LIRR schedule changes due to Grand Central Madison created nightmarish rides

Service changes are coming to the Long Island Railroad following a complex deployment involving Grand Central Madison that resulted in several days of chaotic commuting.

At Jamaica Station on Thursday night, passengers spoke of overcrowded platforms and trains, as well as confusion when trying to transfer.

“They actually changed my route three times, resulting in people racing up and down escalators and stairs and crowding onto platforms,” ​​said commuter John O’Hara, who filmed people scrambling to get to change paths.

Needless to say, this was not the most pleasant way to end a long day at work.

“Things got worse than I’ve ever seen in 30 years of commuting,” Ohara said.

New crowds at the transfer hub and elsewhere along the LIRR lines are one of the growing problems associated with the $11 billion Grand Central Madison opening and the historic train line expansion to Grand Central Station.

“I’m not going to tell you that the first week wasn’t bumpy. The first week was bumpy, no doubt about it,” said LIRR Acting President Cathy Rinaldi. “We try to respond to what we see.”

She said the overcrowding was due to new timetables that cut trains to Pennsylvania Station and Brooklyn. Rinaldi acknowledged that her team reduced the number of cars on some trains based on data analysis. The transit officials thought that many of these people would want to go to Central Station.

“I don’t think it’s a miscalculation – it was based on data. The latest data is even more about Grand Central Madison,” Rinaldi said.

Romney Smith reports commuter dissatisfaction with the new Grand Central Madison station.

Engineers monitor the state of the crowd in real time and have made the following changes:

• The 7:07 am bus from Jamaica to Brooklyn increased from eight to 10 vehicles.
• At 7:28 am, the number of cars from Ronkonkoma to Pennsylvania Station also increased from eight to ten.
• Port Washington branch to receive longer trains next week
• Atlantic Terminal shuttle increase from every 12 minutes to every 10 minutes.

While some enjoyed the new schedule, saying it cut them significant commute times, for others the changes made commuting more difficult.

Jerry Bringmann of the LIRR Drivers’ Council said that while each vehicle added can accommodate 100 additional riders, no one should expect a change overnight – not after a schedule overhaul that eliminated temporary layovers in Jamaica.

“This should go on for a month or so. It’s only the fourth day,” Bringmann said.

However, Rinaldi said she was “very confident” in the service’s improvement in the second week.

“We will have more shuttle flights, we will have longer trains – the busiest trains will be longer,” she said.