LIRR Corona Virus COVID19 Service Disruptions

[Jeff Smith]

3/26: https://new.mta.info/precautions-against-coronavirus

LIRR
Weekday capacity on the Long Island Rail Road will be reduced by about 68%. We'll be running around 500 trains each day, compared to more than 740 trains on a usual weekday.

We’ll have crews and equipment on standby in case we need to supplement service.

[Head-end View]

Construction was ongoing as usual today at the School St. crossing in Westbury.

[Kelly&Kelly]

An executive order by The Governour has ordered all constitution statewide stopped, except "essential" work which includes all transportation and government construction and maintience. For now, all capital work and railroad construction will continue as long as contractors and employees concur.

[Jeff Smith]

https://new.mta.info/coronavirus/lirr-service

Updated April 1, 2020

We're here to provide all-day service for health-care workers, first responders, and other essential employees. Everyone else should stay home.

We’re operating the MTA Essential Service Plan until further notice.

All LIRR ticket counters are closed. We are also no longer taking cash onboard trains. You can still use cash at ticket vending machines, or you can use the MTA eTix app.



Service details for Thursday, April 2
We're running half-hourly or hourly service on most branches, with strategically added trains during peak travel times.

Additional weekday trains we’re running
Morning peak
5 a.m. train from Babylon, all local stops to Lynbrook, Jamaica, Woodside, arriving at Penn at 6:16 a.m.
5 a.m train from Ronkonkoma, all local stops to Mineola, Jamaica, Woodside, arriving at Penn at 6:21 a.m.
5:11 a.m. train from Ronkonkoma, all local stops to Hicksville, Mineola, Jamaica, arriving at Penn at 6:30 a.m.
5:13 a.m. train from Babylon, all local stops to Lynbrook, Jamaica, Woodside, arriving at Penn at 6:28 a.m.
6 a.m. train from Port Jefferson, all local stops to Mineola, Jamaica, arriving at Penn at 7:52 a.m.
6:51 a.m. train from Oyster Bay, all local stops to Mineola, Jamaica, arriving at Penn at 8:10 a.m.
Evening peak
2:05 p.m. train from Penn Station to Babylon, stopping at Woodside, Jamaica, Lynbrook, all local stops to Babylon, arriving at 3:21 p.m.
2:38 p.m. train from Penn Station to Ronkonkoma, stopping at Woodside, Jamaica, Mineola, Hicksville and all local stops to Ronkonkoma, arriving at 4:02 p.m.
5:07 p.m. train from Penn Station to Port Jefferson, stopping at Jamaica, Mineola and all local stops to Port Jefferson (arriving at 6:53 p.m.).
5:31 p.m. train from Penn Station to Oyster Bay, stopping at Jamaica, Mineola and all local stops to Oyster Bay (arriving at 6:46 p.m.).
6:08 p.m. train from Penn Station to Babylon, stopping at Woodside, Jamaica, Lynbrook, all local stops to Babylon, arriving at 7:24 p.m.
6:38 p.m. train from Penn Station to Ronkonkoma, stopping at Woodside, Jamaica, Mineola, and all local stops to Ronkonkoma, arriving at 8:02 p.m.

[Kelly&Kelly]

In a drastic Friday policy change, the MTA is providing LIRR conductors and collectors with N95 masks.

[ConstanceR46]

it's a disgrace that this didn't happen sooner - i hope the unions come down hard on the guys making that decision after all this is over

[MACTRAXX]

Everyone:

The LIRR has announced changes to Essential Service effective Monday May 18:
http://web.mta.info/supplemental/lirr/m ... update.htm

There are changes to Ronkonkoma and Montauk Branch timetables listed.
All of these schedules are in effect daily...

This is traditionally about when the LIRR's Summer Timetable seasonal changes
would normally take effect. With Memorial Day just 8 days away as of this post it
will be interesting to note if there is any increase in ridership with good weather.

Stay-at-home has been extended on LI until Saturday June 13...MACTRAXX

[Maverickstation1]

With the Essential Service plan in place, all afternoon service to Montauk and Greenport has ended, as the Essential Service plan are the weekend schedules for East End services.

