Track Calling Patterns at Penn Station

For those who travel eastbound from Penn Station at any point, the ritual LIRR riders follow is likely well known.  You stand in the concourse, keep your eyes glued to the giant departure board, then, all of a sudden and without rhyme or reason, the track number for your train is posted, and you, along with hundreds of others, scurry towards the staircase that will lead to the respective track.

The giant departure board in the LIRR concourse in Penn Station. (Photo credit: The LIRR Today on Flickr)

NJTransit's departure board at Hoboken Terminal, with
track numbers listed for trains that depart hours
after this photo was taken.  (The LIRR Today)

Every rider is familiar with the process, but most riders are not necessarily happy with it.  On many occasions, people reference places like Grand Central Terminal and Hoboken Terminal, and they point out how at those stations, Metro-North and NJTransit manage to have track numbers posted hours before departure, but at New York Penn we have to suffer through this routine.  It boils down to the fact that operations at Grand Central and Hoboken are much more simplified.  There is a lot more breathing room at Grand Central and Hoboken, so the railroads can have more consistent departure tracks and they can be alright with posting them hours in advance. 

However, you might know by this point that New York Penn Station, on the other hand, is a madhouse.  Basically, there are just so many trains for so few tracks, there is no sure way for the railroads to know what train will depart from what track until literally a couple minutes before departure.  With trains coming in from places as close as Rahway or Jamaica, to trains arriving from places as far away as Miami, New Orleans, or Chicago, there are a lot of trains that the platforms at Penn Station see on any given day, and not all of them could be considered the most punctual.  One late-arriving Long Distance train in the middle of rush hour can result in tons of last-minute changes and shuffleings.

For these reasons, the ushers at New York Penn are reluctant to post track numbers for trains any sooner than 5-10 minutes before the train is set to depart.  There are many different patterns and occasions one can observe if you travel frequently enough and know what to look for, but the general rule of thumb is that tracks are typically posted about five minutes before departure, however there are many exceptions to that rule.

At Penn Station, the ushers keep a close eye on crowding in the concourses and around the departure boards.  If they notice that there are large crowds forming (particularly following special events like Rangers or Knicks games at MSG) they will tend to post a bunch of track numbers early.  The idea behind that move is they figure that once the track number is posted, all the people looking for that train will go down to the platform.  And even if the train is not there when the number is posed, which is sometimes the case, if there are people waiting for the train on the platform, there are less people crowding the concourses upstairs.  It's a pretty effective way to thin the crowds in a hurry, since people will undoubtly go wait down on the platform for the train once they post the track.

However, one of the major disadvantages of posting the track numbers close to departure time is the fact that people feel rushed.  They think that since the train is going to leave so soon, the best thing for them to do is to rush straight down the stairs and straight into the first open door they see, that way the train won't leave without them.  People also think that if they don't immediately dive into the first open door they see, and if they hesitate even for the slightest second, they will not have the chance of getting a seat.  These two reasons tend to lead to a fairly uneven load distribution at times for trains leaving Penn Station.  Frequently one can see very heavy loads in the first couple of cars, since most people wait in the LIRR's 7th Avenue Concourse at the head end of the train and use those staircases down.  Most of those people think along the lines of one of the two things I mentioned above (either they believe the train will leave without them or they think that if they hesitate, even for a second, all of the seats will fill up) will tend to concentrate in the first two or three cars of the train by the staircases.  One can also see marginally heavier loads by the remaining staircases from the West End and Central Concourses, and then loads in the rest of the train away from the concourses can end up being pretty light.

One of the smaller departure screens at Penn Station,
with track numbers for trains leaving nearly 11 minutes
from the time the photo was taken posted.
(Photo credit: The LIRR Today on Flickr)

However, during my extended stay at Penn Station last week, (the same one I mentioned in Friday's Middleseataphobia post), I noticed that the ushers appeared to post the track numbers for quite a few trains at once.  For example, things would be going along as normal, and then all of a sudden, the track numbers for four or five trains would suddenly pop up and people would start scurrying towards the staircases.  And some of the tracks they posted were for trains that wouldn't be leaving for another 10-12 minutes in many cases.  If you look at the big departure board in the photo at the beginning of this post or the screen in the image to the right, you'll notice that there are track numbers posted for trains that will leave 10 minutes from the time the photo was taken.  And after conferring with some others on this, it appears that this has been going on for a few weeks now.

