New Yaphank-BNL station opens

The new Yaphank station located east of CR-49 William Floyd Parkway opens today, replacing the existing Yaphank station along CR-21 Yaphank Avenue near the county office building complex.  The MTA announced that train service would be moving to the new station at a news conference Friday (in perhaps what will be the most people ever at this station at one time).

The opening of the new station represents the end of a nearly decade-long effort to relocate the station.  Plans to construct a new Yaphank station closer to Brookhaven National Lab and William Floyd Parkway were first announced in early 2017.  For a very simple and straightforward project, it has encountered a great many delays and other complications, with the LIRR and local officials not coming to an agreement on the site for the new station until late 2021, and construction not starting until 2025.  The station was originally expected to open back on May 15, but even that was put off.

The new Yaphank-BNL station (Photo: MTA/Marc A. Hermann)

Officials cutting the ribbon at the new Yaphank-BNL station (Photo: MTA/Marc A. Hermann)

The new station includes features a single, 2-car long platform, a parking lot with 50 spaces, a kiss-and-ride loop, and the standard collection of accessories found at any other LIRR station.  As part of this project, the existing Yaphank station will be closed and demolished.

The relocation of the station was intended to make the stop easier to access, as the existing Yaphank station near the county office buildings was often characterized as hard to find, and perhaps that was the reason the station consistently ranks as the least-used station on the LIRR network.

MTA and local officials hope that by relocating the station to a more accessible area, more riders would use the new station than the existing Yaphank station, which consistently ranks as the least-used LIRR station by a considerable margin.  (Fun fact: more people used the temporary Shinnecock Hills station in the roughly a week it was open for the US Open in 2018 than have used Yaphank in all of the last 9 years).

New station is actually further away from most places

If the intent was to make the station more convenient and accessible, the location is everything.  I visited the new station site a few weeks ago, and I was very surprised to see how out of the way and difficult to reach it was, more than a mile east of William Floyd Parkway, buried deep in a commercial/industrial neighborhood with limited roadway access.

In practice, the new station site is not at all more convenient or accessible than the existing Yaphank station one exit to the west on the LIE.  The station site is buried all the way at the east end of an industrial and commercial complex along Ramsey Road and Precision Drive (it is accessed from a traffic circle at the very east end of Precision Drive).

Ramsey Road can only be accessed from the northbound
lanes of William Floyd Parkway

This complex is difficult to reach in the first place, if you are not familiar with the area.  If you are travelling south on the William Floyd Parkway, you cannot make a left-turn onto Ramsey Road at the intersection just south of the LIE interchange.  It is then not permitted to make a U-turn at the next intersection south with Moriches-Middle Island Road.  So you either need to drive nearly a mile south to make a U-turn at Flower Hill Drive, or make a U-turn on the residential streets off Moriches-Middle Island Road.  If you are travelling from the north or east, you have to take the ramp to the LIE South Service Road, go all the way to the end of the service road, and then take a ramp that puts you onto Precision Drive.

Accessing the Yaphank-BNL station site from the north or east requires a confusing detour onto the LIE South Service Road.

If you are coming from the south, you have to do a U-turn using the LIE North Service Road to get out, as the only exit from this entire complex puts you north on William Floyd Parkway.

By time you add in all of this extra maneuvering (not even counting the time getting lost trying to make a U-turn on William Floyd Parkway), the new Yaphank-BNL station is actually a longer drive for most people compared to staying on the LIE for one more exit to the existing Yaphank station!

If you are coming from the east (example starting point is the Wading River Road exit on the LIE), Google Maps shows it taking 9 minutes to drive the 6.1 miles to the new Yaphank-BNL station site.  That is 2 minutes and a tenth of a mile longer than staying on the LIE one more exit to Yaphank Avenue for the existing Yaphank station.

One of the main selling points of a new Yaphank-BNL station was providing better connectivity to Brookhaven National Lab, which is among the largest single-site employers on Long Island, and a renowned facility that attracts researchers from far and wide.  No station site, even on the BNL grounds east of the LIE overpass, would be walkable to the main cluster of buildings on the BNL campus which is more than a mile north of the tracks.  But even if you were to drive or run a bus, it would take 11 minutes to go from Berkner Hall to the site of the new Yaphank-BNL station.  That is 1 minute longer than it would take to drive west one exit on the LIE to the existing Yaphank station.

The proposed station site is also not walkable to any residential areas.  Even though the new station will be about 700 feet as the crow flies away from the nearest house, the closest residential neighborhood is on the south side of the tracks in Shirley, and the station is being built on the north side of the tracks.  The LIRR has not built an overpass or grade crossing to make this station walkable to that community.  You couldn't even walk it if you wanted to, since the William Floyd Parkway overpass over the LIRR tracks does not have sidewalks.  Instead, to reach their house 700 feet away, the person living in the nearest house would have to take an 11 minute drive, detouring via the LIE North Service Road to get home from the station.  It would actually take 2 minutes less for this person to drive home from the existing Yaphank station than the new platform built 700 feet from their house.

What about the new Country Pointe Meadows apartment complex to the northwest of the LIE interchange?  Can't walk there either, as there are no sidewalks on the William Floyd Parkway north of Ramsey Road.  You would have to drive from there to the new Yaphank-BNL station, which Google Maps says will take about 8 minutes.  That is two minutes longer than just driving to the existing Yaphank station.

