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.

1998 Station Eliminations

Came the 90s came the modern-post 2000s era of the LIRR with sleek DE and DM locomotives with futuristic C3s hauling them, and gone were the ratty old MP15ACs which many of which still serve in freight service to this day. While EMD and Kawasaki were building the new equipment, the LIRR had to do some preparations for the arrival of this new equipment.

Much like how the M1s worked, the C3s would only be able to platform at high-level stations, therefore, the railroad would have to go around and convert the few remaining low-level stations to high-level stations.

By the 90s, all of the stations on the Port Jefferson Branch east of Huntington had already been converted as the C1 test cars had already begun service however many of the stations on the Main Line east of Ronkonkoma and on the Montauk Branch hadn't been converted.

Therefore, the LIRR sent out crews to begin building these new platforms.

While high-level platforms have many benefits, one of them isn't being cheap, and building more than 30 of them at once would cost quite a bit, therefore, the LIRR constructed many of these 1990s platforms at shorter lengths then seen on platforms at many stations. Platforms on the Port Jefferson Branch and at Bay Shore were constructed with a full 12-car long platforms however the stations on the Montauk Branch were only 4 to 8 cars and the cars east of Ronkonkoma were a measly one car length! That choice has come back to them as summer loading on the Montauk Branch at stations connecting to the Fire Island Ferries and at many of the stations in the Hamptons is very slow. 

And while they didn't go cheap and did construct high-level stations at most of those 30 or so stations, the railroad also did single-out a couple unlucky ones and shortened their platforms to 0 cars long.

A sign informing customers of Quogue’s retirement.

On March 16th, 1998, the LIRR abandoned service at 10 stations with many of those being on the Montauk Branch. Trains on the Montauk, Oyster Bay and Greenport branches made their final stops at Penny Bridge, Fresh Pond, Haberman, Richmond Hill, Glendale, Quogue, Center Moriches, Mill Neck, Southampton Campus, and Holtsville.

The first five of those stations were along the Lower Montauk Branch. The Lower Montauk Branch had long been struggling to keep ridership and it wasn't surprising they cut the cord for these stations.

Penny Bridge was located at Calvary Cemetery near Newtown Creek in Laurel Hill (map), and was a very small station with only a low platform and a shelter. It got it's name from a bridge of same name that linked Laurel Hill, Queens to Brooklyn. The station only had one daily rider when it closed so it's not at all surprising that it did meet it's fate.

Penny Bridge (Photo: Dave Keller Archive)

Haberman was another small station, this one located in Maspeth, Queens (map) like Penny Bridge, it also had a low-level platform. The station had opened in September 2010, and still had manual crossing gates, a guard shack as recently as 1973. It only had 3 daily riders when it closed in 1973.

The next station was Fresh Pond. Fresh Pond was another small station positioned with a low-level island platform that sat at the point where the Bushwick Branch diverged off the Montauk Branch (map). The station was west of Fresh Pond Yard, a major freight yard even to this day.

Next was Glendale, which easily was the smallest of these stations, only consisting of a stool to discharge passengers. As for ridership it only had two of them per day. No wonder this one got closed!

(Photo: LIRR History)

The next and last of the Lower Montauk stations was Richmond Hill, which unlike the others, had a long, elevated, high-level platform. Despite the station having a long, high-level platform, it was only used by one person and was closed in March of 1998. Even though it could have remained open for no cost, it just wasn't worth it considering it was the odd one out on this branch. As you can see the BMT Jamaica Avenue Line passed right over it (map).

When the remaining Lower Montauk Branch stations were closed, this branch was only served by just two Oyster Bay Branch trains, with one in the morning and one in the evening in the peak direction. Others travelled via the Lower Montauk, but none of them stopped at these stations. Train 507 was the final revenue train to travel via the Lower Montauk Branch on a daily basis before it too stopped doing so in October 2012 after Hurricane Sandy.

Mill Neck was the one Oyster Bay Branch station to be abandoned. The station was located between Locust Valley and Oyster Bay (map). The station had lower-level platform, and some 12 to 20 passengers used it before it was eliminated. The station actually survived through quite a lot, being burned down twice in it's history. The station building is now used as a town hall. 

A colorized photo of Holtsville in 1959 (Photo: Trains Are Fun)  

Holtsville was another one of the 10 closed during the 1998 Station Eliminations. This one was located between Ronkonkoma and Greenport on the Scoot. It was located at Waverly Avenue (map). It originally opened in 1843 as Westerly but was then changed to Holtsville in 1897 as did the surrounding area. This station was little-used back in 1998 when it closed, but the area has grown quite a bit since then. I personally think that if they improve service out on the North Fork (not even electrifying), then there could be talks of reopening this one. The Suffolk County Traction Company's trolly line terminated south of Holtsville, after running south from Patchogue. They planned to extend it to Port Jeff, but never finished it as the company went bankrupt.

