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With more than 33 years at the organization, Mr. Free has equipped himself with an extraordinary grasp of rail operations, planning, and customers. He built his career from the ground up, starting with the railroad as a Station Cleaner and later moving up through a variety of mission-critical roles. He led operations through the COVID pandemic and also helped advance the railroad’s epic Capital Program, which included megaprojects such as the Main Line Third Track and Grand Central Madison.

Since Mr. Free’s appointment as the LIRR’s 42nd President in April 2024, the Railroad has renewed its focus on maximizing the customer experience through improving and “right-sizing” train schedules to meet actual demand, system modernization and achieving record-breaking on-time performance—all while focusing on reducing costs and creating efficiencies throughout the system. Through extensive and ongoing data analysis, vast improvements have been made to throughput and the transfer experience at the major Jamaica hub and overall customer satisfaction jumped 11% in one year’s time.