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LIRR And MNRR Random Thoughts Thread


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1 hour ago, QM1to6Ave said:

That's so funny...I know a few folks who live in WH and commute to the city (or at least they did before covid), so i assumed their trains were full of working professionals 

The question is did they actually take the WH branch or did they drive over to the more frequent service on the Main Line, Babylon Branch or Hempstead Branch?

The same thing with Oyster Bay. Based on the areas it serves (Glen Cove is technically a city, Oyster Bay is a fairly dense village), it should have higher ridership, but people drive over to the Main Line or Port Washington Branch for the higher frequency and direct service to Penn Station. 

Edited by checkmatechamp13
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1 hour ago, checkmatechamp13 said:

The question is did they actually take the WH branch or did they drive over to the more frequent service on the Main Line, Babylon Branch or Hempstead Branch?

The same thing with Oyster Bay. Based on the areas it serves (Glen Cove is technically a city, Oyster Bay is a fairly dense village), it should have higher ridership, but people drive over to the Main Line or Port Washington Branch for the higher frequency and direct service to Penn Station. 

Ahh, excellent question. I'm going to ask them and find out lol

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I went on Google and saw that if you’re at West Hempstead proper, it’s actually faster to drive to Mineola and get a Main Line train straight to Penn from there, as opposed to taking three trains from WH (change at Jamaica *and* Valley Stream).

Also if you’re closer to the Valley Stream end of the WH branch, Google suggests driving to Lynwood to get a Babylon or Long Beach train to get to Penn.

No wonder the WH line has no ridership.

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24 minutes ago, paulrivera said:

I went on Google and saw that if you’re at West Hempstead proper, it’s actually faster to drive to Mineola and get a Main Line train straight to Penn from there, as opposed to taking three trains from WH (change at Jamaica *and* Valley Stream).

Also if you’re closer to the Valley Stream end of the WH branch, Google suggests driving to Lynwood to get a Babylon or Long Beach train to get to Penn.

No wonder the WH line has no ridership.

IIRC the West Hempstead line is the remaining part of an original LIRR route. Line ran from Jamaica to Mineola, turning south to Country Life on the Hempstead branch and ran south to Valley Stream and back north to Jamaica. I have a friend who lives in Malverne and has never used the line in 20+ years. He either drives to Lynbrook or the Hempstead branch because many Babylon trains bypass Valley Stream completely. Said that the Franklin Shuttle puts the West Hempstead branch to shame. I know that the line is always on the LIRR chopping block and is basically a shuttle service itself most of the time. I’ve never been on the line but if the local residents don’t think much of it it’s future isn’t too bright, IMO. Of course if it’s closure is mentioned the residents and politicians will protest. That’s guaranteed. My take. Carry on.

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11 hours ago, paulrivera said:

I went on Google and saw that if you’re at West Hempstead proper, it’s actually faster to drive to Mineola and get a Main Line train straight to Penn from there, as opposed to taking three trains from WH (change at Jamaica *and* Valley Stream).

Also if you’re closer to the Valley Stream end of the WH branch, Google suggests driving to Lynwood to get a Babylon or Long Beach train to get to Penn.

No wonder the WH line has no ridership.

 

10 hours ago, Trainmaster5 said:

IIRC the West Hempstead line is the remaining part of an original LIRR route. Line ran from Jamaica to Mineola, turning south to Country Life on the Hempstead branch and ran south to Valley Stream and back north to Jamaica. I have a friend who lives in Malverne and has never used the line in 20+ years. He either drives to Lynbrook or the Hempstead branch because many Babylon trains bypass Valley Stream completely. Said that the Franklin Shuttle puts the West Hempstead branch to shame. I know that the line is always on the LIRR chopping block and is basically a shuttle service itself most of the time. I’ve never been on the line but if the local residents don’t think much of it it’s future isn’t too bright, IMO. Of course if it’s closure is mentioned the residents and politicians will protest. That’s guaranteed. My take. Carry on.

The branch runs every two hours M-F, of course no one uses it.

IIRC the only useful proposal I've seen for it is that the RPA wants to sever it from the LIRR, and knit it with the Oyster Bay Branch via street running tracks to create a sort of cross-island light rail line from Green Acres to Oyster Bay.

Edited by bobtehpanda
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3 hours ago, bobtehpanda said:

 

The branch runs every two hours M-F, of course no one uses it.

IIRC the only useful proposal I've seen for it is that the RPA wants to sever it from the LIRR, and knit it with the Oyster Bay Branch via street running tracks to create a sort of cross-island light rail line from Green Acres to Oyster Bay.

Now I know they're not serious about that. If they were, they'd be trying to avoid this as much as possible, especially in Mineola and the Village of Hempstead.

