Port Washington Yard Reconfiguration

Port Washington station sits at the very eastern tip of the Port Washington Branch, about 18 miles east of Long Island City.  With the completion of East Side Access in 2019, the LIRR will be able to run more trains along the Port Washington Branch (among others).  However, the LIRR is going to need to do some track expansions on the east end of operations to allow more trains to run along the branch.  Projects like the Colonial Road Improvement Project and the Port Washington Yard Reconfiguration is expected to add lots of capacity along the branch.

The Port Washington Yard Reconfiguration project plans to extend two of the station's yard tracks (either tracks 6 and 7 or 7 and 8) enough to fit 18 more cars at the station.  Those 18 cars would be enough to add storage for 2 more trains at the station.

Here's a diagram of the station configuration as it is today.  You can see the tracks they are trying to extend are on the east/south side of the station:

Now in order for this project to happen, the LIRR is going to need to acquire a small piece of that parking lot on the east side of the station that would be in the way.  The work would cause the loss of approximately 40 parking spaces from that lot, but the LIRR says that re-striping the lot there (repainting all the lines) to manage the space more efficiently could recover all of those parking spots, so there would be no net loss in parking spaces.

However, NIMBYism is rearing its ugly head.  The parking lot's owner, the Town of North Hempstead, says they do not want to sell the 18-by-439-foot parcel of asphalt to the LIRR.

And the NIMBYism that's growing over this project is amazing.  Here are some excerpts from a Newsday artcile released Wednesday on the plan:

...De Giorgio, a Republican who announced her bid for supervisor last month, said the proposals amount to creating an unsightly storage yard in Port Washington.

"The idea of storing these massive trains, adding two storage tracks to Port Washington, will completely ruin the character of the town," she said. "This is creating a train depot in Port Washington..."

"If we're going to give up even 40, there's got to be a compelling reason, something on the other side that is going to get us better service," Schwartz said. "I'm not convinced at this point."

To be honest, the NIMBY opposition over this is completely idiotic. These people are opposed to allowing the LIRR to operate more trains into the city!  Most people (myself included) would love more service!  Port Washington wants less!  Watch them close, they'll be the very ones complaining once ESA opens that their trains are too crowded and that they demand more service.  So typical.

But, luckily, there is another option for the LIRR.  They can extend the yard tracks on the west side of the station (so extend track 1 and build a track 0).  However, since the yard is less developed on the west side and the parking lot is closer, this alternate will require the destruction of 140 parking spaces and no amount of re-striping is going to recover that many spaces.

BUT the parking lot on the west side of the station is operated by the LIRR, so they would not need the cooperation of the town to get this done.

So the bottom line is this:  the project is going to get done no matter what.  Either the town of North Hempstead and the Port Washington NIMBYs cooperate and there is no net loss in parking spaces, or the LIRR just gives the residents of Port Washington the proverbial finger and tears up its own parking lot to get the job done at the cost of 140 parking spaces.

The NIMBY's won't win on this one.  So it's either cooperate for the greater good or get screwed.  End of story.