I wonder how many may show up at Penn on Thursday, or Friday. or even HPA loving for a train that won't come.

Ken

[gamer4616]

New weekday schedules are effective June 8th. It will be a regular weekday schedule with several trains canceled. This will include no south fork connection, friday extra to greenport, and no cannonball.

[MACTRAXX]

Everyone: With LIRR ridership remaining consistently low under regular weekday schedules new timetables
with service cutbacks are going into effect March 8, 2021. These timetables are posted and now available:
http://web.mta.info/supplemental/lirr/n ... 8-2021.htm

Weekday service under the new March 8 timetables look to be somewhat similar to what was operated on
weekdays under the 2020 Essential Service Plan. This looks to be now unfortunately necessary with ridership
averaging about 25% of normal weekday levels with the ongoing pandemic.

Let's hope that these LIRR service cuts turn out to be temporary and not permanent...MACTRAXX

[njtmnrrbuff]

I'm sure that many of the cuts will be temporary. We still aren't finished with dealing with the pandemic yet and it will take a while until LIRR gets close to it's pre-covid ridership back. Maybe many of the trains that were cut from the electric only lines will be restored. As for the diesel lines, I could see many of those trains being restored on the Montauk Line, including the express trains. I'm not sure about the Oyster Bay Branch as those trains don't see high enough ridership and it was like that during pre-covid times. The Pt. Jefferson diesel stretch probably doesn't have high enough ridership given the fact that the line isn't the fastest. I saw that the weekend after 3/8/21, LIRR will run shuttle trains between Huntington and Pt. Jefferson and back every other hour. That may pretty fine for those trains. I may be riding the dieselized stretch of the Pt. Jefferson Line this weekend. Remember, there is still the third track project happening on the Main Line between Floral Park and Hicksville and even if we weren't dealing with this pandemic, the LIRR would probably still be having many track outages causing trains to be temporarily pulled from the schedule.

[Head-end View]

Some day when this pandemic is over it will be interesting to see how close LIRR gets to the old ridership numbers from before the pandemic. I predict that a certain percentage of businesses and employees will continue to work from home at least part of the time, having found that this works well for them. How large a percentage remains to be seen. But I'm guessing the daily ridership will only get back to about 85% of what it used to be. That might actually be a good thing in some ways as the rush-hour trains will be less crowded.

It will be really ironic if the numbers never get back to 100% of what they were before, after the MTA spends billions of dollars to double-track the Ronkonkoma service and triple-track from Floral Park to Hicksville. But at least there will be no more grade-crossing accidents on that busy ten mile stretch.

[photobug56]

This project has been badly needed for decades. It's not just about capacity. It is about the elimination of grade crossings in such high density territory, of course, noise elimination. The constant accidents and deaths and traffic stops and holdups for accident investigations. It ought to be a much smoother operation going forward, though knowing LIRR, who knows. They have an amazing ability to pull chaos out of calm, and have a long record of equipment breakdowns of track, signals, switches and rolling stock. Their M9's MIGHT some day finish being delivered, to some day be followed by the mythical M9A's, we may someday see new diesel locos and cars (carefully designed to not fit into the ESA GCT tunnels), but no one seems to have any idea when, we may someday even have enough working rolling stock for diesel country, but that seems unlikely.

[Head-end View]

They have an amazing ability to pull chaos out of calm

That's a great line that I could apply to a lot of situations, organizations and people I know. Mind if I quote you?

[Kelly&Kelly]

The more realistic and confidential projections by the MTA see a ridership return of 65-70% during the next 5 years. Travel to pre-shutdown levels isn't expected for 15 - 15 years, assuming no further denigration of the currency and business environment. There are even models with different projections depending on national and state political elections outcome and immigration trends.

Represented employee furloughs are being delayed until/unless wide-scale long-term layoffs occur in private market segments. There will be job loss through attrition as new so-called "pandemic related" methods of fare collection are slowly implemented. Non-represented employee layoffs may occur sooner, based on political trends and monetary inflation.

Expect a pause in the funding of new capital projects, with the exception of East River Tunnel and equipment replacement which will move forward rather quickly.