As if Long Island Rail Road riders weren’t already frustrated with the train service on a normal day.
LIRR riders wait in Penn Station during massive delays on Monday (AP)
Commuters endured significant delays for the second day as the railroad works to fix the damage from a switching station fire that resulted in a four-hour service suspension Monday near the Jamaica station, one of the system’s main hubs.
The LIRR, the nation’s largest commuter railroad, canceled 33 westbound morning trains during the peak rush hour commute Tuesday.
On the Far Rockaway branch, there’s no eastbound service from Jamaica, Queens, to Locust Manor, Laurelton and Rosedale. There’s also no service between West Hempstead and Valley Stream and no westbound service between St. Albans and Jamaica.
Bus service will replace those trains.
“They should have more up-to-date systems in place but what are you going to do?” Accountant Sophia Bentley asked an Associated Press reporter while waiting for an LIRR train. “I’m going to get on the next one that gets here. Whenever I get one, I get one.”
The railroad says it could take several days to repair the problem, which started after an electrical fire broke out in a switching tower. “It’s a very tedious and exacting job that needs to be done,” said LIRR spokesman Mike Charles.
The equipment that was damaged is a machine that dates back to the 1920s. “We’re due to change to a computer system in the fall,” Charles said.
The $60 million project will be completed over the course of two weekends. He added that it was too early to tell the estimated cost of the damage the fire caused.
Elected officials, already critical of the controversial MTA decisions aimed at closing a massive budget gap, saw the chaos resulting from the delays as evidence of mismanagement.
“While Long Islanders are being slammed by the MTA tax, service cuts, and rate hikes the fact that the LIRR switching station operates in the framework of pre-World War I technology is astounding and unbearable,” Suffolk County Legis. Wayne Horsley (D-Babylon) said in a statement. “With constant reports of pension and disability benefit abuse this is just another sorry example of poor oversight and planning on the part of the MTA and LIRR.”
The Port Washington Branch, the only one of the LIRR’s 11 lines that does not pass through Jamaica, is operating on a normal schedule, and trains are leaving Brooklyn and Penn Station.
The Tuesday evening eastbound commute is expected to be as snarled as it was on Monday evening. There are expected to be 60 percent of the usual 120 trains leaving Penn Station again. Details can be found here.
On top of the equipment-related delays, service was also suspended for nearly an hour on the Ronkokoma branch after a train struck a woman east of Farmingdale shortly after 9 p.m. The victim, whose identity was not released, was taken to a hospital in critical condition.
With Associated Press