So is the new station closer for anyone?  Well, if you work in that commercial/industrial complex right where the station is, sure.  That complex initially contained some biopharma companies that sprout up in the shadow of BNL, but most of the new construction that has happened there are logistics and trucking companies.  While there are sidewalks in this area where you could conceivably walk someplace, you could only really reach one (currently cleared but undeveloped) site within the 0.25 mile radius typically considered acceptable for walking.  And according to Census data, most of the 849 people that work in this complex come from the nearby towns to the south and northwest (e.g. Shirley, Mastic Beach, Mastic, Coram, Centereach), not accessible by train.  Less than 5% (40 people) reverse commute from New York City.

Ultimately, the problem with the exiting Yaphank station is not necessarily that it is hard to access (and, if it was, this new station certainly doesn't address that).  Rather, the LIRR's train service offered here is next to useless.  With only five westbound (four on weekends) and four eastbound trains per day, there is simply little reason to utilize this station when you can just stay on the LIE, drive to, and park for free at, Ronkonkoma station less than 15 minutes to the west, where the LIRR offers substantially more peak and off-peak service.  At the end of the day, MTA and LIRR have not solved the root cause of Yaphank's low ridership.  It's like the going to the hospital for a broken arm, and the doctor ignoring that to treat a pimple on your nose.  The MTA has said that they are initiating a study of potential infrastructure improvements to support more service east of Ronkonkoma, but we have been down this road before...

With these types of projects, the devil is always in the details.  And here, the MTA got the details wrong.

LIRR back on track after 3-day strike

For the first time in more than 30 years, LIRR employees went on strike last weekend after the MTA and a coalition of LIRR unions failed to reach an agreement on a new contract.  Workers walked off the job and all LIRR service was suspended systemwide at 12:01am last Saturday, May 16.  Service is now back to normal after a deal was struck Monday evening, with service being restored from noon on Tuesday, May 19.

LIRR workers picketing outside the 33rd Street entrance at NY-Penn Station

The dispute involved the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, the Transportation Communications Union, the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.  Together, these organizations represent around 3,500 employees (about half of the LIRR’s represented workforce), including train engineers, dispatchers, clerical employees, station agents, signal and communication workers, electricians, and machinists.

The prior contracts between the LIRR and these unions ended and became amendable in June 2023.  Over the course of the last 3 or so years, the parties have been negotiating on and off, including National Mediation Board mediation and two Presidential Emergency Boards which weighed proposals from both sides and have made recommendations to resolve the matter.  But when the clock struck midnight last week, the parties had not come to an agreement, so for the first time since 1994, LIRR service shut down systemwide due to a strike. 

No trains available at NY-Penn Station due to the strike
(Photo: The LIRR Today)

The strike certainly disrupted daily life on Long Island for many, but most Long Islanders seemed to be able to make do without their railroad, at least for a few days.  Many just stayed home for the two days (either working from home or taking time off), others that had to travel have driven, taken the limited contingency bus services, or existing NICE and SCT bus services.  The MTA reported that only about 2,000 riders availed of the contingency buses.  Traffic was worse, but not apocalyptically so.

In the final days leading up to the deadline last week, the two sides were not all that far apart.  The parties were largely on the same page with 3%, 3%, and 3.5% retroactive raises for 2023, 2024, and 2025.  Where they disagreed was over the increase for 2026, the fourth year of the contract.  The unions wanted 5% raises to bring the overall wage increase a little ahead of inflation.  The MTA wanted 3% raises to keep with a more conservative pattern they had been seeking with the agency's other bargaining units, but had continued negotiating and offered a lump-sum payment that would bring the total increase for 2026 closer to 4.5%, but not fix wages at that level until the next contract was resolved.

I remarked on Friday before the strike that, with the field of play as it was, we (the riders and taxpayers) had already basically lost.  The MTA had already taken reform of the LIRR's archaic and painful work rules off the table, and the only real remaining point of contention seemed small enough (half a percentage point or so) that resorting to such extraordinary action as self-help wasn't likely to dramatically change the outcome.  The math didn't really favor a strike for the unions—certainly not a protracted one.  As workers on strike don't get paid, a weeklong strike would result in 2% lost wages, more than eating up any difference they would gain over just taking the MTA's prior offer.

But there were clearly larger undercurrents that were keeping the two sides from striking a deal in the lead up to the deadline.

For the unions, some suggested that they were holding out to bust the pattern for the benefit of the MTA's subway and bus unions, utilizing their ability to strike to leverage better wages for subway and bus workers, who are covered by New York State's Taylor Law and are not allowed to strike.  But I don't know how likely that is—LIRR workers and unions generally couldn't be bothered about what is good or bad for subway and bus workers.  And certainly not at their personal expense.  More likely, the unions have been feeling their political power dwindling in the post-Cuomo years and were looking to get back closer to the center of attention.  The State's public sector unions were a major source of political support for former Governor Andrew Cuomo, especially in the suburbs, and he went to much greater lengths to show them love with significant investments in infrastructure across the state.  But in recent years, the game of electoral politics in New York has changed and now-Governor Kathy Hochul has sought and obtained her support in other areas.

