Every year, Chuck commits to traveling to all62 counties in New York to meet with constituents.
On January 30, 2015, U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer revealed that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) still does not have any specific plan to test Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) engineers for sleep apnea. Schumer urged that the MTA quickly develop and institute screening and treatment of LIRR engineers for this disorder, which caused the recent, deadly Spuyten-Duyvil crash on Metro-North. For more than a decade, the National Transportation Safety Board has recommended that railroads test and treat vehicle operators for sleep disorders, like sleep apnea, which was long ignored until a series of deadly, related accidents. Schumer said that the MTA has been slow to heed the NTSB’s expert safety recommendations and conduct sleep disorder testing and treatment, and has only done so in a reactive way to deadly accidents. Schumer said that, like Metro-North and New York City Transit workers, the MTA should expand sleep disorder screening and testing protocols to LIRR conductors. Schumer was joined by Dr. Michael Weinstein, Director of the Winthrop Hospital Sleep Disorder Center