GALL ABOARD!
Angry commuters launch first suit over Penn Station hell
Meredith Jacobs, (near right) 48, of Wantagh, LI, slapped the MTA and Long Island Rail Road with a classaction lawsuit Saturday after getting fed up with the constant chaos, cancellations and delays, stating, “We want what we pay for — and if we don’t get it, we want our money back!” Chris Gross (far right), 44, of Floral Park, LI, is also poised to sign on.
Next stop, court. Fed-up Penn Station commuters facing a “summer of hell” launched the first class-action lawsuit against the MTA, Long Island Rail Road and NYC Transit on Saturday over the chaos, cancellations and delays at the nation’s busiest rail hub.
“We want the word out,” a furious Meredith Jacobs, one of two plaintiffs in the suit, told The Post. “We want change, accountability, visibility and, quite frankly, we want what we pay for — and if we don’t get it, we want our money back!”
Jacobs, 48, of Wantagh, LI, has been commuting to Manhattan for 24 years. The sales executive coughs up $297 a month for the privilege of riding the rickety rails.
“This has been going on for four years, but the last two have been really bad. We got two fare increases in two years, and service is at an alltime low,” she said.
Uniondale, LI, resident Fred Lee, 31, is the other named plaintiff in the action.
The suit charges infliction of emotional distress, negligence and breach of “contract of carriage.”
Aside from the two named plaintiffs, it is being brought on “behalf of . . . all other individuals who regularly ride the Long Island Rail Road,” according to papers filed Saturday in Nassau County Supreme Court.
“There are thousands of commuters who want to join this suit” and once the court “certifies the action, everybody can join in,” said Manhattan attorney and Long Island resident Paul Liggieri, who filed the suit.
“Penn Station is a mess, and we hope this lawsuit is the first step in cleaning it up,” he said.
Amtrak owns the troubled tracks at Penn Station, a hub for NJ Transit and LIRR railroads serving more than 600,000 daily weekday riders.
The legal salvo came a day after NJ Transit released its summer game plan to deal with Amtrak’s overhaul of the dilapidated rails in and around Penn Station.
The MTA, which operates the LIRR and NYC Transit, had hoped to unveil its pain remedy by June 1 but has yet to offer a light at the end of the tunnel to Long Island riders.
Starting next month, construction will take place every day of the week, with some tracks out of service 24/7, Amtrak has said. Sources said Amtrak would take on only four of the station’s 21 tracks at a time, but the company would not “make any guarantees about disruptions.”
The need for the overhaul became clear after two slow-speed derailments on Penn Station tracks in late March and early April. The MTA blamed Amtrak for a “series of unacceptable infrastructure failures” in the accidents that caused chaos for tens of thousands of riders.
“The increasing frequency of these failures leaves the clear impression that Amtrak is not aggressively maintaining its track, switches and related equipment at Penn Station and that repairs have not happened as swiftly as needed,” MTA execs wrote in a letter to Amtrak.
The two-page letter noted “four equipment failures and accidents that have resulted in major delays” on Amtrak-owned tracks used by the commuter trains.
But the plaintiffs are weary of the blame game.
“While the MTA LIRR cries foul and passes blame onto Amtrak, the MTA LIRR has done absolutely nothing to improve railroad and safety conditions for passengers to whom they owe a duty of reasonable care,” their suit charges.
The suit also takes on NYC Transit, because the Penn Station mess has LIRR riders “spilling onto the 2, 3, and A,C, E,” Liggieri said.
The suit points to the Penn Station nightmare of May 10, when LIRR commuters were “subjected to catastrophic service disruptions” as nearly 80 trains were scrapped during the height of the evening rush, leaving thousands stranded.
“The cancellations not only disrupted passengers’ travel plans, they also became the catalyst for dangerous overcrowding at Penn Station, on the train platforms, and onboard the few trains still running,” the suit says, noting that the fiasco came after “two days of widespread cancellations.”
The complaint alleges that delays and cancellations have resulted in:
Dangerous overcrowding on trains and platforms, where commuters are forced to stand “on the very edge . . . mere inches away from incoming trains.” Some have complained that “they have almost fallen onto the train tracks.”
Riders relegated to “standing shoulder-to-shoulder amongst doz- ens of other riders packed into the middle of the train car’s vestibule.”
“Begrudged” passengers forced to stand “in the train car’s unsanitary and untreated bathrooms. The floors of these bathroom areas are consistently covered in visible layers of urine and the toilets are regularly overflowing with human waste.”
Riders suffering everything from “discipline at work, loss of job interviews, loss of enjoyment of life” to “physical and emotional distress” due to chronic delays.
The suit says the outrageous conditions “should not be tolerated in a civilized society.”
It points to a study released last week that said cancellations and delays on LIRR trains are worse than they have been in a decade.
And while NJ Transit and the LIRR have blamed Amtrak for many of the delays, an analysis by The Wall Street Journal found that Penn Station infrastructure issues were responsible for only 21 percent of the 10,000 trains that were canceled or delayed through the first five months of this year.
Gov. Cuomo and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called for Amtrak to cede control of Penn Station to a private management firm and blamed it for allowing conditions at the hub to go “from bad to worse to intolerable.”
Cuomo said last month that the impending track repairs at Penn Station would mean a “summer of hell” for commuters.
The suit seeks unspecified damages, attorneys’ fees and reimbursement of monthly LIRR train passes for May.
Liggieri could not estimate the number of passes involved, but said, “We’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
“In New York, common carriers owe a duty to provide reasonable ‘comfort and safety’ in delivering passengers to their destinations without reasonable delay or detention,” the suit says, citing case law.
“The LIRR has unquestionably breached the duty of care owed to passengers by forcing them to ride trains in dangerous and unsanitary conditions,” the suit says.