Governor Dannel Malloy met on Monday with Joseph Giulietti, the new president of Metro-North Railroad, and Thomas Prendergast, chairman and chief executive of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
Malloy said Connecticut and the MTA agreed to establish an independent review before work is done on Metro-North's power or electrical lines, in order to avoid outages like what happened last September.
Giulietti is a former executive director of the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority. He is replacing Howard Permut, who served as the head of Metro-North Railroad since 2008.
Mark Pazniokas of The Connecticut Mirrorreported that Malloy said, of the meeting, "I think it was frank. I think it was honest. I think they know the hole they dug." Prendergast conceded that the MTA has management and cultural issues in the organization.
During a recent appearance on WNPR's Where We Live, Malloy opened the door to the possibility of putting the operation of Metro-North's New Haven line out to bid, calling the railroad's recent performance "abysmal."
In December, following a derailment in the Bronx that killed four passengers, Malloy called on the railroad to provide an action plan addressing safety issues on the system. He also expressed concern following an earlier derailment in Bridgeport last May, as well as a power outage that disrupted service along the New Haven Line.
Adding to recent problems, a Metro-North train on the Danbury line struck an unoccupied van in Norwalk around 6:30 pm on Saturday. The Hour reported that the train had 100 passengers on board at the time, but no injuries were reported.
This report includes information from The Associated Press.