For the MTA, sticking to the pattern and keeping overall wage increases down was key to maintaining the agency's relatively stable financial outlook.  The MTA operates on a system of pattern bargaining, meaning one set of unions typically gets the same deal as all of the others.  When that pattern changes, other unions will point to it in future negotiations and argue they should get the same thing.  Several contracts now even have explicit "me too" clauses.  While granting a larger increase to the 3,500 LIRR workers might not break the bank this month, breaking the pattern could have a large impact on the MTA's finances if they have to offer the same raises to the 40,000+ TWU workers whose contract is coming up for negotiation in the near future.

The departure board at Brooklyn-Atlantic Terminal was blocked out with "No Passengers" trains, and stairways up to the LIRR platforms were gated off (Photo: The LIRR Today)

In the end, the MTA largely caved, agreeing to a 4-year, 6-week contract that grants wage increases of the 3%/3%/3.5% for 2023-2025, a 4.5% increase for 2026 plus a $3,000 lump-sum payment.  The MTA did not win any substantive givebacks in terms of work rule concessions, increased contributions for healthcare, or productivity reforms.  But it did get trains moving again after a 3.5 day suspension.

However, even though the MTA was unable to hold the pattern or secure productivity reforms, I believe that the strike and ensuing disruption was still moderately fruitful...  The strike focused more attention to the significant levels of inefficiency and waste brought about by the LIRR's union contracts, and, even though the strike was disruptive, most people were able to bear it out and public support was generally positive.  But, most importantly, it showed that the Governor is willing to take a few lumps, even in an election year, instead of caving in the eleventh hour to keep the peace.  This will hopefully demonstrate to the MTA that the backing will be there should they one day grow the brains or the balls to really tackle these labor issues in future rounds of contract negotiations. 

Self-help is never convenient, but it is a very effective tool at keeping unions in line, and we need to take extraordinary measures to address the extraordinary problems of inefficacy, waste, and low productivity that plague the LIRR today.

East Side Access hasn't saved travel time for most riders

One of the MTA's major selling points for the $12+ billion East Side Access project was the significant time savings it would offer Long Islanders who want to commute or travel to Manhattan's East Side, saving them, as the MTA claimed, 40 minutes of travel time every day.  But results from a past MTA Customers Count survey shows that East Side Access and the more than $17 billion in capacity improvement projects the LIRR has brought online has not resulted in door-to-door travel time savings for most riders.

The long amount of time it takes to exit from the ESA
caverns water down much of the time savings
(Photo: The LIRR Today)

As part of the MTA's bi-annual online customer satisfaction survey in Fall 2024 (about 18 months after full service began to East Side Access) LIRR riders were asked a series of special supplemental questions about their most recent inbound weekday LIRR trip.  Respondents were asked some additional questions about how their travel patterns have changed since before East Side Access opened.  One question asked riders whether their total travel time (door to door travel) for their last weekday inbound trip changed since East Side Access opened in 2023.  Riders could respond in 5 minute increments.

Overall, 45% of respondents said that the opening of East Side Access and LIRR service to NY-Grand Central resulted in a reduction in their door-to-door travel time.  34% say there has been no change in their door-to-door travel time.  21% of respondents said that their travel time has gotten longer since the start of East Side Access.

Drilling down into the time ranges, only 22% of riders say that East Side Access is actually delivering that 40+ minutes a day in travel time savings the MTA celebrated.  10% of respondents are saving 15-20 minutes on their weekday inbound trips, 6% are saving 10-15 minutes, 5% report saving 5-10 minutes, 2% report saving less than 5 minutes.  On the other side of the coin, 1% of respondents say their trips have gotten longer by less than 5 minutes, 5% longer by 5-10 minutes, 5% longer by 10-15 minutes, 4% longer by 15-20 minutes, and 6% of respondents say their travel times have gotten longer by 20 or more minutes.

While there are always winners and losers in any major service overhaul or schedule change, the fact that more than 1 in 5 respondents say their travel time has gotten longer thanks to the fruits of more than $17 billion in capacity improvements is quite disappointing.

I am actually surprised that even as many riders responded that they are saving travel time as they did.  When you look at just the schedule times, running times have gotten longer due to trains generally making more stops and more schedule padding.  Then when you add in connections, which can be long especially during off-peak hours, it eats away at a significant chunk of that travel time savings.  Riders tend to underestimate their actual travel time, and riders were also being asked to compare their travel time to trips in 2022, when LIRR was still running reduced rush-hour service, with more local trains and awkward gaps between trains.

The phrasing of the questions were also quite confusing.  Riders were asked to evaluate their most recent, westbound, weekday trip, which looks like it tripped a lot of people up (and also limited the universe of trips that have been impacted by these changes.

Depending on what branch you are on, there may be more winners or losers.  The branch with the most riders reporting travel time savings is in the City Terminal Zone (Jamaica and points west) where there are more trains making local stops and travel times tend to be short in the first place.  On the Long Island branches, fewer riders responded that East Side Access has reduced their travel times.  

Branches with the most riders reporting their travel time has decreased include the Far Rockaway Branch (48% of trips shorter), Port Washington Branch (47% of trips shorter) and West Hempstead Branch (46% of trips shorter).  

While the West Hempstead Branch reported a higher share of riders seeing travel time savings, they also saw the most riders reporting that East Side Access changes resulted in longer trips, with 32% of riders saying their trips are now longer than they were before East Side Access.  That is followed by the Long Beach Branch (31% of trips longer) and Far Rockaway Branch (27% of trips longer).

