Objective

To determine the extent of implementation, as of April 17, 2025, of the 13 recommendations included in our initial audit report, Non-Revenue Service Vehicles and On-Rail Equipment (2020-S-29).

About the Program

The MTA is responsible for developing and implementing a unified mass transportation policy for New York City and Dutchess, Nassau, Orange, Putnum, Rockland, Suffolk, and Westchester counties. The MTA carries out these responsibilities directly and through its subsidiaries and affiliates, including the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR). 

LIRR comprises over 700 miles of track on 11 different branches and extends from four major NYC terminals—Penn Station, Grand Central Madison, Atlantic Terminal, and Hunters Point Avenue—through a major transfer hub at Jamaica to the easternmost tip of Long Island. 

LIRR’s Engineering Department is responsible for the design, construction, maintenance, and rehabilitation of LIRR’s entire physical plant, excluding rolling stock. Vehicle Fleet Operations (VFO) and the Track Department (Track) are two of the nine subdivisions of Engineering. 

VFO is responsible for the overall administration of fleet vehicles—cars, SUVs, trailers, trucks, and vans—including design, specifications, purchasing, and coordination of maintenance through third-party vendors, fueling, and relinquishment. During the period from May 2023 to September 2024, VFO was responsible for an inventory of 1,024 active vehicles (811 owned and 213 leased) used by 26 LIRR departments. 

VFO does not service vehicles in-house. Instead, it has a maintenance contract with a vendor that schedules the preventive maintenance and repairs for the fleet, keeps the maintenance records, and coordinates billing with local independent mechanic shops. However, VFO officials make unscheduled visits to mechanic shops daily to verify that work is progressing and that the repair costs are justified for the vehicles. VFO staff also monitor the open invoices in the vendor’s system and must authorize all invoices over $450 before work can be undertaken. 

Track is responsible for the maintenance of 396 pieces of on-rail equipment. Track has a maintenance shop at the Hillside Support Facility (HSF) providing both maintenance and repair services for its on-rail non-revenue service equipment. The Maintenance of Way Materials (MofW) unit maintains a warehouse at HSF to supply parts needed to perform maintenance and as-needed repairs on the on-rail equipment. As of January 1, 2025, the MofW Parts Inventory listing consisted of 10,839 different part numbers/types and was valued at almost $12.5 million. The Inventory is reported at the end of every month to Track management and LIRR’s Finance unit. 

We issued our initial audit on May 3, 2023. The audit objectives were to determine whether LIRR maintained an asset inventory, performed preventive maintenance, and maintained an accurate inventory of parts required to repair the on-rail equipment. The initial audit found that: 

• VFO did not have written policies or procedures for keeping its vehicle fleet inventory or performing vehicle maintenance. Files for 30 of the 76 sampled vehicles were missing one or more documents that should contain essential information about the vehicles, such as the service date, fuel tank, and tire size.
• VFO did not always complete preventive maintenance or the required New York State inspections. The 76 sampled vehicles required 345 preventive maintenance services, and we found that 90 were done late and 28 were not done.
• About 29% of VFO’s non-revenue vehicles were leased. VFO did not do a complete analysis of the cost to lease or purchase the vehicles. For five of the 20 sampled VFO vehicles reviewed, the leases were extended beyond the initial request period: three were extended twice and two were extended once. One vehicle cost $81,000 more over the 58 months it was leased than it would have cost to purchase the vehicle.
• Track officials could not document the recommended or actual maintenance done on the 30 pieces of equipment we sampled from January 2018 to April 2022, valued at $8 million. We found service tickets for 18 pieces of equipment. Six pieces of equipment did not have any service tickets to show they were maintained.
• Eighteen pieces of equipment had 768 service tickets. However, for six of the 18, none of the service tickets were for preventive maintenance. We determined that only 172 of the 768 tickets documented maintenance as specified in the manual or the description on the service tickets. The other service tickets were for repairs, moving the equipment from one location to another, or work done with the equipment.

The objective of our follow-up was to assess the extent of implementation, as of April 17, 2025, of the 13 recommendations included in our initial audit report. 

Key Finding

The MTA made some progress in addressing the problems we identified in the initial audit report. Of the initial report’s 13 audit recommendations, three were implemented, four were partially implemented, and six were not implemented. 

Key Recommendation

MTA officials are requested, but not required, to provide information about any actions planned to address any unresolved issues discussed in this follow-up within 30 days of the report’s issuance.