The Issue With Mineola Station

One of the LIRR’s biggest accomplishments, rolled out alongside with the opening of East Side Access was the opening of the Third Track project. This project brought huge capacity improvements to the Main Line allowing for additional trains to be ran down out in the peak direction, and even more specifically during the reverse-peak periods.

And while this project was HUGE for the railroad and while limited in peak service improvements, provided groundbreaking improvements to reverse-peak service on the Main Line between Floral Park and Hicksville and to other points connecting to it. 

There was one huge problem with the final draft that was a huge dealbreaker for reverse-peak and intra-island commuting on the Main Line, specifically at Long Island’s third biggest job hub, Mineola. Mineola is not only a busy station, but  a beautiful station that serves as an important job hub. In the original draft for the Third Track Project, it called for all stations from New Hyde Park thru Westbury to have their platforms demolished in favor of new 12-car platforms, and it also called for Mineola station to like Hicksville, receive an island platform allowing for express trains to simultaneously stop at Mineola without having to bother switching tracks. 

In the final plan, however, this was dropped as a cost-saving measure and Mineola was slated to receive 2 normal 12-car platforms like the other stations. This was a major flaw with the final design and really dragged down the value of the project, since, trains, that run express down the Main Line from/to places as far away as Port Jefferson, Ronkonkoma, Patchogue and Speonk could no longer stop at Mineola without switching to the third track serving as a deterrent for these trains to switch tracks and cause backup on the Main Line just to stop there and provide intra-island service opportunities.  

(Photo: Fan Railer)

And when asked, the project team said that the decision was made to “avoid residential property impacts both east and west of the station” and “ because the LIRR believes that the revised NASSAU Interlocking configuration (moving NASSAU 1 and 3 closer to Mineola) would permit sufficient stopping flexibility for "intra-Island" service." This proves to be untrue as having a train running down the express track slow down to switch to the local track, stop at Mineola, then switch back to the express track proved to be very disruptive to local track operations as if your trying to do this during the height of the rush hour (when most intra-island travel is occurring) then your likely to cause delays to a local train that’s waiting behind to also make its Mineola stop. And while this is going on, things have already been made worse as you also got the Oyster Bay Branch junction which requires Oyster Bay Branch trains to go through Mineola and onto the junction at 10 mph which gums up the local track already.

I’m conclusion, this was a huge loss for Mineola and for this project as a whole. By neglecting to build a middle platform, the LIRR essentially turned down an opportunity to provide tons of additional intra-island service opportunities to the places that need it most, but decided to instead just drag their foot and cut their losses.