NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Commuters are fed on with the horrible conditions on the Long Island Rail Road, particularly the broken and torn up seats. Chair after chair in car after car, it’s really no secret they’re far from the best seats in the house. Unfortunately, LIRR riders have no choice but to sit on the tattered and taped up seats day after day, year after year. “When you’re paying like a monthly standard of let’s say 260 dollars a month, you’re sitting on a chair that’s broken or out of service,” Great Neck resident Ariel Basalely said. So what’s the agency doing about it? CBS2’s Reena Roy rode a train with LIRR President Phillip Eng to ask him just that. “It’s one of the things we’ve been talking to customers a lot about in terms of commutes,” Eng said. “As we find torn seats they’re being replaced.” The seats are taken to a repair facility in Hillside, Queens to get fixed. At any given time a hundred cars out of the 11,000 total are in maintenance as part of the annual $400,000 seat replacement program. “It’s a continuous 24/7 operation when they come into maintenance they’re being repaired,” Eng said. “We have over a thousand cars, that’s obviously thousands and thousands of seats. We can’t take a car out of service for one torn seat.” Each car has around 40 to 50 seats, on average. Changing cushions on each seat costs about $50, and one car can take an entire day. Eng adds repairs are tough to keep up with because as some seats are fixed, others are damaged, often by the wear and tear of its 300,000 daily riders.
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Demanding Answers: Torn & Tattered Seats Not Sitting Well With LIRR Riders
