January 12, 2017 

To Our Valued Riders:

I would like to begin by extending my sincerest apology to everyone that was affected by today’s service disruption.

Train 102 started the morning rush without experiencing any issues. However, as most of you know, the balance of our morning rush hour encountered a severe flash freeze situation on the western portion of our line that negatively affected train performance. While our crews made numerous attempts to resolve the issues created by this situation, we made the difficult, but necessary, decision to suspend service and return our passengers to their originating stations.

Unfortunately, the continuing buildup of ice on our overhead wire and train pantagraphs impaired our ability to return our riders to their station of origin within a reasonable amount of time, especially our passengers on Trains 104/6 who suffered the longest delay. To make matters worse for those of you who were unfortunate enough to be stuck on those trains, our communication was not what it should be. We need to provide updates in a timely and informative fashion, and we fell short of that responsibility.

We will be conducting an investigation into today’s service disruption to determine where we can improve our service to you, our customers. You should expect better performance, including enhanced communications, from us and we are committed to making this a top priority. We all know that extreme weather events like that which occurred today can happen again, and we assure you that we will be better prepared to respond.

Thank you so much for your support of the South Shore Line and for being a loyal rider of our train.

With apology, 

Michael Noland
President/General Manager
South Shore Line