The LIRR’s Spring Trackwork Program

It’s a Friday afternoon, your waiting on the platform at Hunterspoint Avenue for an eastbound train towards the Hamptons (cuz, let’s face it who doesn’t take a train to the Hamptons in April) and you hear on the PA an announcement stating that tie replacement on [affected branch] will [cause this to happen]. 

Yep, that’s right we’re now approaching the busiest portion of the LIRR’s Spring Trackwork program, massive program

Here’s a general overview of what will be going on on the railroad this spring, please note that some of these have already finished, I decided to include everything that’s going on: 

• Valley Stream - Switch Rehabilitation & West Hempstead Crossing Rehabilitation 

On the weekends of March 29-30, April 5th and 6th, and April 12th and 13th, one of the two main tracks on the Montauk Branch (Babylon Branch) will be closed between Jamaica and Rockville Centre to support a series of switch rehabilitations in or near Valley Stream, along with a grade crossing rehabilitation on the West Hempstead Branch, which will take the West Hempstead Branch fully OOS on those weekends. 

Due to this, Babylon Branch service will be reduced in both directions between Penn and Babylon during the majority of these 48-hour periods. Also except Montauk Branch schedules to be changed with some trains being extended to/from Jamaica. Limited semi-express service will continue to operate between Penn Station and Babylon for the majority of these 48-hour periods. Additionally, bus service will replace train service on the West Hempstead Branch for this 48-hour period. LIRR customers should expect adjusted schedules on trains on these affected branches while switch work is being performed. Additional service will be provided to/from Montauk on Sunday, March 30th for the Montauk St.Patrick’s Day Parade. 

• Montauk Branch - Crossing Replacement and Maintenance Activities 

On Saturday, April 19th, all tracks between Babylon and Montauk will be out of service for a period of 30 hours while the Snake Hollow Road crossing in Bridgehampton is replaced Tut hull Creek Bridge timber rehabilitation occurs between Sayville and Patchogue, and other track/structural maintenance is performed between Babylon and Montauk. 

With all main tracks out of service between Babylon and Montauk, the Montauk Branch will bustitute train service during a period of 30 hours.

• ADA Station Rehabilitation - Hollis

The ADA project at Hollis is excepted to resume construction on March 24th.

While construction is performed to support the ADA Rehabilitation Project at Hollis, select trains will bypass stops at Elmont-UBS Arena, Hollis, and Queens Village during the midday/weekday period. 

• ADA Station Rehabilitation Project - Forest Hills

The ADA Station Rehabilitation Project at Forest Hills is slated to resume construction in April.

While construction is performed to support the ADA Rehabilitation Project at Forest Hills, select trains will bypass stops at Kew Gardens, Forest Hills; and Woodside during the weekend period. 

With all the construction projects going on, and add that to all the extra trains the LIRR has been running for the St.Patrick’s Day Parades in New York and Montauk, it will be difficult for the railroad to hold up, but I’m sure they’ll manage it as they always do.

What The Hempstead Branch Timetable Could Look Like

From the West Hempstead Branch's eastern terminal of West Hempstead, we must hop a couple of blocks down Fulton Street to the east and north a little bit to get to the eastern terminal of another (much more favored) branch, the Hempstead Branch. The branch's eastern terminal of Hempstead is right across the street from Hempstead Transit Center, which is one of NICE's main bus terminals. Quite a few people, upon arrival into Hempstead Transit Center will not cross the street and hop on the LIRR but instead will change to another bus to Jamaica and hop on the subway!

Those lucky enough to make the choice to hop on the train, will take a trip up through Garden City, and stop at no less than 3 stations in Garden City, before pulling through Stewart Manor before meeting the LIRR's Mainline at Floral Park.

From Garden City through Floral Park, the Hempstead Branch runs pretty darn closer to the Mainline. Crazy enough, Nassau Blvd is only a mile south of Merllion Avenue and New Hyde Park is even closer only being a half a mile south of Stewart Manor. In both cases, the Hempstead Branch stations are not even 2 minutes apart on New Hyde Park Road. The tracks that branch off going perfectly eastbound at Garden City are actually the remnants of the old Central Railroad of Long Island and this could become the route many Ronkonkoma Branch trains could take if the LIRR were to reactivate this portion. 