The branches that had the fewest riders reporting additional travel time are mostly the diesel branches, where there were very little service improvements or changes with East Side Access.

Travel time changes were perceived more positively by off-peak riders, where 45%-52% of off-peak and reverse-peak riders reported that their trip was faster than before East Side Access (but also remember, in the last few years leading up to the completion of East Side Access and Third Track, LIRR reduced off-peak service on several lines that resulted in longer than usual baseline travel times).  But during the AM Peak period, where there are many more riders, fewer riders reported that East Side Access has saved them time, while 1 in 4 AM Peak riders say their journey is now longer than it was before.

This correlates to trip purpose...riders who are travelling for or commuting to work (which tend to travel during the peak periods) have the largest share of riders reporting that their travel times have gotten longer, with 26% of riders saying their trip takes longer than it did before East Side Access.  For non-work leisure travel—where riders tend to have more flexibility on when they travel so they can steer towards direct trains with shorter travel times—fewer riders report that their travel times are longer.

It might come as no surprise that travel time changes are heavily correlated to what city terminal you are using.  Riders that are travelling through NY-Grand Central, as you might guess, overwhelmingly report that their trips are shorter.  But on the other hand, nearly half of Brooklyn riders say that East Side Access has lengthened their travel times.  For those still using NY-Penn Station, there are more people that say their trips are longer than shorter.

This pretty clearly shows that most of the travel time savings for those headed to Midtown East is coming at the expense of longer travel times for most other riders.

Long walks eat up most East Side Access travel time savings

Even though NY-Grand Central may be better located for those who work on the East Side, the design of the new station—where the LIRR trains are buried in a cavern 140 feet below street level—means that it takes quite a while to just get out of the station once your train pulls in and the doors open.  This is significantly different from the LIRR's other terminals, where the layout is simpler and more compact (NY-Penn Station isn't quite simple, but the layout is compact...if you know where you are going, you can get from the street to your train very quickly).

Shortly after East Side Access opened, I measured walking times between different locations at the LIRR's major terminals to offer a more empirical look at actual door-to-door travel times.  The deep caverns and long escalators mean that it can take several minutes after your LIRR train pulls in to actually get to the street or the Subway.  At NY-Grand Central, the fastest possible route from LIRR trains to the street (to 47th Street and Madison Avenue) takes more than four and a half minutes.  If you are going to one of the other GCT entrances more central to 42nd Street, it can take between six and eight minutes to wind your way through the concourses, staircases, ramps, and escalators to even just get out to the street—then you have to actually walk to your destination.

Even if you were to assume that the location of East Side Access would save someone travelling to the East Side the 40 minutes a day the MTA alleges, if you are spending 7 minutes just walking to or from the train inside the station, that immediately wipes away 14 of those 40 minutes...

These walking times are markedly higher than what we see at NY-Penn Station.  While the layout of NY-Penn Station is a lot more confusing, it is also a lot more compact—so if you know where you are going and enter through the right entrance, you can get to your platform quite quickly.  From 7th Avenue (where most LIRR riders enter), you can get to your train in as little as 90 seconds.  From 8th Avenue, again you can get to the LIRR tracks in as little as 1 minute, 3 seconds and in most cases under 2 minutes.  Even if you enter all the way west at 9th Avenue through Moynihan Train Hall, it only takes a little over 3 minutes to reach LIRR trains.

The LIRR's alternate terminals in Brooklyn and Queens are even easier and faster to navigate through.  If you are travelling through Brooklyn-Atlantic Terminal, you can walk from the street to the platform in about 30 seconds.

And at Hunterspoint Avenue, the single LIRR platform can be reached from the street in just about 24 seconds.

All of these extra minutes and seconds really add up, especially if you have to cover more distance on foot once you leave the LIRR terminal to get to your destination.  This is especially an issue at NY-Grand Central, where the LIRR terminal is set up further north (between 45th and 48th Street) from the main hub of activity closer to 42nd Street on the East Side.

If you are connecting from the LIRR to the Subway, that takes a lot longer at NY-Grand Central as well.  Getting from the north end of the caverns at NY-Grand Central to the Lexington Avenue Line platforms at NY-Grand Central takes over 10 minutes (so long that when the MTA posted a video showing the fastest walking route, they had to speed up the video).  That's nearly twice as long as it takes to get to the Subway at NY-Penn Station, where it takes about five minutes, and significantly longer than it takes at Brooklyn-Atlantic Terminal (a little over 2 minutes) or Hunterspoint Avenue (less than 2 minutes).

Again the long walking times cancel out most of the time savings offered by East Side Access.  If you are commuting from Long Island to Lower Manhattan (Wall Street and Broad Street, for example), travelling via NY-Grand Central takes the longest out of the LIRR's four city terminals.  The fastest route from Jamaica to Wall Street & Broad Street are:

• via Brooklyn-Atlantic Terminal: 33 minutes, 32 seconds
• via Hunterspoint Avenue: 40 minutes, 15 seconds
• via NY-Penn Station: 41 minutes, 43 seconds
• via NY-Grand Central: 44 minutes, 20 seconds

A fun fact: if you are coming from the Lexington Avenue subway platforms at NY-Grand Central, it actually takes less time to get to the LIRR platform at Hunterspoint Avenue than it is to trek to the other side of the Grand Central complex!