Center Moriches was located between Mastic-Shirley and Speonk on the Montauk Branch. The station consisted of one low-level side platform on the south side and that was about it. The station had two tracks because of MO siding. Like Bellport which would've been the 11th but faced a lot of local opposition associated with it's closure and ended up being saved, only saw a few riders and even fewer trains.

Some residents in the area have had some interest in seeing Center Moriches station reopened. The Moriches area has grown quite a bit in the past few years, and many believe it could sustain enough ridership to warrant service similar to what is seen at Bellport.

These final two stations were located on the second most remote part of the LIRR- the South Fork east of Speonk. 

Quogue station in 1997 (Photo: Trains Are Fun)

The first of these two was Quogue which was located between Westhampton and Hampton Bays. Quogue was yet another tiny, roadside shack with almost no ridership. Once they eliminated Quogue, most of the Hamptons stations were pretty evenly spaced from each other. I wouldn't say ridership would warrant this station being reopened as there's little development in the area of the original station (map).

And finally, Southampton Campus. This was another little-used, roadside station that opened in 1974, with the goal of serving LI University's Southampton College (map). As attendance at Southampton College declined, so did the station which closed like the others in 1998 (SUNY Southampton closed in 2005.) SUNY Stony Brook took over and is now called "Stony Brook Southampton", and Stony Brook Southampton has covered slightly but I don't think it would warrant it's own station again. Even if they were to reopen this station, they'd probably cheap it out and have it run like Bellport used to with only a limited number of the already limited number of trains that pass by it actually stop there, and you'd get cheaped out when you could go to Southampton which is only five minutes east and is more then plenty to serve this area and college.

At the end of the day, the main reason the LIRR even closed these stations was due to money issues. You'd be suprised at how much the LIRR actually saved by not having to close these stations. The LIRR told The New York Times in 1998 that rebuilding these stations would cost about $260,000 to $2.25 million per station, and to spend $2.25 million for a station which only serve 30 or so people at maximum daily is just not worth it. I'm sure the money the LIRR saved was much better used elsewhere. 

At this point, I think it's mega unlikely the Lower Montauk Branch will ever return, as there's really no good reason to reopen it. Ridership was low in the first place, and there's no good reason to reopen the stations in the first place, and with the IBX, thats even more unlikely. To be honest, if they electrify out to Port Jefferson and Patchogue chances are that Hunterspoint Avenue and Long Island City may close as well as sad as that is. If they ever improve service out on the East End and on the North fork, it may make sense in the future to reopen some of those stations and if the Oyster Bay Branch were ever to be electrified (not that I’m suggesting that), then maybe they could warrant a reopen of Mill Neck but I don’t know.

In conclusion, these stations will always be remembered in LIRR history.

The Ronkonkoma Problem

I wasn’t busy today (yep, a Monday in Feburary), so I’ve been writing a bunch of posts that’ll be coming out in the far-future and getting them ready now. Aside from New York, Brooklyn, and Jamaica, Ronkonkoma station is actually the busiest station on Long Island, with Hicksville right on its heals. You may be lead to believe that Ronkonkoma’s popularity is something that is a great thing, however, once you dig deeper, you see it’s actually a problem.

The Hamlet of Ronkonkoma, a place I live near and visit often, probably seams very dense due to its ridership, however, there’s barely more people who live in Ronkonkoma then that use the station. The problem is, the vast majority of those who board at Ronkonkoma are actually not from Ronkonkoma, or even the surrounding communities, but are instead from many different points east, north, south, and even west of Ronkonkoma. 

In order for commuter rail to work as it supposed to, service should be consistent proportional to population density, all the way out to the end of the line. At no point should there be a steep service dropout (unless the population similarly drops off, which hasn’t and won’t happen on Long Island). Service may be relatively proportional out in Greenport, however, Riverhead for example, has about 30% people living there, but sees an 85% drop in service. Many of those who could use Riverhead station (or any other station along the North and South forks), just drive to Ronkonkoma and park there for free.

These riders fly past their local stations because the levels of service in many cases is just laughable. The lack of service on the East End is much worse considering there are very few alternatives (if you want decent service). A prime example of this is the West Hempstead Branch, which gets much, much better service then the East End, but doesn’t get service proportional to Western Nassau County population, or better, to its peers over on the Far Rockaway, Hempstead, and Main Line branches.

