Photos: Oyster Bay 11/2024

 

Late Friday Links 11/22

Happy Friday everyone! It’s been a while and here are a good couple of articles for your commute home (and for your enjoyment):

• Van Ritshie, voice of MNR & LIRR announcements died at 80 - NBC

Van Ritshie, the iconic voice of announcements on the C3, M7, M7A, and M8 cars has tragically died of old age at 80. I really loved his announcements and I grew up with them, and I think it’s very sad he died, but his legacy will live on for years. I advise you that next time you hear “This Station Is” or “Watch The Gap” on your LIRR/MNR trip, pay tribute to him.

• LIRR's Iconic 'Ronkonkoma' voice dies at 80 - Greater Long Island

I decided to include an additional article because of my failure to make a post and because of the sadness of this event and in tribute of him. Rest in peace Van Ritshie, you’ll be truly missed.

• MNR Unveils New Locomotives

I decided not to make a post for this, but the long-awaited Siemens Charger SC42-DM locomotives have finally been unveiled. They are expected to enter service in early 2025, though who knows if they will at this point, and I expect to go see them early on!!!!!

• SIR R211s Sidelined

The New York City Subway’s “Staten Island Railway” New R211S cars that just entered service around a month ago have already been sidelined due to signal issues. I don’t care for the Staten Island Railway very much at all, but I hope that they fix the issue.

If you’re riding the rails this weekend, it’s important to note that this weekend (7) trains will not run between Queensboro Plaza and 34 St - Hudson Yards, (F) trains will not run between Coney Island and Church Avenue, (G) trains will not run between Church Avenue and Hoyt-Schermerhorn St and will run in two sections, (2) trains aren’t running between Franklin Avenue and Flatbush Avenue, (L) trains aren’t running between Myrtle-Wyckoff Avenues and Canarsie-Rockaway Pkwy, (3) trains aren’t running between New Lots Avenue and Chambers St, and (Q) trains aren’t running between Brighton Beach. 

Other than that, there’s a lot of cool stuff coming next week, and Thanksgiving is just around the corner! Have a good weekend!

MTA: No train service to Rockaways for 4 months next year

I'm sleepily writing this post after basketball tryouts, so I'm exhausted and please forgive any typos that may come up. Earlier this evening, I heard that the MTA is shutting down train service to the Rockaways for 4 months from January 17 to May 19, 2025. 

During this shutdown, (A) trains will terminate at Howard Beach-JFK Airport in both directions, and the Rockaway Park Shuttle trains will not run at all. The MTA stated that they are doing this to repair bridges that were extensively damaged during Hurricane Sandy, which I could definitely see.

Now, the Rockaways is the undoubtedly the least used portion of the New York City Subway, but it did come as a surprise, and it will still affect over 9,000 riders, and for many of them, the subway is one of the only modes of transportation into Manhattan. They will be running free Q97 busses from Howard Beach to Far Rockaway, and free Q109 busses from Howard Beach to Beach 67 St and Beach 90 St. They also said that "enhanced train service for LIRR is being considered."

Printed or Digital?

In March of 2021, LIRR & MNR ended the days of consulting to paper timetables as a cost-cutting measure approved in the MTA's 2021 budget. Ever since the first days of the LIRR back in the 1830s,  the LIRR has been printing these timetables, but as of March of 2021, is relying on passengers to either 1. Print the timetables, 2. View them on the website or use TrainTime, or 3. Use the station announcement information, which isn't always right. 

The last set of paper branch timetables was at the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, as since then it's been tweaking it's schedules all the more often to try to meet new ridership demand, while balancing capacity and costs —the railroad issued about 18 different schedule revisions over the course of 3 weeks, showing how desperate they were to keep up. If they were to update this every one of those time, it would be very difficult, costly, and wasteful. The very last set of paper timetables that was distributed were the March 9, 2020 timetables, right as the pandemic was making it's way into New York. They seam to have printed a batch of schedules that were supposed to go into effect on May 18, 2020, however, they ended up being cancelled. 

The LIRR & MNR previously printed multiple times of timetables, the normal ones for each line, along with some smaller, pocket-sized ones that featured only a few stations (e.g Sayville, Oakdale, & Great River). In 2019, however, as a cost-cutting measure, the LIRR eliminated these individual station timetables due to usage-declining.

Unlike there unlikely counterparts, the normal paper timetables held on, with the LIRR printing 3 million a year for little cost as advertisements paid the company printing the schedules. However, as the digital age became more apparent and more and more and more and more people became digital, the usage of these paper branch timetables declined, especially since it can be very cumbersome to view in paper form- especially on branches that have a lot of trains.

The Digital Age

With the elimination of the paper timetables, riders must either print the timetables a head of time, use the amazing TrainTime app, or look at the schedules via the MTA website.

