62 Business View Magazine - May 2016
Victor goes on to describe the Long Island Railroad’s
network and how the NYA fits in: “In terms of the tracks
– whose are they and what do we work under – the
Long Island Railroad has about 350 route miles of
operation. Track miles are significantly more because
you have some stretches of three and four track main-
line, plus yards, and everything else.
“The complete network comes in various parts,” he
says. “Right now, in the City of New York, we have ap-
proximately 25 route miles of track that is freight-only.
And that means there’s no scheduled passenger ser-
vice on it. The trackage and the access are owned by
the Long Island Railroad, but within that portion of the
network, we have the custodial responsibility for the
track. So, that’s one portion.
“The other extreme of the Long Island’s network is
where there are no freight trains – you’ll see no freight
trains in Harold Interlocking, and no freight trains in
Penn Station, and on certain branches, where there’s
no freight business, you will only see passenger trains.
Those particular segments of the Long Island Railroad
are passenger-only as opposed to freight-only.
“The largest part of the network - the third classifica-
tion - is where you have both freight and passenger
operations. And in all cases, passenger operations are
dominant and the freight operations are a ‘rounding
error.’ The Long Island Railroad handles over 300,000
passengers a day, so our entire operation is rounding
error, relative to that volume of passenger/commuter
activity. On that segment, the custodial control rests
with the Long Island and we pay toll fees as our loco-
motives and cars go over that portion of the network.
And for us, that portion of the network that we cur-
rently utilize is roughly about 90 miles.
“The remaining fourth part would be ancillary support
trackage all over Long Island that is not part of the
25-mile freight territory - shipper trackage and support
