No direction at Metro-North: IG

Metro-North maintenance crews — responsible for making sure crucial switches and signals are operating properly— get little or no supervision, do not document their work and are sometimes not even given assignments, according to a report from the MTA’s inspector general.

Crews are sometimes just told to drive around checking equipment at random without documenting where they go or what they do, says the report from Inspector General Barry Kluger’s office.

And, when orders are issued, they aren’t documented either— leaving no record of who was assigned to do what.

Many of these issues were brought to the railroad’s attention back in 2001, but were never properly addressed. That audit found a lack of recordkeeping for equipment failures and repair work and reported that Metro-North was not keeping track of the work done by crews during their shifts.

MTA spokeswoman Marjorie Anders said the agency is working to fix the issues raised in the report by creating a computerbased system of recordkeeping to better track assigned and completed tasks.

Kluger agreed. “From our perspective, the new management clearly recognizes the seriousness of the issue,” he said. Rebecca Harshbarger, Bob Fredericks

and Georgett Roberts