Not only do the desperate riders on the Ronkonkoma-Greenport section of the Mainline flock to Ronkonkoma, so do many riders along the North and South forks. Many riders that live closer to the Montauk and Port Jefferson branches often find themselves driving, and parking at Ronkonkoma. I feel like there’s lot to be done to peak service on the Montauk and Port Jefferson branches which have room for more, and many riders would rather just drive to Ronkonkoma to get the direct and frequent service out of there. Many times, when my mother needs to go into the city for an appointment or what not, she’ll drive to Ronkonkoma even though our local Montauk Branch station is just up the block! My dad normally takes the Montauk Branch though.

The truth is only 34% of Ronkonkoma ridership actually comes from the nearby area. Roughly two thirds of riders who use this station are driving from a community elsewhere in Long Island that is locally served via a different station. It’s possible to determine from the LIRR’s 2012-2014 Origin and Destination Survey where the MTA asked riders to obviously provide their origin and destination, all bc with their home ZIP codes so they could chart a more overall picture of riders’ overall choice. I’ll give the breakdown:

• About only 34% riders come from the local area, while the most 18% of the riders drive south from communities along the Port Jefferson Branch.
• 17% of the riders backtrack east from Brentwood and Central Islip (specially from Islandia which is more understandable given the location being closer to Ronkonkoma.)
• 15% of riders drive north from communities along the Montauk Branch in the towns of Brookhaven and Islip. 
• 12% of riders drive from areas along the Main Line in eastern portions of the Town of Brookhaven (instead of using Medford or Yaphank stations which is highly understandable given the poor service there)
• 3% of riders drive west from the North Fork (areas in Town of Riverhead and Southold)
• 2% of riders drive up the island from the South Fork (areas in the Towns of Southampton and East Hampton)

If this doesn’t get the point across about just how many people use this station, then I don’t know what does. Many of these people are diesel branch refugees, and the rest are riders backtracking from Central Islip and Brentwood which surprised me, however, considering some of the best trains skipped these stations, you can kind of understand it more. While I expect this has changed quite a bit since commuting patterns changed because of COVID-19 and ESA, and many of these people who used to take popular trains to New York such as: 

• The old train 2013 (the 6:24am from Ronkonkoma), which ran nonstop to Hicksville
• The old train 2015 (the 6:39am from Ronkonkoma), which ran just before the old train 2017 from CI that skipped Jamaica and this train possibly carried local passengers and passengers to alternate terminals. 
• The old train 2021 (the 7:04am from Ronkonkoma) which ran nonstop to Deer Park.
• The old train 2019 (the 7:19am from Ronkonkoma), which only maked Ronkonkoma, Central Islip, and Brentwood before running nonstop to New York. This is one of the busiest trains for these stations, therefore those who live close to the border would likely chose eastbound. 
• The old train 2061 (the 4:46pm reverse-peak from Ronkonkoma), which used to skip Brentwood before the double track. 

Nowadays, those trains are gone with East Side Access (for the better in some cases). Nowadays, I expect that number has gone down as service patterns on the branch have gotten much more simple, however I assume that the smaller percentage of back trackers would do it for these trains:

• Train 2017 (the 6:29am flyer from Ronkonkoma) This train can get relatively crowded and I wouldn’t be surprised if some Brentwood riders would backtrack to guarantee a seat. 
• Train 1917 (the 6:36am from Ronkonkoma) Another well-traveled train.
• Train 2019 (the 7:10am from Ronkonkoma) This train is probably the busiest train on the entire branch, and I assume that there would be many standees for anyone who didn’t board at Ronkonkoma. 
• Train 1921 (the 7:28am from Ronkonkoma) Another well-traveled train. 

Coupled with the diesel riders, all of this puts extraordinary stress on poor Ronkonkoma. While capacity improvements have improved greatly since the Third Track project opened, there’s still capacity constraints, and Ronkonkoma just cannot keep up with the loads. It’s crazy to note that some trains out of Ronkonkoma in the morning already have standees before even making their first station stop.

As you’ve seen with my timetable project, I’ve been trying to balance the loads around, and with the recent unveil of my Montauk Branch timetable, many of you hopefully saw the improvements that were made to diesel peak service, in hopes of improving peak commutes on the Montauk Branch.

I believe the worst of the problems lies in off-peak and event service. Trains after big events on the Ronkonkoma branch consistently have all 8, 10, or even 12 cars filled to the gills with the standees, and even some weekend off-peak trains during the busier travel periods can get rough. 

The Ronkonkoma Branch timetable will release this Monday at 6:00am, so stay tuned!