The LIRR could work to use the relatively close spacing of stations to their advantage. Both New Hyde Park and Merllion Avenue lie on the busy Mainline, and due to this, they both have capacity constraints. A lot of people who would use the Hempstead Branch stations actually just end p driving to stations along the Mainline due to crowding or because service can get very lazy on this branch at times. A family friend of mine who use to commute into New York who lives very close to both Nassau Blvd and Merllion Avenue stations (slightly closer to the latter) would just go to Merllion Avenue since he said the station was quieter.  

My hope is by increasing service on the Hempstead Branch, along with the Far Rockaway and Long Beach branches, service will begin to even a tad bit out more. I personally think the Hempstead Branch definitely has some growing to do, and the LIRR just needs to help it grow.

To get onto the actual timetable, the linked .pdf file includes the full set of weekday and weekend Hempstead Branch timetables. Peak, off-peak, reverse-peak, and special-event trains trains have all been included within the timetables.

The timetables only show revenue trains, not deadhead or equipment moves, which will be planned out using AI to align with crew and equipment moves and will be written down on paper. They’ll be included on a separate page in the attached PDF. I tried to mostly minimize deadheading as it’s essentially wasted time, crew, and equipment hours but in some cases it’s unavoidable to make the most out of the resources available.

Like was said on the Introduction Page, before we can begin talking about the actual schedule “Key Assumptions” and “Service Guidelines” needs to be taken care of and mentioned before this project can become totally feasible since I’ve built the timetables off of it. I’ve tried my best to make these schedules able to be done with these projects completed or not, but in some cases that isn’t possible.

Just like the other timetable posts, here are some "Key Assumptions" and "Service Guidelines" which I built the timetables on: 

Key Assumptions

• The current infrastructure on the branch will remain the same or similar to what it is now. 

Service Guidelines

• During peak hours, service is provided on 20 minutes headways as a minimum throughout the course of the rush hour. Train service is provided to Penn Station, Grand Central, and Atlantic Terminal hourly. 
• I’ve decided to cut-back a bit on service to Queens Village and Hollis stations during rush and reverse-peak hours however they will continue to get off-peak service. The Belmont Park trains will now be the main flag carriers for the branch, and they will now get 30-minute headways during off-peak hours. 
• During off-peak hours, service is provided hourly on the branch and these trains continue to operate to/from Grand Central w/ a couple of exceptions during late-nights. 
• During the weekday reverse-peak period, additional trains are run in the reverse-peak direction from Penn Station to help provide 30-minute headways. My hope is that by providing additional reverse-peak service, especially earlier in the rush hour, this will continue my effort of minimizing deadheading/empty equipment moves.  These trains are targeted at people holding jobs in western Nassau County, and others may take the train to Hempstead to connect with NICE bus. 

Link to Hempstead Branch Timetable

Knowing that service at Main Line stations such as Merllion Avenue and New Hyde Park would be unfortunately sporadic, I wanted the Hempstead Branch to be a fast, frequent, and viable alternative. I tried to space service on this branch evenly, so it's a good alternative to catching the train at Merllion Avenue and New Hyde Park. 

During the morning peak period, service is set up to run from Hempstead roughly every 20 minutes, and there's a direct train to/from every terminal pretty much every hour. There are multiple flyers that run over the course of the rush hour. 

During the evening peak period, service is set up a bit more sporadic, however, generally you can get a direct train from any one of the 3 main city terminals out to Hempstead every hour. 

During off-peak periods, trains continue to run from Grand Central, which I believe is fitting for the branch. 

I am personally a big advocate for improved transit in eastern Queens, therefore, I've reinstated the Belmont Park Branch to run as a full-time branch for the first time. As a result, some peak Hempstead trains that used to stop at Queens Village and Hollis will now skip the station along with Elmont-UBS Arena, which is overserved. However, most off-peak trains will continue to stop at these stations, providing bi-hourly service to Queens Village and Hollis. While it may seam a bit over, I strongly believe this branch, while very small, could succeed if done properly.

During weekend "peak" periods, I was able to provide three additional westbound trains from Hempstead towards Atlantic Terminal during the busiest times of the morning, along with four additional eastbound trains towards Hempstead. 

I thank everyone who has taken the time to read my timetables project so far, it's been a very fun project and I've learned a lot about the railroad through it. I look forward to continuing to work on it. Today's my birthday and I realized that I haven't gotten a single comment yet, it would be a nice surprise to see someone comment giving any thoughts, suggestions, corrections, etc. You can leave suggestions, thoughts, comments, etc by leaving a comment on the comment form below, or you could e-mail me at gavin.s.wilcox@gmail.com.

View an index of all the other sample timetables, the post about those timetables, and revision history, right here.

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.