Posting lots of track numbers earlier on accomplishes a couple good things.  First off, it loosens up the concourse like I said above, and during the peak of the peak, that is pretty advantageous.  And if they do end up posting track numbers in advance, what can often happen at times is the people will get down to the platforms before the train arrives.  And this can be seen as a "blessing in disguise" of sorts.  If people come down the stairs before the train arrives, they will not feel as rushed, since how can the train leave without them if the train itself hasn't even made it to the station yet?  This also does a good job of discouraging the uneven loading one can frequently see on trains leaving Penn Station.  When people get to the bottom of the stairs and notice that the train hasn't gotten to the station yet, they are more inclined to spread themselves out along the platform.  Naturally, people will not all mob up right at the bottom of the stairs, but instead they will move along the platform so that when the train finally does pull into the station, the people are already much more evenly distributed along the length of the train and then the loads in each car are more manageable and even.  There is still some inconsistency, as the loads in the cars by the LIRR concourse are still a bit heavier than the loads in the cars by the lesser-used exit concourse, but it's far better than having 80% of the passengers stuffed into the first three cars of the train.  During my observations last week at Penn Station, it was pretty clear that the trains that had their track numbers posted before they arrived had their loads spread out more evenly than those trains that had their track numbers posted closer to departure when the train was already there. 

So if posting track numbers early solves quite a few problems, what's stopping the LIRR from doing this more?  Well, track numbers for trains can't always be posted so early.  In a perfect world, they would be able to post all of the track numbers hours in advance like they can at Grand Central or Penn Station, but due to the cramped nature of NYP, there are a limited number of platforms that trains can pull in and discharge on, and a train that needs to discharge passengers onto a platform that already has a lot of people waiting on it can get messy pretty quickly.   Furthermore, not every LIRR train that leaves Penn Station comes in empty from West Side Yard.  Some trains come in from places on Long Island then immediately turn around and go back out without even going to WSY.  And I can only imagine the chaos that could be caused if a westbound train, full of passengers, arrives at Penn Station after the track number has already been posted and there are tons of people already waiting on the platform....the arriving passengers will be trying to get off the train at the same time the eastbound passengers will be climbing and clawing their way as they try to shove into the train and get a seat. 

So don't expect the LIRR to turn around one day soon and have all of the track numbers posted on the boards hours in advance.  Posting them early is definitely beneficial to trains that originate at West Side Yard or deadhead into NYP empty, but calling trains too early, or calling trains early for trains that will arrive at the station with passengers already on them can get pretty messy pretty quickly.  Presumably, the ushers at NYP know that, so hopefully they won't fall into the habit of posting track numbers for the wrong trains too early, or it won't end well.

However, there are quite a few commuters who have caught on to one of Penn Station's most interesting secrets.  While we all know that Penn Station is a madhouse and things can change pretty frequently in terms of track numbers, there are quite a few people who know that the track numbers are often the most consistent and regular during the peak of the peak, and that they can be quite random during the off-peak.  Since November 11th, 25 trains have left from the same exact track every weekday since then.   And, of those 25, 23 of those trains were during the peak period. 

Many trains leave from the same exact track pretty much every single day.  And if your the person who takes the same train home every day without variation, you might notice at some point (if you had your eyes unglued from your phone and looked around at your surroundings every now and then) that the track numbers are often pretty consistent.

During the off-peak periods, however, the track numbers vary a lot more.  And this can be expected, since during the off-peak there is more wiggle room in and around Penn Station and in the tunnels, and since they're continually doing work in the East River Tunnels and in Queens, the track numbers for trains in the off-peak period will probably remain scattered all over the place for a couple more years to come.

In conclusion, the deign and operations of Penn Station are both unique and challenging.  While it would be beneficial to everyone in many regards to have track numbers posted earlier than they are, there are still some substantial operational troubles that can arise if they go too wild with the advance posting of track numbers.   What they have been doing during the evening peak period when the crowds are the heaviest and the tracks are the most consistent definitely seems to be working, from what I can tell, so hopefully they can keep that up.  It gets trickier in the off-peak times when there are a lot more variables in the mix and the crowd are lighter, so it's likely that we will still continue to see track numbers for off-peak trains only posted a couple of minutes before departure, at least until East Side Access is open in 2019 and lots of the other long-term projects in the vicinity of Penn Station have finished up.