Hell, the way they describe the quality of existing services is misleading. Sure, they're infrequent, but there's no deeper dive into why. Worse, they somehow manage to imply that heavy rail is noisy because it's heavy, as opposed to the use of steel rails and wheels (which the proposal won't change) or the fact that the Oyster Bay Branch almost never uses electric trains due to a lack of electrification past East Williston.

That's not to say that the idea is absolutely meritless, but they don't do a particularly good job of selling it with bad use of terminology, being really cheap, and failing to look into what elements are hampering existing service (the West Hempstead Branch in particular isn't only being hampered by the short reach or piss-poor frequency, though they certainly don't help).

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17 hours ago, Lex said:

Now I know they're not serious about that. If they were, they'd be trying to avoid this as much as possible, especially in Mineola and the Village of Hempstead.

Hell, the way they describe the quality of existing services is misleading. Sure, they're infrequent, but there's no deeper dive into why. Worse, they somehow manage to imply that heavy rail is noisy because it's heavy, as opposed to the use of steel rails and wheels (which the proposal won't change) or the fact that the Oyster Bay Branch almost never uses electric trains due to a lack of electrification past East Williston.

That's not to say that the idea is absolutely meritless, but they don't do a particularly good job of selling it with bad use of terminology, being really cheap, and failing to look into what elements are hampering existing service (the West Hempstead Branch in particular isn't only being hampered by the short reach or piss-poor frequency, though they certainly don't help).

Disclaimer: not a Long Islander

Heavy rail to light rail is not the worst idea in the world. We even have our own examples around the area like HBLR or the River Line. It generally solves the problem of "legacy heavy rail often doesn't go where people go", and Long Island's commercial and office hubs pretty much fit that description to a T.

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6 hours ago, bobtehpanda said:

Disclaimer: not a Long Islander

Heavy rail to light rail is not the worst idea in the world. We even have our own examples around the area like HBLR or the River Line. It generally solves the problem of "legacy heavy rail often doesn't go where people go", and Long Island's commercial and office hubs pretty much fit that description to a T.

I'm not saying that the conversion is an inherently bad idea. I'm saying that they're not doing a good job of selling the concept, particularly where constraints are concerned. As far as I'm concerned, if they were serious about it, they'd release a more detailed plan, such as what to do about single-tracking and keeping trains moving.

For the record, I'm not from Nassau, either, but having seen things either in videos or up close, I can't simply approve of it, particularly since we're talking about one of the RPA's proposals.

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14 hours ago, Lex said:

I'm not saying that the conversion is an inherently bad idea. I'm saying that they're not doing a good job of selling the concept, particularly where constraints are concerned. As far as I'm concerned, if they were serious about it, they'd release a more detailed plan, such as what to do about single-tracking and keeping trains moving.

For the record, I'm not from Nassau, either, but having seen things either in videos or up close, I can't simply approve of it, particularly since we're talking about one of the RPA's proposals.

Yeah the RPA honestly produces a lot of pretty presentations but once you look behind the curtains it all seems a bit thin.

better selling point would be to compare it with something that actually exists. The RiverLine is in Trenton and runs along mostly old rail right of way but on downtown streets where it would be advantageous to get closer to destinations like residents and jobs. And even with single tracking they've built strategic overtaking points so that service runs every 15 minutes, which would be way more useful than anything either Oyster Bay or West Hempstead is running right now. In this case it might even be an easier sell than the River Line, since I don't think there are freight customers along either Oyster Bay or WH.

I don't know that you'd want to run it as one line through Hempstead though. You'd probably get more value running them as separate lines hooking Hempstead and NCC and RFM.

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I took the West Hempstead Branch for the first time ever today. They're running trains this weekend to/from Jamaica, running express between Jamaica and Westwood along the Atlantic Branch (so via Rosedale, Laurelton, and Locust Manor instead of via St Albans). 

I think I was the only person on the entire train until Malverne. A few people got on, and then some more at Westwood. I'm pretty sure everyone there could have fit on one train and there would have been space for social distancing. I think the engineer was surprised to see me on when I got on at West Hempstead, lol. 

Anyways, I think that what they're doing this weekend (Jamaica to West Hempstead) should be a permanent thing. There's no layups on either end and the same bi-hourly headway can be achieved with decent layover on each end. Plus better connections at Jamaica vs. Valley stream. 

Edited by BM5 via Woodhaven
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20 hours ago, BM5 via Woodhaven said:

I took the West Hempstead Branch for the first time ever today. They're running trains this weekend to/from Jamaica, running express between Jamaica and Westwood along the Atlantic Branch (so via Rosedale, Laurelton, and Locust Manor instead of via St Albans). 