PDF timetables

The LIRR's Timetables page still offers the full PDF timetables for each branch along with special event & trackwork timetables, and this page is a good one, it's easy for the average Dashing Dan to find, yet it's authoritative, and provides everything needed.

Now, I gotta admit, I think the LIRR's old (as seen there) and the LIRR's new (as seen below) timetable pages are nicely done, something that is rather rare to find on the MTA's website. 

However, since the beginning of time, I've always thought it's rather difficult to read the LIRR's PDF timetables, now, after years of practice, I've gotten better at it, but especially for people that aren't very familiar with the LIRR, it can be quite confusing, and I think the LIRR should redesign the PDF timetables into a format that's a little easier to read, and while the LIRR isn't terrible (I'm looking at you New Jersey Transit!), there's certainly room for improvement. 

Metro-North, the LIRR's sister, has already revamped their timetables to make them much more elegant and simpler and because I'm fond of their design, and that is now the generally the style I use when I'm making example timetables for the site (yup, their coming, stay tuned!!!!!!!!).

I'm still in the process of making my new timetables, but I wanted to get this post out, so I decided to borrow The LIRR Today's timetables for this photo, but this gives you a pretty good rough estimate about what it will look like for my secret project 👀

TrainTime

TrainTime, ahh, TrainTime, the MTA's online app trip-planning tool and a railfanner's BFF (nah, the Radar is, but this is second)

To be honest, I think that this is one of those few things that the LIRR really put all of their effort into and therefore, it came out as a very clean, published, application with very few issues.

Commenting on the site with Disqus

Most pages on our site allow you to leave comments using Disqus. Commenting on our site is encouraged and welcomed, as long as you don't abuse it.

We use Disqus, a well-regarded website comment platform, and comment forms are located at the bottom of each page so if you have any questions, don't forget to comment!

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Now, unfortunately, you cannot comment on a post from the direct site link, you must click on the post and then scroll down, I think this is somewhat annoying as many people most likely read the post from the direct site if they have it in their bookmarks but you must just click on the title.

Example shown below:

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!

LIRR announces November/Winter timetables with little upgrades.

Recently, the Long Island Rail Road announced it's winter timetables, lasting until March 2nd. I was hopeful that they'd add some extra trains around the holiday season, although so far I think it's safe to say that that is a myth. It turns out that they made very few changes to the schedules, many of them being tweaks to the train times. 

The other main change, though, is that the updated schedule enables Amtrak to take one of it's four tunnels out-of-service as they fix damage from storm surge flooding caused by Superstorm Sandy in 2012! Interestingly, there will be no changes to weekend service, and I'm going to list below a couple of the more major changes the LIRR highlighted.

The LIRR announced a couple of days ago that it’s new fall timetables will take effect right after Labor Day on 9/3. As a Long Islander myself, these new timetables genuinely pleasantly-surprised me! I did not expect the LIRR to announce these new timetables so early, neither did I expect them to make such significant changes to off-peak service. 

• Remember that odd 7:48 AM departure from Island Park to Atlantic Terminal? It will now leave at 7:21 AM and arrive at 8:12 AM

• The 7:54 AM from Long Beach will depart at 7:41, drop Kew Gardens, and now run to Grand Central

• The 8:02 AM from Long Beach will now drop Rosedale, Laurelton, and Locust Manor and instead add Kew Gardens.

• The 4:26 PM from Port Jefferson to Jamaica will depart at 4:49 PM, with the LIRR making this change to allow for a later westbound option for Stony Brook students.

• The 8:19 AM electric-run from Jamaica to Hunterspoint Avenue will no longer run, I mean at least we got it for a little while.

I'd also like to mention that the LIRR stated that midday service between Ronkonkoma & Greenport will resume on Monday, November 11, and through November 24, buses will replace all trains between Riverhead and Greenport as rail & switch equipment work moves eastward, and finally, on Monday, November 25, full service to Greenport will resume.

Now, this game as a great shock to me. I was really hoping that the LIRR would at least do something about the off-peak crowding problems that typically happen around the holidays, but, no, the LIRR did basically nothing about this besides shifting all off-peak trains on the busier branches to Penn Station, which was a major bonus. I really think they should add additional trains on Thanksgiving, and some of the busier weekends in December as people flock to the city for popular Christmas events and shopping such as The Radio City Rockettes, SantaCon, among many other things as last year dozens train loads exceeded 100 percent!

The @mta / @lirr is basically begging people to stop taking the train on Saturdays for $19.50-30.50 round trip per person and instead drive to Manhattan for the bargain price of $15 per personal vehicle because they cannot/will not increase train sizes or frequency #lirr pic.twitter.com/lzZ1NHHK7S

— Googuls (@Googuls) December 9, 2023

    

I will elaborate on this whole situation in an upcoming post, but I do think that the LIRR needs to understand that they must switch over to off-peak ridership as their main focus. Also, everyone, have a good Halloween tomorrow and I'll see you in November!