Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford
LIRR is the MTA, which owns the corridor. It's the exact same ownership.
LIRR and the subway are both MTA (alongside Metro North, MTA Bus, NYC Bus, and a few other agencies).
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I'm well aware of that, but LIRR is still a entity with its own railroader culture that is very different from NYCTA. They are benchmarked against other commuter and freight railroads, not transit agencies, and operate with a lot of independence. MTA's control over LIRR is mostly as a pass-thru for funding, similar to how RTA interacts with Metra in Chicago or LA Metro interacts with Metrolink.
If Hochul wants to, she can force a wholesale transfer of the Bay Ridge Branch from LIRR to NYCTA but it would be done over the objections of LIRR and would mean the end of freight service. Splitting the ownership down the middle is possible but requires a lot of expensive and space-consuming infrastructure due to various regulations.
Legacy systems didn't have these requirements, so CTA Orange Line sits side-by-side with freight tracks, as do various DC Metro lines, etc with just a chainlink fence separating them. That's no longer possible. Regulations either require a very wide separation between tracks where space permits, or a crash wall where space is limited. The crash wall is basically a 3ft thick military-level fortification to stop a derailing freight train, so it's not cheap to build.