I think I was the only person on the entire train until Malverne. A few people got on, and then some more at Westwood. I'm pretty sure everyone there could have fit on one train and there would have been space for social distancing. I think the engineer was surprised to see me on when I got on at West Hempstead, lol. 

Anyways, I think that what they're doing this weekend (Jamaica to West Hempstead) should be a permanent thing. There's no layups on either end and the same bi-hourly headway can be achieved with decent layover on each end. Plus better connections at Jamaica vs. Valley stream. 

Been saying for years the LIRR has had numerous opportunities to implement alternative service patterns to the benefit of riders, but they're so laser-focused on Penn Station and the Main Line that they refuse to consider the commutes of non-Penn, non-ML riders.

Sadly it's just one of many chapters in the book of LIRR complacency; been wondering whatever happened to that plan to bring back the Elmhurst stop on the PW branch.  Nearly a decade since the idea was publicly announced and no sign of any progress yet. 

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2 minutes ago, R10 2952 said:

Been saying for years the LIRR has had numerous opportunities to implement alternative service patterns to the benefit of riders, but they're so laser-focused on Penn Station and the Main Line that they refuse to consider the commutes of non-Penn, non-ML riders.

Sadly it's just one of many chapters in the book of LIRR complacency; been wondering whatever happened to that plan to bring back the Elmhurst stop on the PW branch.  Nearly a decade since the idea was publicly announced and no sign of any progress yet. 

Funding was cut to pay for the black hole that is East Side Access.

It's also very silly, because we cut funding for that, but we are simultaneously building an Elmont station that nobody asked for.

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On 3/23/2021 at 6:42 PM, checkmatechamp13 said:

The question is did they actually take the WH branch or did they drive over to the more frequent service on the Main Line, Babylon Branch or Hempstead Branch?

The same thing with Oyster Bay. Based on the areas it serves (Glen Cove is technically a city, Oyster Bay is a fairly dense village), it should have higher ridership, but people drive over to the Main Line or Port Washington Branch for the higher frequency and direct service to Penn Station. 

The most silly example is the PJ line. 

It takes double the time, over an hour longer, to travel from Stony Brook to Penn Station, than it does from Ronkonkoma, even though they are more or less directly north/south from each other. And this is because the transfer at Huntington sucks, the line isn't double tracked, and the diesels are slow and unreliable.

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19 minutes ago, bobtehpanda said:

Funding was cut to pay for the black hole that is East Side Access.

It's also very silly, because we cut funding for that, but we are simultaneously building an Elmont station that nobody asked for.

Disappointed but not surprised.  Confirms a lot of suspicions I've already had that their financial addiction to ESA would result in cutbacks to other projects.

15 minutes ago, bobtehpanda said:

The most silly example is the PJ line. 

It takes double the time, over an hour longer, to travel from Stony Brook to Penn Station, than it does from Ronkonkoma, even though they are more or less directly north/south from each other. And this is because the transfer at Huntington sucks, the line isn't double tracked, and the diesels are slow and unreliable.

The wait at Huntington is the main reason that when I'd go out to visit people in Port Jefferson several years back, I took the rush-hour specials from LIC Terminal, so I could avoid waiting 45 minutes in the cold on that overcrowded platform.  Just goes to show how ass-backwards the LIRR is, that the only direct trains to the end of the line where 2-3 special trippers that almost nobody knew about, from the least utilized terminal in the City Zone.

Edited by R10 2952
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25 minutes ago, R10 2952 said:

Disappointed but not surprised.  Confirms a lot of suspicions I've already had that their financial addiction to ESA would result in cutbacks to other projects.

Also keep in mind that the end result of the Cuomo MTA audit and reorganization was somehow to conclude that MTACC was an example of successful consolidation.

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23 minutes ago, bobtehpanda said:

Also keep in mind that the end result of the Cuomo MTA audit and reorganization was somehow to conclude that MTACC was an example of successful consolidation.

I mean, when you're a micromanager...

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6 hours ago, GojiMet86 said:

Gov. Cuomo is holding a press conference today; he says all major construction for East Side Access is done.

I hope it is.

My concern is that he's jumping the gun just to make himself look good.

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14 minutes ago, Lex said:

I hope it is.

My concern is that he's jumping the gun just to make himself look good.

It's still gonna take a year and a half to get all the electrical stuff wired and to get all the crews certified on the new trackage, and he knows it. December 2022 has been the target date for a while now.

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The track geometry car from the NYC Subway actually ran inside of ESA already, it got there via Linden Yard connection between the subway and the Bay Ridge Branch. There was footage all over youtube when it happened. A train actually traveling inside of ESA is a huge milestone. I'm surprised nobody posted it on here when it happened.

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