation agencies including Amtrak, Metro-North, New York City Transit, New York City Bus, New Jersey Transit, to name a few. NICE bus on Long Island, Suffolk County bus – we're sounding the horn tomorrow afternoon at 3pm and Amtrak will be doing it across the country. We're providing all transportation providers to sound the horn at three o'clock tomorrow in honor of our workers, transportation workers, and all the heroes that are doing phenomenal things to help us beat this pandemic.  

OLIVER: That's good stuff there. Phil Eng with us,  President of the railroad, LIRR. And you know, I was reading yesterday, and you have all the protections now up and around and all the bus drivers. You have the plexiglass when they're doing their thing. And I was thinking about how conductors are going about their business. I get it, ridership's down a lot. Still though, there are tickets to be collected, and it's almost impossible, you can't put up a shield of plexiglass on cars. Are they doing enough to protect themselves now, Phil?  

ENG: Well, you know, a lot of credit to the train crews and conductors. They are public facing and they're vital. And even before that the public acknowledged just how professional they've been. But they are doing, they're taking very good measures themselves. We've talked to them and our labor leaders are talking with them because we know they're out there every day helping make sure these train rides are safe. So, a lot of it is practicing good social habits, right? It's making sure you're not touching your face, you're not rubbing your eyes and you're keeping your hands clean and sanitized as frequently as you can. So we've given them sanitizers, we've given them gloves, we give them a masks. And I think everyone knows starting tonight at 8pm, it's going to be mandatory that public facing employees across New York State will be required to wear a face covering. And that's a good thing because it's going to allow again, you know, when I've chatted about masks before it gives the peace of mind to some folks. You may be healthy, and others may be healthy, but that extra peace of mind to say there's this protection between us goes a long way. Because, right now, so many people are faced with so many challenges, not just having to go to work, financial challenges, the fear of not only catching the virus yourself but perhaps spreading it to family members. You know, just early on in this thing when I was chatting with employees, they all have the same stories. They're all worried about their parents. They're all worried about their children. You know what? They have a right to be, and that's why we want to do everything we can to give them the protection they need. And masks are being provided, sanitizers are being provided, gloves are being provided. And we're continuing to allow them to practice the ability to social distance. If they see someone on the train that maybe looks ill, you know, we're not asking them to go up to those customers, but we're asking those customers if they're not feeling well, please stay home. We're saying that to save our employees. And, you know,what? The public is heeding the advice as we saw from the Governor's press conference, the numbers are leveling off, that's a good thing. The tragedies are still happening, but those are appearing to be going down in the right direction. And we're going to continue to do everything we can to continue moving heroes. We're going to do everything we can to protect our employees. And we're very proud of the the role we play in doing this.   

OLIVER: It's gonna be an interesting dynamic, Phil. Now the plans are kind of being contemplated as far as when to open up the doors. And, of course, that means more people taking those rides into Manhattan. That's going to be interesting. That call and everything else. I mean, I'm sure preparedness is in play, but certainly with ridership down that could be increasing in the next 30 days or so for sure. I'm sure that's on your mind.  

ENG: Well, I'm hopeful that we will be getting out of this sooner rather than later. But at the same time, I don't know the timeframe. Having said that, we are getting prepared in the event that things start to open up. One thing I want to assure our riders, and our own workforce, I think a lot of lessons learned from this event. The sanitization efforts are huge, and we'll continue to do sanitization. I think the key here is that what we want people to know is that if you need to take the train, we're cleaning them, we're sanitizing them, and we're going to protect them. You know, the challenge will be as the system gets back to normal, when that day comes. Social distancing, obviously, when it comes to mass transportation is much more of a challenge, and I think that's where people still have to practice good social habits, good social hygiene. If you're not feeling well, you should be staying home. And that's even before coronavirus, that is things that I think we took for granted before. You know, we all feel an obligation to continue to do our jobs. And sometimes we go in when we shouldn't and now moreso than ever, I think we have to heed the advice that we've learned through this difficult times.  

OLIVER: And I'll tell you, on the other side as well, you know, riders are gonna have to have the confidence as far as, you know, getting back to the swing again. And again, it could be a lot longer, but you know, they're talking about maybe opening it up ever so slowly. Of course New York has been seriously hit, we know, that. Long Island, as well, continuing, the numbers are not good, but you are seeing some positive trends. So certainly on the other side, as far as the commuters themselves, Phil Eng, they're gonna have to be confident to ride those trains.  

ENG: Yeah. And, you know, there are positives coming out. Just yesterday we had 46 employees return to work. We've had, to date, 551 employees that were either positive or quarantine come back to work. So the numbers are showing that we're making a difference. And I think those types of things will help and it's not just here, it's across New York, Long Island. You know, again, the flattening of this curve, getting ourselves on the other side where hospitalizations are going down, and all of those things, will start to give us that light at the end of the tunnel you talked about, Jay. And again, what we're going to do is we're going to take a lot of lessons learned in terms of how to protect the customer better, how to protect our employees better, and make sure we apply that moving forward. You know, this is something that none of us could have ever imagined we'd be dealing with. But at the same time, we need to learn from this and we will.  And I want the public to be assured that we're going to do everything we can to protect them when the time comes, and they want to ride the railroads and we look forward to that day.  

OLIVER: So, of course, one last thing on my end, you know, kind of a side thing here. With all that's going on I know Positive Train Control has been a big topic, and as far as dates and everything else when will be utilized. Is that still on target for the for the end of this year? I'm thinking in my head it was December 2020. Tell me if I'm wrong, but where are we at with that?  

ENG: You know, Jay, I am proud to say that that project is still on target. Our folks working on that project are doing things despite the fact that we need the social distance. Our firms that are working for us are also finding ways to do things remotely. We're doing a lot of factory stuff and testing, you know, using cameras. Where we can't social distance we're using cameras and we're allowing people to observe and to monitor and approve testing remotely. So there's a lot of things that will come out of this that I think will give us ideas for future practices. I mean, at the same time, I give a lot of credit to the firms that are doing work for us. I give a lot of credit to my team on PTC. And I give a lot of credit to the teams that are doing other projects that continue to move because they're adapting, they're adjusting, and we're still taking care of those critical things. Positive Train Control is something that obviously we're monitoring industry, we're monitoring vendors, and we know the virus could strike hard at any time. Yet, these things continue and then, right now, they remain on schedule. And we'll adjust over the course of the year as we need to, but again, it's it is on schedule and I'm proud of the effort of everybody involved in the project.  

OLIVER: Alright, Philip, you got a good handle on things. Keep up the great work and we'll get through this. And stay safe, my friend, we'll talk to you in a couple of weeks.   

ENG: Jay, thanks for giving me a chance and I hope everyone stays safe, as well, and rest assured the public should know that we will get through this and we're here to help.