Real Time Train Information

You wake up slightly late, so then you rush to the train station, you then arrive at your station, in the morning, and you peer down the platform into the sunrise, looking at the right-of-way, hoping to see the headlights of your train. While the headlights don’t appear, shortly afterward you hear the announcement on the PA system  saying “the 7:15 train to Penn Station will arrive in 2 minutes”, so you wait. Eventually, after 6 minutes of waiting, you see the headlights of your train either coming around the bend or off in the distance. You then reposition yourself on the platform in hopes of getting a good seat. The train then comes, and your on your merry way. However, you wish there was a way for the ETA of the train to actually be somewhat accurate, not an estimate that turns out to be rather far-off. 

The railroad's AVPS system (the ETA system) is actually one of the best in North America. It consists of multiple LED screens, along the length of each platform, in waiting areas, and near the ticket machines. Each one features audible announcements that can be heard throughout the station letting you know how soon the train is. And, generally, it does a decent job of that. However, there's no denying, that there's lot to improve mainly in the area of real-time train prediction.

Photo: The LIRR Today on Bluesky

However, in order to address the areas for improvement, I need to explain how the AVPS system works in the first place. The LIRR has a system called TIMACS (Train Information Management and Control System), which keeps track of the time each train hits each interlocking and station. It works as part of the signalling system and at each signalling point (i.e JAY interlocking), the train will take note of what time the train hit the interlocking, and what time it was supposed to (aka it was supposed to hit BWD at 7:15am, but it hit BWD at 7:19am). It then uses this information to calculate the estimated arrival time for the train. In addition, if the TIMACS system is down, or the other way around, most of the trains also feature GPS which allows for an even more fine method to track actually down to earth where the trains are.

When you combine all these systems, one can come to the conclusion that the LIRR is pretty well covered in figuring out exactly where trains are. However, one can also wonder why the predictions can be so off at times. The system currently in place is far from perfect as it faces multiple issues. 

The first is that if a train is in a bad disruption, one bad enough to keep it from moving altogether, then the AVPS system won't update, therefore, if your train stopped at CI for example at 6:50am, and is supposed to arrive at Brentwood at 6:56am, but is still held at Brentwood at 6:56am, then it would still be displayed as on-time, even though the train hadn't even left CI! Another example of this is that if there's no points to update the train, and GPS isn't working, then, it won't be able to give a good estimate. For example, imagine your at Amagansett on a nice summer Friday at 10:09pm, waiting for the 10:25pm to Jamaica. The train left Montauk on time at 10:04pm, but had to stop somewhere in Napeague. 

The problem is that it would continue to count down to that scheduled 10:25pm arrival,  and at 10:25pm, it would say the train is arriving, meanwhile it's only halfway to Amagansett. The only time it would actually update is if it's marked held, and in a smaller disruption like this that will bring the train to a halt for only minutes, that's probably unlikely to happen. This is the LIRR downright lying to people, as they are saying the train is arriving, when it's really not.