longisland

MTA Board Member Sammy Chu joined the News 12 Long Island team this morning to discuss what the MTA is doing to resolve the Long Island Rail Road issues.&nbsp;

<b>MORE:&nbsp;<a href="https://longisland.news12.com/lirr-commuters-hope-for-better-ride-this-morning-following-rollout-of-grand-central-madison-service">LIRR commuters hope for better ride this morning following rollout of Grand Central Madison service</a></b>

MTA Board Member Sammy Chu joined the News 12 Long Island team this morning.

Long Island

LI | Weather

LIFORECAST

Let's talk about the wet weather. Now, we're over here in the weather center with meteorologist Julian C right. Julian. I feel like it has been raining since we all woke up this morning and it really pretty much has, especially with the light drizzle. Now that we're starting to transition to the good news is that when we wake up tomorrow, Tama, it's not going to be rain. I know finally. Right. So getting into what we can expect for next or for the start of next week, Monday in itself, we are looking for drier conditions and sunshine. So we are into our last remnants of rain across the island and we saw quite a bit of it for today near an inch for many of us. About uh three quarters of an inch from the airport. Jefferson and much of Suffolk County and mainly for the eastern end of Nassau County. But others did see about a half of an inch of rainfall or at least near it. Now, the other issue we're gonna be watching for from tonight's going its small is some foggy conditions. So just note that visibility is gonna be on the lower end as we wait up for tomorrow, especially near Huntington. 44 degrees areas of fog going to be chilly and for our school day forecast we're gonna be seeing in our afternoon. We're looking at those fifties rolling in with early sun as well. A quick look at what we're gonna be seeing for our 10 day forecast. Just notes it is going to be colder after mild conditions for Monday and then we'll warm up for the weekend. All right, Julian.

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Weather

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ZOOM INTERVIEW: MTA Board Member Sammy Chu on LIRR issues

Alright, double argument as they have been hoping for a better week after a very rough kickoff to that new Grand Central Madison Service railroad making changes on the fly. Really to try to fix certain problems. Joining us right now is M T A board member, Sammy Chew. Sammy, thanks for being here. You're hearing the complaints. We're hearing the complaints. What are the fixes? I guess that's the biggest question. Sure, there's no doubt. Um Last week was a painful week. Uh There was no way to fully predict, you know, what ridership would look like making the biggest, the most drastic changes to a railroad of the size really was unprecedented. Um The fix is being made this week. Um You know, there were uh shuttles added to the Brooklyn service changes made. So just from last week to this week, shuttle service from Brooklyn out of Jamaica, It was down from 12 minutes to nine minutes, which a big difference. And they're also making um you know, dynamic change on the fly by adding a platform manager Into response to train traffic um to hold trains if necessary to make sure the most amount of communities can get on the train without having to wait uh, to Brooklyn. Uh, overcrowding was very, there was wild cries about overcrowding. Last week, there are now more, you know, 10 car train sets, 12 car train sets to address that. And this week, over week, we are seeing that Um, the, the initial models are coming more into fruition just from last Monday, this Monday, last Monday, 30% of riders um, that going into Manhattan went into Grand Central Madison. And this yesterday, it was closer to 35% when the initial modeling predicted 40. So it's going to be a moving targets. But you know, railroad staff is working very hard, management, staff is working very hard to meet the needs of the communities. You know, there's two different stories here and quickly Sammy, there's people who are going to Grand Central Madison who says, yes, life has changed and then there's the people who are trying to get to Brooklyn and Penn who have kind of tripped up in all of this. Do you think that in the future there's some sort of cohesiveness between the two? Thank you for that point, Aaron, listen, the goal here is to make sure that everyone who wants to commute has a good commute and has a great commute. But just by the numbers, we saw 30% off the bat go into Grand Central Madison, which was a drastic improvement for their commute. So, but I think we're going to be a moving target, but we're gonna get there and continue to improve the experience. All right, Sammy Chew, thank you for coming on with us. We know you're watching it closely and we will continue to do so as well. Thank you, Rich. Thank you Erin.

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