Let’s now turn our attention to the West Hempstead Branch. The West Hempstead Branch is a sad little branch, as since LIRR service expanded, its service has been slowly chipped away over the past few decades. During the peak, it feels like a rob Peter to pay Paul situation, as by giving a little West Hempstead train a rush-hour slot into Penn Station, you’d be taking away a much needed seat for Babylon, Huntington, and Ronkonkoma riders. The mentality is that poor ridership along this branch cannot justify the wasting of a rush-hour slot for a train in the cramped Penn Station.
Well, since conditions in Penn Station have greatly improved since East Side Access was unveiled, smaller branches such as the Long Beach, Far Rockaway, and West Hempstead Branches stand out the most to gain because they are no longer be “shut out” of Penn Station. My hope is that if we can increase service to stations along these branches, people will begin to gravitate back to them and things will even a tad bit out.
Included in the linked PDF file below is the full sample weekday & weekend West Hempstead Branch timetables. Peak, off-peak, reverse-peak, and special-event trains are all included. Note that this is a new and improved timetable design.
The timetables have yet to include the deadhead/non-revenue moves which will be planned out along with the crew and equipment rotations using AI and will be written down on paper. They’ll be included in a separate page in the attached pdf. Nonetheless, I have tried whenever possible to minimize the amount of deadheading as it’s essentially wasted crew and equipment hours. However, in some cases, it’s unavoidable in order to make the best use out of the resources available.
Like was said on the Introduction Page, before we can begin talking about the actual schedule “Key Assumptions” needs to be taken care of and mentioned before this project can become totally feasible. I’ve tried my best to make these schedules able to be done with these projects completed or not, but in some cases that isn’t possible.
Key Assumptions:
- The infrastructure on the branch will remain the same or similar to what it is now.
Service Guidelines:
- During peak hours, train service is sustained at 30-minute headways in the peak direction.
- Passengers will no longer be required to transfer trains at Valley Stream! Service will be provided to a western terminal during all daylight hours.
- With a couple of exceptions, Babylon Branch trains will no longer stop at St. Albans as it will be served exclusively by West Hempstead trains.
- During the off-peak hours, service will be provided hourly to Hunterspoint Avenue (Grand Central on weekends).
- On weekends, I was able to squeeze one additional round-trip to Penn Station during the busiest travel period.
Link to West Hempstead Branch Timetable
Obviously, planning peak-hour West Hempstead Branch service was not my top priority while making these schedules, so these trains got “scraps” of the slots that were left during rush hours. That being said, riders on this branch will still have access to a pretty decent selection of peak and reverse-peak trains. During the morning rush, the trains to New York are able to operate primarily through the middle of the peak, while in the evening rush, the trains to West Hempstead primarily leave during the beginning and end of the peak. During the rest of the rush hour, trains will operate to/from Atlantic Terminal or Hunterspoint Av.
During the weekday off-peak period, trains will operate to/from Grand Central as they currently do. Originally, Brooklyn was chosen over Grand Central because because I wanted to provide more service there, but once the LIRR made the worthwhile descion to significantly scale-back service to Grand Central, it made much more sense to send them there as the LIRR did. This is monumental for the branch, which hasn’t ever had direct off-peak service to Manhattan. However, with that being said, I was still able to send some trains to Atlantic Terminal throughout the peak and reverse-peak periods.
To be honest, I’m not the biggest fan of the West Hempstead Branch, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they just abandoned the branch entirely. Originally, I planned for 90-minute headways on the branch, despite hourly service at this time, but after thinking about it more, it makes more sense to provide hourly service so things are easier to understand.
Another noticeable addition to this timetable is the addition of much more reverse-peak service. I’ve always felt like the West Hempstead Branch is a good branch to provide solid reverse-peak service, something it’s continued to lack even after East Side Access. Instead of deadheading equipment which is commonly done right now, I got creative with it and created a reverse-peak express train. It may seam odd to run an express train on a line with such low ridership and service, however, since there’s no yard and there’s extra equipment laying around that needs to get moved, why not? deadheading equipment. Instead, I decided to include a couple express runs.
The truth is... now that the LIRR actually takes this branch seriously, and gives it more then an bi-hourly shuttle, it must allow it to open up and join into the playing field, and these little improvements should really give it a nice upper-hand.
I don’t commute along the West Hempstead Branch, therefore if anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. I also don’t know much about St. Albans, but with the hospital nearby, I assume there’s some sort of demand for intra-island and reverse-peak service. If anyone thinks more service there would be welcome, again, please let me know. You can leave a comment by using the Disqus system below, or you can email me at gavin.s.wilcox@gmail.com.
P.S At the very end, I decided against the arrows as I noticed they could be very distracting and they are beyond difficult to insert into the excel timetables. They will be added on the final copies of all the timetables and will be removed from the Port Washington Branch timetable in the next version.