NEW YORK — Increased service to Penn Station and more direct service to Brooklyn’s Atlantic Terminal are part of changes to the Long Island Rail Road schedule planned for Sept. 5, the LIRR announced on Friday.
Those changes address two leading concerns voiced by passengers in the wake of the February schedule makeover that accompanied the opening of Grand Central Madison [see “LIRR launches expanded schedules …,” Trains News Wire, Feb. 27, 2023].
One was that the new schedules did not adequately address demand for Penn Station service; the other was that passengers who had previously enjoyed direct service to Atlantic Terminal were not happy with a change that required a transfer at Jamaica, even if service between Jamaica and Atlantic Terminal was more frequent. The LIRR had made several changes since February to add trains and increase capacity to Penn Station [see “Long Island Rail Road to switch four trains …,” News Wire, March 10, 2023].
“We have made many adjustments to our schedules since GCM service was launched in February to best accommodate ridership patterns we were seeing as quickly as possible,” LIRR Interim President and Metro-North Railroad President Catherine Rinaldi said in a press release. “Our September schedule is based on ridership data, real-time observations, and input from customers, building upon the earlier schedule adjustments and responding to many of the concerns that we have been hearing consistently from our customers. The opening of Grand Central Madison was a historic milestone for the LIRR, and we will keep monitoring the data to identify future improvements where possible.”
Features of the new schedule include through trains to Brooklyn on the Far Rockaway, Long Beach, Hempstead, and Huntington branches, and additional stops on those trains to reflect data on where Brooklyn riders originate. There will also be additional morning express service on the Huntington and Ronkonkoma branches.
More details are available in the press release cited above. Full schedules will be available in August on the MTA website.
What? Not everyone wants to go uptown?