If you are sticking around Midtown, the long walk to the Subway at NY-Grand Central means that it is often faster to just walk to your destination on foot than to connect to the Subway for a short hop.  If you are trying to get to Times Square (corner of 42nd Street and 7th Avenue), it takes a little over 6 minutes to get there from the LIRR platforms at NY-Penn Station vs. over 19 minutes from the LIRR platforms at NY-Grand Central.

The 40-minute fallacy

There was never all that much truth behind the MTA's claim that East Side Access would save riders "40 minutes a day".  Even according to the trip planner on the MTA's own website, riders can get from NY-Penn Station to NY-Grand Central in as little as 11 minutes (and if you compare that to the walking times I have recorded, that matches up).  So it was really only saving at most 22 minutes a day (11 minutes there + 11 minutes back).

Then when you back out the extra walking time from the caverns at NY-Grand Central, it's even less.  Measuring total travel times from the east end of LIRR trains to the corner of 42nd Street and Madison Avenue, it takes about 11 minutes, 14 seconds to get there from NY-Penn Station on the Subway vs. 8 minutes, 20 seconds to walk there from the LIRR caverns.

So the real savings in terms of onward travel time after you get off your LIRR trains is not 40 minutes, it's more closer to 6 minutes...

Therefore, any travel time savings perceived by riders is either purely perceived (a one-seat ride seems faster than a similar trip with one or more transfers...and when there are delays it sometimes is) or the result of other schedule changes not directly related to the location of the new terminal (for example, some trips from the South Shore to Brooklyn got faster because all express trains stop now stop at Jamaica, where before the only way to get to Brooklyn was on slower, local trains).

Overall, it's a bit disappointing that the more than $17 billion spent on LIRR capacity improvements did not result in any travel time savings for most riders.  It's another example of how the details for how these projects really matters.  Burying a new train station so far below ground it takes several minutes to even get to the surface washes away a lot of the benefits of a project.  Not focusing enough on measuring outputs (actual frequency improvements or travel time savings delivered for riders) not just inputs (the amount of money spent on a project) is a critical misstep that leads to situations like this, where the LIRR is running fewer peak trains to/from Long Island than they were in 2019, and most riders haven't seen their travel times improve.

MTA sneaks in major changes to LIRR, Metro-North refund policy

New fares and tolls took effect across the MTA's subways, buses, railroads, and crossings on Sunday, including some of the most sweeping and anti-customer changes to ticket policies on the LIRR and Metro-North in decades.  In addition to raising fares between 4.5% and 8%, the MTA is dramatically reducing the validity period for one-way tickets, eliminating the 10-trip ticket and its 15% discount for off-peak and intermediate travel, and other changes, including:

• Dramatically shorten the validity period for one-way and round-trip tickets from 60 days to 1 day (with all tickets expiring at 4:00am on the next day).  This means riders will be unable to save their tickets and use them again on another day in the event their travel plans change, or there is a disruption in service that forces them to alter or abandon their journey.
• Eliminate the 10-trip ticket and its accompanying 15% discount for off-peak and intermediate travel.  This would be replaced with a buy-10-get-1-free pilot offer, if all tickets are used within 14 days.  This will significantly increase costs for those who travel frequently off-peak, or between intermediate stations on Metro-North.  The MTA's buy-10-get-1-free pilot offer is a joke of a replacement as all 11 trips need to be taken within 14 days (if you are taking 11 trips within 14 days, you are beyond the breakeven point for just getting a monthly ticket).
• Introduce a day pass for unlimited travel, priced at 10% less than two one-way peak tickets on weekdays (except in NYC, where there will be no discount) or the price of two off-peak tickets on weekends.  While this provides those who want to stop-over or take multiple trips a more affordable way to do so, the vast majority of LIRR and Metro-North riders are not making more than two trips per day, so it delivers no real benefit.  And the weekday day pass is more expensive than buying 1v peak and 1 off-peak ticket or 2 off-peak tickets.  So if you decide to head home early before rush hour, or stay late in the city for dinner or an event, you end up losing money over buying separate tickets.
• Make the Peak CityTicket and Far Rockaway Ticket permanent fare products, and having CityTicket replace the full-fare one-way tickets for travel within New York City.
• Accept half-fare tickets on all trains, including during the AM Peak period.  This restriction was seldom enforced to begin with and made the MTA less than $190k per year in additional revenue.
• Allow children up to 17 years of age to travel with $1 Family Fare tickets when accompanied by an adult.  Child fares remain available only to those who are younger than 12, so if you are travelling with more than four children, or 12-17 year olds are travelling on their own, they must still pay the full adult fare.
• Increase the onboard surcharge from $6 to $8.

Accepting half-fare tickets for seniors, Medicare beneficiaries, and people with disabilities, along with increasing the age for the Family Fare from 12 to 17 are good improvements, but seniors/half fare riders and children account for only about 5% and 1% of LIRR ridership, respectively.  For the 94% of riders that pay for full-fare tickets, these changes are overwhelmingly negative as they dramatically reduce flexibility, increase costs, and will end up with riders paying much more out of pocket to ride the LIRR and Metro-North.

LIRR and Metro-North fares are already the most expensive and second-most expensive rail fares in North America, by a considerable margin.  These fare changes now make LIRR and Metro-North fares not only the most expensive in North America—but now also the least flexible.

