Howard Permut will retire the end of this month as president of Metro-North Railroad and Joseph Giulietti will succeed him, said New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority chairman and chief executive Thomas Prendergast.
The MTA operates Metro-North, which provides commuter train service to counties north of New York City into Connecticut.
The Jan. 9 announcement came five weeks after a Metro-North commuter train derailment in the Bronx killed four people and injured about 70 others. The accident just north of the Spuyten Duyvil station prompted calls for MTA officials to implement train-control technology.
The National Transportation Safety Board ruled that the southbound train headed from Poughkeepsie to Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan was going 82 miles per hour as it approached a 30-mph curve.
Permut has been a senior Metro-North executive since 1983. He began his MTA career in 1979 and was one of 10 people chosen to help form Metro-North from former Conrail commuter lines in 1983. He was named president in 2008.
Giulietti has served as executive director of the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority for more than 14 years, and previously was a Metro-North executive for 15 years starting at the railroad's inception.
