The LIRR announced a couple of days ago that it’s new fall timetables will take effect right after Labor Day on 9/3. As a Long Islander myself, these new timetables genuinely pleasantly-surprised me! I did not expect the LIRR to announce these new timetables so early, neither did I expect them to make such significant changes to off-peak service.
Beginning in September, there will be a lot of reshuffling for off-peak service:
- Both Ronkonkoma trains each hour will run to-from NY- Penn Station
- Both Huntington trains each hour will run to-from NY- Penn Station
- Long Beach trains will run to/from NY-Penn Station on weekdays, and now weekends as well.
- The local trains to/from Babylon & NY-Grand Central will now be truncated to Massapequa. To make up for this change, the express trains will now add all stops from Massapequa-Lindenhurst
- Far Rockaway trains will now run to/from NY-Grand Central oppose to NY-Penn Station, which I think sounds very fitting.
- West Hempstead trains will now run to/from NY-Grand Central instead of Brooklyn on middays and weekends except during late night hours (trains will run from Jamaica- West Hempstead.)
- Atlantic Terminal, Brooklyn will now get 20-minute headways with just shuttle trains.
These new changes support a big drawback in service to/from NY-Grand Central. All four Main Line trains will now run to/from NY-Penn Station oppose to just two. Along with that, only one train from the South Shore will run to NY-Grand Central and that will only run from Massapequa due to construction work in Babylon, meaning that there will be absolutely no off-peak service to/from NY-Grand Central to anywhere in Suffolk County.
The MTA is making these changes (at last) to better meet off-peak ridership demand. During peak hours, NY-Grand Central has very steady ridership and is well-worth it, but, during off-peak hours, few people travel there as there is a lot more to do on The West Side (near Penn Station). To add to this, crowding on off-peak trains to NY-Penn Station (especially during more Winter months) has become a decently significant problem.
Credit to The LIRR Today for the image.
As you can see from the image, there is quite less off-peak service offered to NY-Penn Station then is offered to NY-Grand Central. These changes have been progressive over time and show the significant retreat from NY- Grand Central. After the MTA spent $12 Billion on one of the most expensive new rail terminals on Earth, ridership has simply not achieved to the level that the MTA had hoped, at least during off-peak hours, anyway.
Since Grand Central Madison’s opening, the LIRR has been cutting trains from there and shifting trains to Penn Station for a variety of reasons, including for events at MSG. And, in April of this year, they cut Grand Central North’s hours during weekends and evenings.
They also did two interesting things for peak hours. The first thing they announced on the site was that they were “for the first time, running two trains from Oyster Bay to Penn Station”. Train #513 the 7:17a from Oyster Bay to Hunterspoint Avenue is now being switched over to Penn Station, I’m very happy about this change as unexpected as it is, as it now gives a useful Oyster Bay dual-mode. However, I do believe it would actually make more sense for #509, the 7:01a express train to run to Penn Station as currently while it does save time, it would be nice for it have a direct faster ride for these stops. But, by having #513 shift, it does give all the Oyster Bay Branch stops a direct ride! Following that, the LIRR also announced that one of the shuttle trains to Atlantic Terminal will now start at Valley Stream, and then make all local stops to Atlantic Terminal, I’m not sure what time this train will leave, but most likely, this is another good thing.
By cutting trains to NY-Grand Central, they have to make sure that they do a good job lining up connections at Jamaica. I really think they should bring back timed-transfers, as there are sometimes some very large gaps at Jamaica between trains to each terminal. I feel like what will determine whether or not these schedules were good is the wait times at Jamaica, if the wait times are very long then we have a problem, but, if the LIRR does a good job evenly spacing the 3 NY-Grand Central trains during the evening hours, then this can be a success.
At the end of the day, while it’s disappointing to see service to this new beautiful terminal being scaled away so quickly, clearly it’s for the better as there's clearly a big difference in off-peak travel for the East Side vs the West Side. I do want to give the LIRR credit for this, as it was probably very frustrating for the MTA and LIRR after they spent so much money on this for it to not be close to as successful as they had hoped. I’m happy the LIRR has finally admitted this and has done something to address it as this has been an obvious problem for anyone taking weekend trains. After about 17 months, The LIRR has finally woken up.