We’ll clean up our act: LIRR

Less trash, more fixes

The Long Island Rail Road launched a plan Monday aimed at giving its riders a cleaner — and hopefully faster — commute.

The agency will implement midroute train cleaning and increased station trash pickups to freshen up the commuter service — and replace a string of bad switches to curb many of the delays that have plagued it, according to new LIRR President Phil Eng.

“The message I have heard from riders has been loud and clear, and that’s that we need to get back to the basics, providing our customers with reliable service, realtime information, clean stations, clean trains, and clean facilities,” Eng said.

As part of the plan, called LIRR Forward, Eng has ordered workers to replace 10 switches that caused 44 percent of the total switch failures in the system last year. The work should be completed over the next six months.

Workers will also inspect and repair track joints that often break and cause track-circuit failures.

The plan will also try to keep Mother Nature from causing chaos. Eng wants workers to clear 180 miles of overgrown vegetation and install 60 snow switch covers and 14 third-rail heaters.

The LIRR will send cleaners to tackle trash and spills on trains midroute, and workers will do 30 percent more tidying-up at stations, Eng said.

The plan comes on the heels of a Subway Action Plan that MTA Chairman Joe Lhota announced last summer.

Former LIRR head Patrick Nowakowski released a performance-enhancement plan this year, but it was derided. He stepped down a few weeks later.

NYC Transit head Andy Byford is expected to introduce his own subway plan Wednesday that will include strategies for adding trains and capacity in the system.

Byford said on Monday that the MTA would add trains to the A, D, E and F lines and also add buses on some Queens routes.