A new day pass (photo byu/pokemonhgharris innycrail)

Significant changes to refund policy

Along with the new fare policy changes, the MTA has posted a new refund policy for LIRR and Metro-North tickets on its website.  Under the new policy, one-way tickets are now completely non-refundable, regardless of their purchase price.  

This means that one-way tickets are now completely worthless after they expire at 4:00am the next morning, and you can't even get a partial or full refund if you don't use the ticket like you could before this past weekend.

More than 36,000 LIRR riders sought refunds for tickets in 2024, so this impacts a significant number of riders who wish to recover at least some of the value of their unused tickets.  The MTA implemented a $10 administrative fee per refund transaction for tickets purchased from December 30, 2010 to discourage riders from seeking refunds of lower-value tickets (the railroad has admitted in the past that this was really a revenue protection measure to prevent riders from getting refunds of unused one-way tickets).  The LIRR raked in more $2.5 million in refund fees between 2013 and 2024.

Under the new refund policy, one-way tickets are non-refundable except for an extremely short window immediately after purchase (paper tickets can be submitted for a refund with no fee only for 30 minutes after purchase, only at the station they were purchased, and only if there is a ticket window open at the time; mobile tickets can be submitted for a refund only for 2 minutes after purchase).  After that point, the tickets are non-refundable.  The railroads will continue to offer pro-rated refunds for monthly and weekly tickets in the same way as the previous policy, and still subject to the $10 fee.

In a statement, MTA Spokesperson Aaron Donovan said "the new ticket policy is designed to discourage customers avoiding conductors so they don't pay the fare, an increasing problem since mobile ticketing was introduced. Unused tickets can be refunded within the timeframes indicated."

The MTA has snuck in this significant change to fares, making it public only this week after the other fare changes were made.  These changes to the refund policy were not included in the public hearing notice or any of the materials or literature distributed by the MTA in order for the public to comment on the proposed changes, nor were the changes approved by the MTA Board.  Fares and fare policy have traditionally been within the purview of the MTA Board, and the MTA has historically sought and obtained MTA Board approval for any changes to fares—until now.

The new refund policy seems to run contrary to a New York State law that requires the MTA to allow riders who purchase a fare the ability to transfer any remaining balance for two years after expiration.  In 2017, the NYS Public Authorities Law was amended to add a new section 1266-k, which states:

"Expired fare transfer policy. Notwithstanding any other provision of law to the contrary, the authority shall, within ninety days of the effective date of this section, establish an expired fare transfer policy that may be amended from time to time. Such policy shall provide any person who purchases a fare the ability to transfer any remaining balance for two years after such fare is deemed expired."

In March 2018, the MTA sought and obtained MTA Board approval to extend the refund period for unused one-way, round-trip, and ten-trip tickets to 2 years after expiration.  At the time, the MTA said that they were extending the refund period "to bring the Railroads in compliance with [the 2017] amendment to the Public Authorities Law".  The MTA said at the time that "in order to best comply with the requirements of the law, Metro-North and LIRR recommend that the period during which a refund can be obtained be extended for an additional two years."  This action item was approved by the MTA Board at the time.

After being extended in 2022, this law remains in force until December 31, 2029.  Yet the MTA has underhandedly reverted the extension to the refund periods it said in 2018 were necessary to comply with the law.  The new refund policy gives riders no mechanism to transfer the remaining, unused balanced on their one-way tickets after the fare is deemed expired (or, even before it expires).

When asked how the new refund policy complies with section 1266-k of the NYS Public Authorities Law, the MTA declined to comment.

The MTA also appears to have circumvented the approval procedures for fare and toll changes required under state law.  Section 1266(3) of the NYS Public Authorities Law states in part that: 

"Any such fares, tolls, rentals, rates, charges or other fees for the transportation of passengers shall be established and changed only if approved by resolution of the [MTA Board], and only after a public hearing..." 

State law requires that any changes to fares, charges, or other fees require the approval of the MTA Board, and can only be made after a public hearing.  The ticket refund policy is part of the LIRR's passenger tariff, and is part of the terms and conditions of sale.  A change to the refund policy is a change to the fare (the law makes no limitation to only changes in the fare rates, it says "any changes to fares").  Also, the new refund policy changes/eliminates the $10 refund fee ("charges, or other fees") for one-way tickets which would trigger the requirement regardless.

But in this case, the MTA has made a change to fares/charges/other fees entirely on its own, without a public hearing, and without MTA Board approval.

The MTA did not respond to questions about why these changes were left out of the public hearing notice, why the public was not given the opportunity to comment on these changes, and why they made this change unilaterally without MTA Board approval—since they are essentially undoing a past action that was taken by the MTA Board in 2018.

In a statement, Lisa Daglian, Executive Director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA, said "As the new fare policies go into effect on the LIRR and Metro-North, riders have a lot of changes to adapt to, including some that we have strenuously supported for years. Allowing seniors and disabled riders to use their discounts in the AM peak and extending the Family Fare to age 17 makes it more affordable to ride and encourages more people to get onboard. Conversely, the loss of the 10-trip and changing the round trip to a Day Pass are not things we supported. However, as change moves forward, it should be as easy as possible for riders to adapt to the new policies and to find them easily. Having refund policies that largely eliminate the ability to get your money back on a One Way ticket in the event of a service disruption or last minute change of plans on a separate webpage – and not including them as part of the hearing or outreach process – does not help engender rider trust or support as they contend with higher fares. The MTA has come a long way in being more transparent and we call on them to discuss any such changes at upcoming Board meetings so the public can weigh in and be heard."

