Overnight ice resulted in a rough morning commute on LIRR

Well, after yesterday's storm, the LIRR had a slightly rougher time this morning providing the promised full weekday schedule. 

If you've been outside yet today, you'll know it's FREEZING outside (it's in the upper teens), and as you know, when you had a cold night, it's not uncommon, especially on the LIRR, for the switches to freeze, which happened overnight. A couple switches, all of those being at important locations, and as a result, caused delays and even a couple of cancellations throughout the entire morning rush hour:

• There was switch trouble near Mineola which caused delays on the Oyster Bay Branch that resulted in 35-40 minute delays, and to make matters worse, train 505 (the first dual mode out of Oyster Bay) broke down in Oyster Bay which resulted in congestion. They even had to have train 508 (the 6:43a from Jamaica to Oyster Bay) go all the way to Hicksville to make a reverse-move and get around that broken switch. This also later resulted in the entire Main Line getting put in a chokehold as everything got backed up causing an average of 10 minute delays during the height of the morning rush hour.
• There was switch trouble at both Stewart Manor and Elmont-UBS Arena which resulted in train 709, the 7:04am from Hempstead to Atlantic Terminal having to make a reverse-move.

In the end though, you cannot blame the LIRR for this as this is all weather-related. Afterall this was the first real snow of the season and I think it's impressive enough that they were able to run pretty much a full suite of trains for the Monday morning rush hour already, considering when you look at NJTransit, they annulled basically 25% of the rush hour fleet. And really the delays weren't terrible, when you look at it, as only a small handful of trains ran more than 20 minutes late with the worst of the delays being train 508 which arrived Oyster Bay 43 minutes late.

The Belmont Problem

For years, there's been talk of providing full-time service to the tiny spur station known as Belmont Park. Even before the new UBS Arena, and the Belmont Park Redevelopment project, it's still been on people's wishlists as a park-and-ride facility.

Local officials from several levels of government— including the Town of Hempstead, and county/state legislatures have called on the MTA LIRR to establish full-time service to the spur station in the past. They have said it would provide more rail options for those who live in Elmont, Franklin Sq, and the unincorporated areas of North Valley Stream. These communities do not have their own rail stations, and parking at other nearby stations in western Nassau is limited and restricted to local residents, so if you live in these areas your largely shut-out from rail service, besides the one Elmont-UBS Arena Station which only gets 8 peak trains, and many of those go to Brooklyn.

By unlocking the large, underused parking lots at Belmont Park and allowing riders from both Western Nassau as well as Eastern Queens (where there are limited transit options as well) to park and ride on the LIRR, the MTA could expand access to a much larger potential ridership base in Eastern Queens and Western Nassau County, which both have very limited transit access, along with additional opportunities for those who drive to Manhattan.

For the retail and entertainment complex, Elmont-UBS Arena station is virtually useless. With most of the activity centered on the large south parking lot south of Hempstead Turnpike, the current Elmont station is nearly a mile-long hike from the retail complex. 

To add, both the retail shops and the UBS Arena are both reasonably closer to Belmont Park then to Elmont-UBS Arena, and while the LIRR does run shuttles during events, I think everyone can agree that it's much more sensible for people to be able to walk then to have to bare the burden of providing shuttle buses every event.

Therefore, I've concurred that it's much easier for people to get train service to Belmont Park then to Elmont-UBS Arena. I definitely think some rough form of full-time train service to Belmont Park spur station would be greatly appreciated in both the short and long-terms.

If the railroad does run a reasonably frequent service between Belmont Park and the western terminals, it could offload stops at Queens Village, Hollis, and Hillside (if needed), and all 3 of the Mainline stops (Kew Gardens, Forest Hills, and Woodside) onto trains to/from the spur station, that way the railroad could keep trains bound for other more important places moving, and it might allow the busy Ronkonkoma trains to drop Kew Gardens and Forest Hills which drastically slows down running times. 

Because of Belmont's close location to city terminals, improving service to the spur station might not need to many crew and equipment resources, trains that go out east can bounce back to Belmont Park for a second or third trip when they might not be able to make it all the way back to Babylon, Ronkonkoma, or Far Rockaway with enough time before the end of the rush hour.

A dormant spur

These calls for full-time service at the station have been ignored by the LIRR, which has never thought much of the spur. The "Manhattan & Ronkonkoma Railroad" seams perfectly content with letting Belmont Park wither and die by providing the bare minimum of service to the spur station for events, and by spending $106 million on a brand new mainline station that while is very nice, is literally in line of sight of 4 other stations, and isn't as close as Belmont Park is to these events. I would not be surprised if the LIRR seeks to abandon the spur in the near future.

The railroad has generally just ignored these requests, but it has offered a handful of excuses, too. These have ranged from limited western terminal capacity (which isn't an issue now that we have Grand Central Madison/ESA), as well as risks of congestion @ QUEENS interlocking as trains slowly crawl onto and off the spur. The new station, Elmont- UBS Arena, on the mainline, is located nearly 3-quarters of a mile from the arena, and even further from the retail complex, and it will slow down the commutes of everyone who passes through the area.

While you can argue that by providing additional service to the spur station, you'd be effectively forfeiting a slot that could be used to serve more riders coming from stations' further east, I believe the idea is still plausible. While full-time service to Belmont Park would mean a slight sacrifice to frequency further east along the Main Line, I strongly believe that by offloading local stops onto Belmont Park trains would not only make these trains much more useful, but it would also allow for suburban trips (i.e Ronkonkoma, Hempstead, and Huntington trips) to be faster, since these trips would be able to dump stops at Queens Village, Hollis, maybe even Hillside, and far few trains on all the branches to/from Eastern LI would need to bother stopping at the local stops along the Main Line between Jamaica and New York.

In conclusion, I strongly believe that providing some sort of full-time service to Belmont Park would not only be beneficial for nearby residents, but also for the entire railroad. Not only would it provide better service for residents of Eastern Queens and Western Nassau, but it will also allow for faster suburban trips if used properly, and it will allow for quicker access to events at the nearby arena.