Dan Brucker Quotations

We're basically on time. This morning was anything but normal, with 60 trains delayed up to two hours.

Most storm damage is usually concentrated in one area, but with this wind storm, we had debris all over the entire length of the line. The damage and disruption was widespread.

More and more people are arriving to work earlier and earlier. Given the ever-growing use of cell phones, the Internet, and other communications options, many businesses operate 24 hours a day today. There is a growing necessity to get to work earlier.

I can't give you exact numbers, but our failure rate (for locomotives) has risen. We are very tight on locomotives. We're short two, and the others are not only old but they're also being used more, and their reliability simply isn't 100 percent. So, when one breaks down, we really have to scramble and pull together with NJ Transit.

While we have experienced minor flooding in that section of the Beacon station parking lot in the past, this is the first time we encountered a buildup and volume of water as we did on Jan. 18.

We are always interested in expanding. West of Hudson, there is still significant room for growth.

We're not the subway system. We can't re-create it. But, we did the best we could ... Get people on, get them in. Just keep it moving.

When we restored Grand Central, we had to spend over $1 million just to clean the tar and nicotine stains off the ceiling and even more to scrub them off the walls. So, of course, after spending that kind of money we weren't going to let anybody smoke anywhere in the building.

There is a ton of debris all over the place, downed trees all over. This is certainly one of the most widespread in terms of wind damage and debris all over our system.

We don't know if the train hit the tree, or the tree hit the train or they hit each other at the same time.

We're trying to recover from it. We took some hits from it, with some delays and some mechanical difficulties from the cold.

We asked commuters on trains that got to Grand Central before 7 a.m. if they had a choice, would they take an even earlier train, and we got a very positive response.

We are supposed to charge $4 per ride. But if a train arrived, we simply took them and got them on the train.

Our conductors found it much easier to move a dog or a pet when they're not in a crate.

It's the first storm of the season and we've got to gear up for it. We expect to have a normal commute tomorrow because we will be working all night.

The next step (in pursuing a rail link) would be to do an alternatives analysis and a draft environmental impact statement. But we don't have a time frame for going forward, and we don't have the project in our capital budget.

The world of commuting has changed and we are responding to it.