Riders left high and dry during service disruptions

Aside from the fact that the MTA's new refund policy very likely violates state law, making one-way tickets non-refundable is yet another horribly anti-customer move that will leave riders high and dry with worthless tickets in the event of a service disruption or suspension.

Previously, if your train was canceled or there was a service disruption that required you to alter or abandon your travel plans, you could save your one-way ticket for another 60 days (10-trip tickets for 180 days) and use them again on a later date.  But under the new policy, riders who cannot complete their trip the same day due to a service disruption have no apparent recourse to get their money back—even though LIRR or Metro-North failed to uphold their end of the bargain and transport them to their destination.

The MTA's "Pledge to Customers" states that LIRR and Metro-North may waive the $10 refund fee and give riders a full refund for tickets in the event a service suspension is declared on the MTA website.  Like every other article of the "pledge to customers", this was frequently ignored by the LIRR and Metro-North, but it was official policy to waive the refund fee during service disruptions, and you could get a full refund if you fought hard enough.

When asked whether it would continue to honor its "pledge to customers" going forward, the MTA declined to comment.

As recently as last week (before the new fare and refund policies took effect), LIRR's "customer service" representatives were refusing to offer refunds for tickets after LIRR suspended service on the Port Washington Branch due to switch issues.

@thelirrtoday.com Bought paper CityTicket from Bayside to Grand Central at 5:20 pm, the 5:30 pm gets cancelled, and branch service suspended. Meanwhile:

— goodcow (@goodcow.bsky.social) January 2, 2026 at 5:38 PM

The MTA has a unique and amazing ability to create bad will in the eyes of its passengers.  Slashing the validity period of tickets, eliminating any option for riders to get a refund if they can't or don't use their tickets, and refusing to offer any sort of amelioration to passengers when they fail to provide service will leave people with an unbelievably bad taste in their mouth. 

Fare changes hurt fastest growing LIRR ridership segment

These fare changes will increase the out-of-pocket costs paid by riders much more than the 4.5% increase to the base fares.  The significant increases in out-of-pocket costs ignore some pretty clear correlations between fare pricing and ridership recovery since the COVID-19 pandemic:

• In New York City, where average LIRR fares have declined by 7.7%, ridership has fully recovered and actually exceeds pre-pandemic levels
• For Long Island stations, where average LIRR fares have increased by 9.5%, ridership is down 26% compared to pre-pandemic

Lower fares = more riders.  Sometimes, so many more riders that the growth in ridership actually generates more revenue than increasing fare prices.  At the end of the day, it's not that complicated...  Yet instead of making any fare changes in a manner that was revenue-neutral (or actually lowered out-of-pocket costs for riders), the MTA is making these changes particularly hurt for off-peak and discretionary/occasional riders.

Off-peak ridership has fully recovered, and actually now exceeds pre-pandemic levels across the LIRR.  Off-peak ridership has increased by 13% since 2019, and has grown 17% year-over-year, largely fueled by increases in intra-city ridership thanks to the expansion of CityTicket.  Meanwhile, commuter ridership is down 51% since 2019.

Instead of realizing this trend and looking for ways to continue to lower the cost of off-peak rail travel (which costs the least to provide but has among the most expensive per-trip fares), they are implementing a series of sweeping fare changes that hit the most price sensitive ridership segment the hardest.  It really causes one to scratch their heads...  

But now emboldened by billions in new tax dollars flowing into its coffers and no sort of accountability for growing ridership (or lack thereof), the MTA seems to not care less about the impact these fare changes will have on ridership growth or overall revenue.

The MTA keeps trying to argue that these fare changes are necessary to curb fare evasion, or riders avoiding conductors so they don't pay the fare.  But really the core issue is that conductors are not doing their jobs and collecting tickets.  The LIRR's fare collection failure rates were unacceptably high before the MTA stopped publishing them in mid-2022.  In 2019, LIRR conductors failed to collect 5.3% of fares.  Even in 2022, when ridership was much lower than it is today and service was reduced freeing up more collectors, LIRR conductors were missing 5.2% of fares.  LIRR's fare collection failure rate also did not spike dramatically after mobile ticketing was introduced in mid-2016—suggesting that mobile ticketing is not in fact a major driver of whether conductors can or cannot collect all fares, despite the MTA's claims.

Especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, conductors have been making much less of an effort to do more than one sweep for tickets (e.g. checking tickets again after Jamaica, or collecting tickets from intermediate riders).  After spending $17+ billion in capacity improvements, there should be no reason why there is ever a LIRR train so crowded the conductor cannot get through to check tickets.  All of the issues the MTA imagines of riders reusing tickets, waiting to activate mobile tickets until the conductor arrives, etc. would not be an issue if they made conductors actually do their jobs and collect all tickets.  After all, hundreds of other railroads across the nation and the world manage to offer mobile tickets without having these problems...  The MTA says the fare policy changes are "giving riders more flexibility", but the only real flexibility being offered here is now the assistant conductor has the flexibility to read both the business and the sports section of the Post instead of doing a second ticket check after Jamaica...

