LIRR providing extra service to PGA tournament in Bethpage

The LIRR is actually providing quite a suite of extra trains for the PGA tournament in Bethpage next week. They are providing trains to/from Farmingdale to both Ronkonkoma and New York  before and after the event, and they are also staging a couple unscheduled extras to help bare the rest of the crowds.

The nice thing is with the way the Ronkonkoma Branch runs, they actually currently run a couple of equipment trains in the morning, in both directions, to deadhead equipment out to the yard in Ronkonkoma eastbound and to also deadhead a couple sets west to Hicksville and Westbury to represent local runs on the Main Line. 

The LIRR innovatively converted all of the eastbound equipment runs in the morning into revenue service, providing some very impressive headways into Farmingdale in the morning. The two westbound equipment runs also provide express service from Ronkonkoma (the busiest station on the line by far) to Farmingdale. This is very innovative. And, the best part is, since those two westbound runs originate on the Main Line, they won't affect peak hour passengers as those passengers wont get on until it gets to the Main Line.

Reverse-peak direction

• Train 1996, a 4:34am departure from Penn Station, stopping at Woodside, Jamaica, Mineola, Hicksville, and Farmingdale, arriving at 5:30am.
• Train 2006, a 5:13am departure from Grand Central, stopping at Woodside, Jamaica, Mineola, Hicksville, and Farmingdale, arriving at 6:06am.
• Train 1998, a 5:48am departure from Penn Station, stopping at Woodside, Jamaica, Mineola, Hicksville, and Farmingdale, arriving at 6:46am.
• Train 2008, a 5:54am deaprture from Grand Central, stopping at Woodside, Jamaica, Mineola, Hicksville, and Farmingdale, arriving at 6:50am
• Train 4906, a 6:36am departure from Penn Station, stopping at Woodside, Jamaica, Mineola, Hicksville, and Farmingdale, arriving at 7:35am
• And here's an interesting one, train 2128 (currently a shuttle that deadheads to Farmingdale for whatever reason), a 6:37am departure from Atlantic Terminal stopping at at Nostrand Avenue, East New York, Jamaica, and Farmingdale. 
• Train 4908, a 7:15am departure from Penn Station, stopping at Wooside, Jamaica, Mineola, Hicksville, and Farmingdale.

Now, see a common theme here? All of these trains are actually scheduled deadhead equipment runs already, so essentially, the LIRR is running these for zero cost. 

Peak direction

During the peak direction, the LIRR doesn't directly add any service, and I don't blame them for this as the line is already pretty much at capacity at that time of the morning, and, by adding more service they'd be screwing the LIRR's most important market, westbound commuters.

• Train 2501, orginates at Ronkonkoma at 5:40am, runs express to Farmingdale stopping there at 6:09am, then runs to Westbury before resuming it's normal route making all local stops.
• Train 2103, originates in Ronkonkoma at 6:54am, stopping at Farmingdale at 7:19am (it orginates there), before resuming it's route making all local stops.

In the afternoon, the LIRR doesn't provide close to as a impressive lineup, but, in their defense, they also provide more service during the afternoon reverse-peak, and they do have some unscheduled extras that'll run. 

Reverse-peak direction

• Train 4955, a 4:57pm departure out of Farmingdale, making Jamaica, and Penn Station.

Peak direction

• The LIRR will add stops on the express trains, providing a very frequent service to points east on the Main Line. 

Weekend

On the weekend, the LIRR is only providing eastbound service in the morning to the event, (I find it supriisng that they aren't convering the very early westbound equipment moves to service but whatever) but my guess is that they'll run unscheduled extras on those days, too.

• Train 7934, a 4:15am departure out of Penn Station, stopping at Woodside, Jamaica, Mineola, Hicksville, Bethpage, and Farmingdale, arriving at 5:13am.
• Train 7936, a 4:39am departure out of Penn Station, stopping at Woodside, Jamaica, Mineola, Hicksville, and Farmingdale, arriving at 5:35am.
• Train 8008, a 5:30am departure out of Grand Central, stopping at Woodside, Jamaica, Mineola, Hicksville, and Farmingdale, arriving at 6:28am.
• Train 8012, a 6:33am departure from Grand Central, stopping at Jamaica, Mineola, Hicksville, and Farmingdale, arriving at 7:32am.
• Train 8014, 8016, 8018, and 8020, 7:31, 8:33, 9:33, and 10:33 departures out of Grand Central, all stopping at Woodside, Jamaica, Mineola, Hicksville, and Farmingdale, arriving at 8:29, 9:30, 10:30, and 11:30am respectively.

