It’s that time of year again… the holiday season! During the holiday season, trains in and around New York City are known to be packed due to all the big events happening from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade to the events in Times Square on New Years; there's always something to see during the holidays. For many, the Holidays are a break for people, not only for work and schools, but also for the typical ridership patterns on mass transit. As many normal daily commuters cease from their daily routines, more occasional (or frequent) riders who are sitting around at home with nothing to do decide to head into New York to catch some of the Holiday atmosphere, and many of those decide to skip the hassle of driving in during the holidays.
The last month or two of the year show very different ridership patterns than during previous months, and for many, ridership patterns look nothing like their previous counterparts during this busy time of year. I mean come on, there's no way this photo was taken during the rush hour at 5:45p on a train to Babylon on December 27!
I decided to make an article analyzing this period between Thanksgiving Eve and New Year’s Day, showing the importance of this time for the railroad, and what can be done to improve service during this time.
In order for the LIRR to master this important off-peak period, it all comes down to the proper distribution of resources. First of all, it’s important to note that trains that are overcrowded, no matter the time of day, are very undesirable among passengers (and under the current loading guideline, unacceptable. Yet, trains that are significantly under crowded aren’t great either. It’s important to note that trains are expensive to run, so too many trains when the demands are already extensively needed is wasteful of their limited resources.
I remember that there were a lot of problems on weekends last year, especially on the mainline with lots of overcrowding.
The @mta / @lirr is basically begging people to stop taking the train on Saturdays for $19.50-30.50 round trip per person and instead drive to Manhattan for the bargain price of $15 per personal vehicle because they cannot/will not increase train sizes or frequency #lirr pic.twitter.com/lzZ1NHHK7S
— Googuls (@Googuls) December 9, 2023
Finding a balance
Finding a balance for service during the holidays presents unique challenges and it’s something that the LIRR struggles with, but it’s something that can be solved. For example, Metro-North
Let’s start off with Thanksgiving, and normally, things will start to pick up on Thanksgiving Eve, as some people will leave work early with some taking the extra trains that run in the early afternoon for those going home early. Loads on many trains across the system will increase as people take the trains all over to/from the city to go visit family for Thanksgiving, (e.g go take the LIRR to Jamaica and catch the AirTrain to JFK Airport or catch a train to Bridgehampton to visit family). Thanksgiving Day’s loads will pick up very early in the morning as many people will take trains in the 6, 7, and maybe 8am hours into New York for the famous Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. If anyone would like more information on service on Thanksgiving for the LIRR & MNR, check out this post!
Holiday confusion...
I remember last year while I was railfanning at my home station, Sayville, train #13 was running very late (like 40 minutes) due to equipment trouble, and train 69, which at that point, left Patchogue at like 1:25 pm, very soon after #13, and would run nonstop from Patchogue to Babylon (nowadays it's scheduled to make all the stops) made all the stops of #13 so people wouldn't have to wait in the cold for another 40 minutes, I definitely think this was very nice of the crew, but I remember that some people didn't understand that they could take that train in order to get westbound service, and a few even didn't take the train because they were so confused! I even have a video that I'm going to share as I still just love the ridiculousness of the video
In some cases, what can happen is the LIRR (or even rarer MNR) will operate "passenger extras" aka "xtras" which usually trail a couple of minutes behind the regularly scheduled train and pick up those unlucky folks that cannot fit into the first one, but this cannot always work depending on the time and location.
For this year, Friday, December 20 and Monday, December 23 will most likely be a little hairy loading-wise in the early afternoon, as the LIRR & MNR aren’t planning on adding any extra trains, but I don’t assume the loads will be too much of a problem as many people will just work from home both days. Some people will end work for the year on Friday, possibly even work late on Friday in hopes of getting out earlier on Monday, while others might take an earlier train in on Monday or possibly even Tuesday, so there might be some slightly heavier loads throughout the morning and afternoon on Friday and Monday, but I think the loads will be consistently spread out throughout these couple of days, so, there shouldn’t be too much of a problem.
Normally, the week following up to Christmas is a rather chaotic one for the LIRR & MNR, as many people will travel on various trains into and out of the city for events like the famous Radio City Rockette Christmas Show, a favorite of mine, for example. It’s also not uncommon for a massive blizzard, but these days that’s getting rarer and rarer unfortunately.
On New Year's Eve, the LIRR normally puts up a show of extras, same for Metro-North. The LIRR will normally operate a hodgepodge of extra trains, including dual-modes from Speonk and Port Jefferson for those folks willing to freeze their rear-ends off in Times Square to watch the ball drop, or to go to other concerts that night. Last year, the westbound run from Port Jefferson actually made an added stop at Elmont-UBS Arena, the first ever time for a diesel train to stop there! These extras will almost all hang out in West Side Yard during the festivities, before turning around and heading back out to Long Island. Of these trains, train #6092 is easily the most notable of these, this train departs Penn Station, then stops at Jamaica, Rockville Centre, then makes all local stops to Speonk. That’s 23 stops! The most any LIRR train makes any year and most likely it’ll run again this year however it’s too soon to tell. I feel bad for the crew of that train as they must have absolute fatigue by the time they get to Speonk, and they don’t fiddle with the running times between the closely-packed Babylon-branch stations so the slowly-accelerating DMs have a tough-time and oftenly have been reported to run late. Now, I haven’t been up since 1am, so I can’t speak for it, but I’ve heard that the loads on this train aren't too bad, unlike you’d think, as people will hop on earlier trains.
I don’t remember the loads being too busy last year for New Years, but I do remember them being an issue during a lot of the weekends in December and I remember going into the city once or twice of those weekends and it was pretty crowded. If you live on a branch with high ridership but insufficient off-peak service levels (i.e west of Huntington or west of Ronkonkoma), those 8, 10, 12 car sets can fill up very quickly. I’m also not gonna elaborate much on New Jersey Transit, as I’m not as familiar nor follow it as much.
The LIRR & MNR’s December holiday service is all over the place, and it can be very confusing sometimes to understand, however, I have multiple upcoming posts (well in time for the holiday season) outlining the holiday service in the least confusing way.
I'm really hoping things will go better this year; as this was a huge problem last year and there were many complaints, but if the LIRR would like to do better, they will need to put in some more effort, especially on those sticky 4 weekends from Thanksgiving to New Years!
I really hope you enjoyed this post, I've been looking forward to writing it for a while now, and I tried my best to make it as entertaining as possible, and also, everybody, have a happy Thanksgiving!