These types of fare policies (short validity periods, non-refundable tickets, etc.) are a bit more common on systems that operate with proof of payment—and if the MTA were making these changes as part of a concerted move towards proof of payment and crew size reform, then maybe they could be worthwhile.  But instead, riders are getting stuck with all of the inflexibility and inconvenience of proof of payment, without any of the cost savings of crew size reform.

At the end of the day, making the most expensive rail fares in North America the least flexible is a recipe that is bound to hurt ridership recovery and growth, especially among off-peak/discretionary riders, where the railroad has until now been seeing promising growth.

Friday travel still much lighter on LIRR

As we have gone through many phases of return to office, one trend that has stuck around is fewer people commuting into work on Fridays.  While the busiest days of the week for LIRR ridership tend to be Wednesdays and Tuesdays, ridership on Fridays remains much quieter, especially at the peak of the peak during the morning and evening rush hours.

LIRR stations and trains tend to be quieter on Fridays
(Photo: The LIRR Today)

The figures below are derived from the LIRR's live passenger loading data, which estimate the number of passengers in each car or on each train based on load weigh data, automated passenger counters, or screenshots from the CCTV system.  These live loading conditions are displayed on TrainTime and on AVPS displays.  The results are modestly more representative of day-to-day conditions than the daily and monthly ridership figures that the MTA publishes (which are based on ticket sales and outdated assumptions, and indicate when people are purchasing their tickets, not necessarily riding trains).  Though the live loading data has other drawbacks—it is not that precise, quantifiable numbers are only available for electric MU trains, and some trains do not report ridership figures if the train number is entered wrong, the data isn't communicating, or there is some other issue. 

The figure below shows the average total passengers on LIRR electric trains by the day of the week through the first three quarters of this year.  Because of some of the shortcomings I mentioned above, especially that it only considers electric trains and ridership at the peak load point (which could be east or west of Jamaica, resulting in passengers being double counted), I wouldn't read too much into the numbers you see on the charts—but rather the relative difference between the different days of the week.

Overall, the busiest day of the week for LIRR travel is on Wednesdays, followed closely by Tuesdays (when ridership is about 1% lighter), then Thursdays (about 4% lighter than Wednesdays), and Mondays (about 12% lighter than Wednesdays).  Ridership on Fridays is considerably lower, about 19% fewer total passengers than Wednesdays.

But what is really interesting is how much lighter traffic is during the peak hours on Fridays.  When you look at the average total passengers based on the hour the train arrives or departs its western terminal, the data shows ridership patterns on Fridays are quite different from the other days of the week.  While there is still a pronounced peak going westbound in the morning peak and eastbound in the evening peak, those peaks are considerably less extreme than the other days of the week:

While overall ridership on Fridays is only about 19% lower than Wednesdays, ridership on Fridays during the peak of the morning peak (arriving city terminals between 8:00a and 9:00a) is just about half of what it is on Wednesdays.  In the evening, the trend is similar: between 5:00p and 6:00p ridership on Fridays is also about half of what it is on Wednesdays.

Earlier in the peak periods, when you tend to see more tradespeople or shift workers riding, there not much difference in ridership depending on the day of the week.  But at the times when the most 9-to-5 office workers are travelling, the difference is much starker.  Similarly, ridership during the morning reverse-peak period also shows little variation depending on the day of the week.

And on Fridays, LIRR makes up with ridership at other times of the day.  Going westbound, ridership in the evening reverse-peak heading into the city tends to be noticeably higher on Fridays.  Friday ridership heading into the city between 6:00p and 7:00p is 36% higher than it is on Wednesdays.  Going eastbound, ridership tends to be slightly higher in the mid-afternoon, between 1:00p and 4:00p, suggesting people are heading out of the office or starting their weekend journeys earlier.  Similarly, there is another spike later in the evening, like between 10:00p and 11:00p, when events let out and people want to head back home.

But the key difference is the steep difference in ridership at the peak-of-the-peak on Fridays.  Considering peak service is the most expensive to provide, this could offer an opportunity to redistribute some service to other parts of the day, or the weekend.  In October 2023, the Connecticut DOT implemented service reductions on the New Haven Line, and cut an additional 7 trains on Fridays.  In most cases, two express trains were combined into one that made more stops.  Metro-North also expanded this to a similar degree cutting some and shifting other Friday trains on the Hudson and Harlem Lines.  Taking an approach similar to this—moderately trimming back peak direction service on Fridays—and reallocating some of those trains to bolster service on Friday evenings or parts of the weekend when more discretionary riders are travelling.

On Fridays, AM Peak trains are considerably less crowded almost universally across the board.  There are only 6 trains that top 50% full, and three of those run before 6:30a.

Looking at ridership by branch, the difference between mid-week and Friday ridership is the most stark on the West of Babylon, Far Rockaway, Hempstead, West of Huntington, Branch (Friday ridership is 21% less than Wednesdays), 

The MTA and LIRR should look for new, creative ways to encourage more ridership growth on Fridays.  Redistributing some trains to provide better reverse-peak and evening service could result in faster and more convenient trips, and less crowding after special events.  Last year, Transport for London did a pilot program offering off-peak fares all day on Fridays.  While the pilot program did not demonstrate lower fares on Fridays spurring more ridership, the three-month pilot program was relatively short, and considering the difference between LIRR's peak and off-peak fares are quite a bit steeper, and this could be an interesting idea to fill trains more on Fridays.