Study: Rush Hour Trains More Likely To Be Late

NEW YORK (CBS) ― Commuter rail lines were reporting record on-time performance for last year, but a closer look at the numbers may reveal that, when it comes to the rush hours, commuters are being taken for a ride.

If you listen to the officials at the Long Island Rail Road, New Jersey Transit and Metro-North, those commuter trains are running close to perfectly with an on-time performance of nearly 96-percent last year.

However, according to a study in the New York Times, the devil is in the details. Looked at more closely, the real problems are with rush hour trains at Penn Station, which were 2.5 times as likely to be late as trains at any other time in 2009.

No surprise, the vast majority of riders use the trains during rush hour.

"One of the hazards of commuting is dealing with delays," one passenger said.

According to the Times study, one in 10 trains arriving at Penn Station on weekday mornings arrived late, two-thirds of them by ten minutes or more.

On NJ Transit, the study found 25-percent of their trains were late during the peak of morning rush from 8:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. and two out of five of those late trains were pulling in at least 15 minutes behind schedule.

LIRR commuters from Huntington to Manhattan at rush hour arrived late on one out of every ten trips, twice the railroad's average.

Some Penn Station commuters were appear frustrated by the service. "One day, a week and a half ago, it was an hour and a half delay getting home from here, when the hot weather was here," one passenger said.

However, another disagreed with the study. "My experience is, generally speaking they're pretty much on time," he said.

CBS 2HD's Magee Hickey contributed to this report.