Addressing the LIRR's summer beach services, especially off the South Fork

Through this year's summer schedule changes, the LIRR continues the trend of bringing little to feed summer ridership, something which has been growing rapidly in the last several years.

When they opened East Side Access, instead of looking for ways to improve off-peak travel options for the average traveler they continued to provide the same old hourly headways on the "minor" branches. Instead of looking to improve the single most growing area of ridership on the railroad, they instead continued to overlook the diesel branches, and not try to find ways to rework the schedule to benefit more commuters and leisure travelers alike.

If you've been a regular reader of the site, then you'll know that I talk a lot about summer service on the South Fork and all the improvements that can be made. And while I'll be honest and say the LIRR does provide a pretty good selection on the South Fork, there's still a lot that can be done with existing equipment to help with the extreme South Fork crowding. However, in today's post, I want to focus on the LIRR's disapointing summer service, specifically out on the North Fork and Long Beach, areas that both can see much more improvement then what can be seen on the South Fork, but continued to be pretty much ignored outright. In a future post, I'll be detailing exactly what improvements can be made to summer service on the South Fork, as well.

Long Beach

One of the more aggravating parts that have been continued in this year's summer schedules is summer service on the Long Beach Branch. 

This year, they once again changed the departure times of westbound Long Beach Branch trains on weekends, this time they changed it to :38 past the hour. Then, they made the move to have the only westbound express train to serve Long Beach depart at 4:28pm, which makes no sense since there's only a 10 minute gap between trains.

And, to be honest, this is one area the LIRR can actually do a lot to improve. Summer conditions on the Montauk Branch are kinda set in stone until the LIRR receives more equipment, and while I don't mean they can't make any improvements, it's very limited in what they can do. However, the same can't be said with the Long Beach Branch as there's a surplus of electric equipment that just sits around in yards on weekends, and during the middays when people are most traveling to the beach.

 Example of seasonal Long Beach service

And Long Beach ridership is really at the point where it could sustain half-hourly service. Far Rockaway Branch ridership is roughly half of what Long Beach sees, yet it receives the same plain-old hourly service. It’s almost at the point where the Long Beach Branch could warrant an upgrade to half-hourly service, at least during the summer months and during the winter for winter shopping from May to September. To be honest, the LIRR really should think of investinf

The LIRR likes to use the excuse that they can’t provide any more trains into Penn Station, forgetting that they just built an over $11 billion dollar new terminal, also located in the heart of Manhattan. While Grand Central may not be located in downtown, it's still a busy area and I'm pretty sure with all those subway and bus connections it would be well-used. 

I’ve heard many people who’d prefer to use Grand Central in order to get out to the beach, and I think it could be a popular service in both directions. I think hourly Long Beach-GCT trains during the peak direction on summer weekends could actually be a decently popular service and they could try that for a summer. They have enough equipment to do it, why not give it a try?

North Fork

Similarly overlooked, the new schedules continue bring very little to the North Fork. Stuck with the long forgotten and overlooked scoot, the non-electrified Main Line receives less service than it did 40 years ago. While I can't blame the railroad for not adding too many more trains, considering they have failed to install PTC, therefore, they have to run very limited schedules on it, I do blame them for getting out of installing PTC in the first place and I believe they can still make some improvements to at least make this branch "workable" until further improvements can be made along the branch.

In it's current state, this line literally has no potential to grow. Stuck with one lousy AM peak train, that departs Greenport before even the rooster wakes up at 5:21am, running even earlier than the first peak train from Montauk, and it's already a bad start considering if they shift this train back another 25 minutes or so, it'll be of at least some use to people, getting into Penn slightly later. 

In order to make use of the little equipment and space we have, I believe after arriving at Ronkonkoma, it should immediately turn around and head out to Yaphank, and then represent another peak run back to Ronkonkoma, to at least provide a later option for people. It would then head out, once again, a bit later, as the normal morning train to Greenport. This will make the early train to Greenport a bit later, hopefully of slightly more use to summer travelers. While none of this is ideal, until we install PTC, get more equipment, this will at least make use of the little infrastructure we have. We should also convert the early, early morning equipment train out to Greenport to revenue service, as while I believe few would use it, it would be a zero-cost improvement and we should not ever be deadheading on this line, zero excuses, and hey, it could be considered a fisherman's train. Who knows!

And not to mention that if you want to spend a daytrip out in Greenport on a weekday, the options are extremely limited. You could either take a 5:40am out of Penn, and connect with the 7:25am out of Greenport, getting you there around 9am. And while I'm not doubting that train is useful for certain reverse-peak customers, with the limited equipment we have, it should be geared more towards summer crowds on weekdays and it should be really shifted back about an hour and a half in order to provide a better option. And while it would deny an early reverse-peak option, reverse-peak travel out there is so limited anyway that it would do much more good than it would do harm to run it later. 

I was planning on taking a daytrip out to Greenport today, Juneteenth, but since the options are so limited with a 7:25am departure out of Ronkonkoma, which is way to early! I'm just going to go this weekend instead since there's more options. It sometimes feels like the LIRR is almost sabotaging summer service altogether on this branch.

(Photo: MTA)

I mean look it's getting to the point where it was easier to get to/from Greenport 62 years ago then it is now. And if in railroad, service now is worse than 62 years ago, then that should mean there's a huge problem. Take a look at how service was provided in the 1980s and compare it to today, service then was much better structured and convenient, and that's with true busses to supplement it! 

Summer Fridays

Continuing the trend that they've done for years, the LIRR continues to provide a second eastbound train to Greenport on Friday afternoons in the summer (extending the train that would otherwise turn at Riverhead), and use that opportunity to swap out the equipment. When the second eastbound train gets out there, the crews swap equipment with the old set going back to Jamaica Storage Yard to be refueled, serviced, while the new set begins it's run on the Scoot. 

(Photo: The LIRR Today)

There's nothing wrong with that. However, the LIRR runs that second set of equipment all the way from Jamaica Storage Yard to Ronkonkoma, empty. The LIRR could easily take this opportunity to provide an express run out to Greenport, for zero cost, and not only would this for the first time in years provide a direct express train out to the North Fork, but it would also most likely take some load off the Ronkonkoma Branch, which it's trains are quite busy on Fridays at this time of day. 

The truth is... they should've done that years ago when they first ran that second equipment out but instead they continued to do it this way. Of all the times they could provide a direct ride out there, this is one of the best and most popular times of the week to provide time savings to these travelers. 

I mean look, I think we can all agree Montauk is better, but how come Montauk gets hourly service out to there, yet, Greenport, on the other hand, doesn't even a direct train, when it could using already available equipment. 

With a branch like this that has so little service opportunities, the LIRR should jump at any idea to improve service, especially at no-cost to riders. This would give people a faster ride and would take stress of busy Ronkonkoma trains on summer Fridays, and would at least make it look like they tried to improve service.

Now, I will be showing off what I believe the LIRR can do with the North Fork more long-term in a future post, but, for now, I think there's a lot the LIRR can do to improve service just a bit.