Now, we get the bad part, the LIRR strike is happening at what is probably the worst possible time, since, apparently they could go on strike as early as September 18, giving them only 5 days to restore service in time for the Tuesday morning rush hour/PGA tournament. 

In all, I think, for the most part, the LIRR mastered this plan, and as long as the strike doesn't put a giant fork in the plans, then this should work relatively well. I feel like the LIRR converting deadheads to service could be hopeful, since it shows their willing to do that. Possibly in the future they could actually convert these deadhead moves to revenue service, full time, which would be huge to provide even more reverse-peak service opportunities, something that would be a huge step forward.

I look forward to seeing how this service pattern plays out, and it's just great to see the LIRR using their deadhead equipment to their advantage to provide a very robust line of service. This is going to be a huge event, and getting people to and from it as quickly as possible is key, and this should be a huge motivation to not drive. 

If you'd like to view the full timetable including all service to the event, you can do so by visiting MTA.info.

Daylight Savings Time and the MTA (Fall 2024 Edition)

Daylight Savings Time comes to an end at 2:00 AM tomorrow morning for most of the United States. This time around, we "fall" back an hour and at 2:00 AM, we set the clocks back an hour to 1AM and we get an extra hour of sleep.

Since all of the MTA's territory observes Daylight Savings Time (DST), the MTA must make some adjustments to the schedules to transition smoothly back to Eastern Standard Time.

On Sunday, there are essentially two 1am hours. I decided to break this up across the MTA system.

Long Island Railroad-

For the Long Island Railroad, what basically happens is that all trains that leave their terminal during the Eastern Daylight Hour, the first 1:00am hour, will operate normally, While all trains that were scheduled to depart during the second 1:00 AM (Eastern Standard Hour) will be annulled.

So, if your standing at Penn Station, after midnight Sunday morning, the trains that depart in the 12:00 AM hour will do so as normal, then the clock will strike 1, at this point, the 1:09 AM to Ronkonkoma, 1:34 AM to Huntington, and 1:57 AM to Long Beach will depart as if it were a normal night. Then when the clock strikes 1:59 AM, by playing the magic of Daylight Savings Time game, the clock will blink back to 1:00 AM, and at this point, there will be no trains departing during this hour. It's not like these will run again. Then, after an hour of nothingness, the clock will strike 1:59, then 2:00 AM and everything will proceed as normal again!

However, as you may have noticed, that huge 1 hour gap with nothing scheduled won't make passengers very happy. In past years, the LIRR has added a couple extra trains to the schedule during the second 1:00am hour. The LIRR has added a train #9100, a 1:48 AM EST departure to Babylon stopping at Woodside, Jamaica, Rockville Centre and all stops, getting there at 3:02 AM. They also operate a second train in the second 1:00 AM EST hour to Ronkonkoma, stopping at Forest Hills, Kew Gardens, Jamaica, Mineola, Hicksville, and all stops (besides Pinelawn) to Ronkonkoma. 

Now, it's looks pretty weird on TrainTime as the LIRR doesn't make it that clear that there's two 1AM hours. On TrainTime, the 1:09 AM from Penn Station to Ronkonkoma stops at Hicksville at 1:54 AM, then stops at Bethpage at 1:00 AM, making it rather confusing, and I think they could do a slightly better job as it was even confusing for researching for this post.

Since, in theory, all trains will operate, there will be no missing equipment turns at terminals, and the two extra trains will hurry back west whenever it's convenient for the LIRR.

Metro-North Railroad & NJTransit-

This daylight savings time problem is a problem that is rather unique to the LIRR. The vast majority of transit agencies conclude service for the day around 1am, then start running trains the next morning around 4-5am. So, most other companies wouldn't have a problem with Daylight Savings Time. Metro-North & NJTransit do not have a single 2AM departure, so that means that they do not have to provide extra services, and those few trains that are running are most likely equipment moves or are just discharging passengers. 

New York City Subway- 

I thought i'd just briefly cover this: to my knowledge, the subway headways will continue as normally during the second 1:00am hour.

Amtrak-

Amtrak, unlike most of the others, operates trains all over the US, and many of them operate fully or partly overnight. But,  Amtrak's plan makes much less sense, in my opinion, then the MTA's. Here's what Amtrak does: In the spring, when the clock moves forward an hour all of their trains become instantly late, and they try to play this game of making up the time en route. When your train is on it's merry way and suddenly the clocks switch back to 1am, your train advances towards it's next scheduled station and then waits a whole extra hour until it's scheduled departure time.

So, yeah, that's the time change, I tried to make this as easy to comprehend as possible, but if I did make any mistakes, please let me know or leave a comment below if you have any questions, and remember to set your clocks back on Saturday night!