A 2025 holiday message from Rob Free, Long Island Rail Road President

Dear LIRR Customers:

As we approach the end of another year, I want to express to you my gratitude for trusting the Long Island Rail Road to get you where you need to go.

We are working hard to improve our service and have made significant progress toward that goal. I'd like to take this opportunity to share just some of our accomplishments from the past 12 months.

We operate a safe service, and our customers are noticing it. Customer satisfaction with on-board safety is at 89%, and 81% at our stations. Customers feel safe because they are safe.

Service reliability has never been better, and our on-time performance is at record levels. Currently, we are operating at 96.2% for the year and 99.6% of our train trips are completed. Our mission is to transport the region safely and on time, and customer satisfaction with service reliability is an astounding 87%.

Operating an efficient railroad is one of our strategic priorities, and we strive to maximize savings. In 2025, we achieved $71 million in operating efficiencies. We understand the value of your tax dollars and are trying to use them as responsibly as possible.

Our pledge to build a better railroad and ensure that our system is in a state of good repair took a major step forward this year as our 2025-2029 Capital Program was approved. This program provides $6 billion to improve our network so that we can continue to provide reliable service.

Making our system available to all is a value that we prize deeply, and we are working to make our system 100% ADA accessible. This year we have made significant progress, as 93% of our stations are now accessible.

Overall customer satisfaction has soared over just one year ago, increasing 11 points to 81%.

All of these positive actions have resulted in booming ridership. Non-commutation ridership continues to exceed 2019 levels and commutation ridership is up almost 11% over last year. We have broken many pre- and post-pandemic records. For the month of August, we achieved our highest-ever non-commutation ridership with 4.9 million riders; and in October, we broke a post-COVID record with 7.44 million total riders for the month.

It's been quite a year, and we will continue to work diligently to improve our service and earn your trust.

On behalf of the over 7,500 dedicated employees at the Long Island Rail Road, we thank you for your patronage and wish you and your families a warm, wonderful holiday season and a healthy, prosperous 2026. We look forward to serving you throughout the year!

Sincerely,

Rob Free
President, Long Island Rail Road