Metro-North’s new president said Wednesday that on-time performance had trumped safety at the railroad’s culture, and he plans to change that after last year’s litany of accidents.
Joseph Giulietti, a 41-year railroad veteran, took over the post earlier this month.
“It’s already come back to me that it’s a culture that felt the number-one priority was on-time performance,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong, from a customer’s perspective you want to deliver your trains on time. But I think there was a culture that didn’t believe that their safety was the number one priority, and the safety of the customers is the number one priority.”
He said that managers had focused their oversight on late trains.
“Trains that come in on time don’t get an awful lot of management oversight,” he added.
Giulietti said he plans to focus on safety, then reliability and service quality.
“You use history to ensure you don’t make the same mistakes going forward,” he said. “The other end of it is that I need to focus on where we’re going on.”
He also said that the railroad is doing an analysis of its schedules that is more intensive than just adding extra minutes — and they are reviewing every train that’s gone out during the past 18 months.
Giulietti said he doesn’t expect any trains to be cancelled, and that new Metro-North schedules will likely come out in May.