Howdy.
As several of you might have heard, I was "out of service" for a period of several weeks over the summer, and in the meantime, I have been busy trying to work on getting back to normal, so I have not been updating the site. (Access to it had to be restricted since there was quite a buildup of spam comments in my absence that had to be cleaned up). It's not the way I would have liked things to go, but, as they say, things happen.
As to my involvement in this particular forum, I decided quite a while ago that reading and posting here was not really worth my time (my last post here was on the 29th of May). As I said in that post, this is becoming a community less and less worth participating in. At one point, this forum was incredibly active with many people contributing to interesting discussions, but over time that has dwindled. I have lurked here on occasion, and will probably drop a few lines in some threads I was reading, but, at first glance, this still doesn't seem like a place I would bother visiting with any frequency.
Can I say that I am surprised by the outcome of this summer's little episode of internal strife? No. Do I still think that the commuter got the short end of the stick in terms of higher fare increases and less money for future capital improvements? Absolutely. As I said back then, I found it curious that the members of the LIRR unions were so eager to undermine the financial solvency of the very agency that pays their salaries. You can only strangle the golden goose so much before it drops dead. A situation very similar played out in the medical industry some decades ago... there was very little oversight, physicians were very greedy, and there was lots of waste. All of a sudden, it got to the point where the waste was just way too much that the government had no choice but to step in and crack down on the industry, and now there's a million more restrictions and regulations governing almost everything, insurance companies nitpick every little thing, and it can be maddening at times. But so it goes. And so it went with many parts of the financial industry back during the recent recession. The waste and inefficiency is fun and good during times of economic prosperity, which we will hopefully be in for quite some time, but the rank and file of the nation's railroads are setting themselves up for a disaster. Public agencies can generally get away with this kind of stuff, thanks to the general notion with them that money grows on trees and they don't really have to care as much about balancing budgets, turning profits, or keeping costs down. But next time the MTA is having trouble making ends meet, and we have a governor who doesn't not care one bit about the transportation network that drive's this region's economy, the unions might have a much more difficult time making such 'outlandish' requests. Hopefully the ---- storm won't come until after you've retired, but enjoy the waste and inefficiency now, because its days are numbered.
In regards to The LIRR Today, the site won't be updated for a little while, but I have been sending out occasional updates via e-mail to The LIRR Today's Mailing List, and if you'd like, you can sign up for that
using this form. (Those on the mailing list can also request access to the archived posts on the website).
I, for one, would like to see all the internal LIRR employee issues, crafts, negotiations, labor disputes, on time problems, etc. in its own forum, but that is just a view of mine and doesn't take away from the overall experience. 
