Authors

Calvin Kuhnen, Matt Ghadimi, Pascale Ergas

Research Question

How far does the $307M Lower Hudson Transit Link fall short of its promised reliability, and who bears the cost? The project quantifies the gap between promised and delivered service, benchmarks it against peer agencies, and maps failures to the riders most harmed.

Background

Rockland County, NY has no passenger rail of its own. Residents depend on the Lower Hudson Transit Link, a $307 million, 15-year NYSDOT contract, to reach Metro-North stations and jobs across the region. Buses are timed to meet trains within a roughly six-minute transfer window, so a bus more than five minutes late causes a missed train and a much worse commute. For tens of thousands of residents, it is the only public link to the regional rail network.

Service is poor and recently got worse. The operator changed in April 2026, and the new operator publishes no usable real-time data and turned off station arrival displays. The contract has defined performance standards and $10,000-per-day liquidated damages for failing to provide scheduled service, but there is no public, rigorous measurement of performance and therefore no evidence base to trigger enforcement.

Methodology

The project involves:

• Defining reliability statistically.
• Comparing promised service (the published schedule and contract performance standards) with delivered service.
• Benchmarking the agency against comparable peers.
• Mapping service failures across space and time.
• Analyzing who is most harmed and the economic and job-access costs.

Deliverables

• Interactive data dashboard
• Project website
• GitHub repository with documentation
• Policy memo
• Policy recommendations

Data Sources

• Published schedules and contract performance standards
• Federal National Transit Database (NTD) reports
• Working dataset already collected by the sponsor