Additional Trains for the Rowdy St. Patrick's Day Travelers

Next Monday is St. Patrick's Day, a celebrated religious feast day among some, but a day for lots of [alcoholic] "celebration" by many.  The annual St. Patrick's Day Parade held in Manhattan each year is a big attraction that draws many Long Islanders into the city to watch and participate in. 

The LIRR has had quite a few rough St. Patrick's Days in recent years as more and more people heed the warnings to not drink and drive home and instead drink and take public transportation to and from the day's festivities.  The sheer volume of extra travelers causes enough problems with loading, but the issues caused by so many additional travelers is only amplified by the fact that most of those extra travelers are rather intoxicated, and we all know how well people behave when they're intoxicated.

Last year St. Patrick's Day fell on a Sunday, so the parade was held on a Saturday.  Several additional trains allowed the LIRR to make it through the day without too many delays, but getting cleanly through St. Patrick's Day when it falls on a weekday and you have rush hour-levels of loads and trains is a lot more difficult.

New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade
In order to minimize the potential for delay, at least as people are going to the parade, the LIRR will run six additional westbound trains between 8:41am and 10:15am.  Three of those trains will be on the Montauk Branch, two on the Mainline, and one from Huntington.  The trains will operate as follows:

• 8:41am train form Freeport making all stops through Lynbrook, then stopping at Jamaica and New York, arriving there at 9:07am.
• 9:00am train from Hicksville, stopping at Westbury, Mineola, Merillon Ave, New Hyde Park, Jamaica, and New York, arriving there at 9:42am.
• 9:23am train from Wantagh making all stops through Rockville Centre, then stopping at Jamaica and New York, arriving at 10:14am.
• 9:27am from Farmingdale, stopping at Bethpage, Hicksville, Mineola, Jamaica, and Penn Station, arriving there at 10:22am.
• 9:48am train from Wantagh making all stops through Rockville Centre, then stopping at Jamaica and New York, arriving at 10:39am.
• 10:15am from Huntington, stopping at Hicksville, Jamaica, and Penn Station, arriving New York at 11:15am.

And there's a good bit of confusion about what the LIRR has planned for Monday already.  The news release the LIRR put out earlier in the week mysteriously forgot to mention the very first extra, train 1199, the 8:41am from Freeport, in the press release (yet it's shown on the timetable cards for the day, all of which are available here). 

Additionally, the first two extra trains (the 8:41am train from Freeport and the 9:00am train from Hicksville) arrive New York before 10:00am (and their connections arrive Brooklyn before 10:00am too), so they are technically peak trains.  The press release mentions nothing about peak or off-peak fares (leaving riders to infer that line of the tariff for themselves), and the timetable cards do not show the traditional "PEAK AM" note at the top for the two trains, so who knows if any trouble will arise out of that.

For riders calling an early day to their festivities in Manhattan, the LIRR will be operating it's normal Holiday Eve extras (17 trains in total) to get people who might be leaving the city early home.  A couple of the Holiday Eve extras can cause havoc on the Mainline if they don't get out of the way in time, so hopefully they will be able to make it through pretty easily.  The Holiday Eve trains and their schedules can be seen in the regular timetables for your branch.

In an effort to reduce the amount of disorderly conduct incidents, the LIRR will be banning all alcoholic beverages (in open or closed containers) on trains, station platforms, and other waiting areas from 12:01am Monday 3/17 through 5:00am on Tuesday 3/18.  MTA Police will enforce this restriction.

Montauk St. Patrick's Day Parade
The Montauk St. Patrick's Day Parade will take place the Sunday beginning on Main Street in Montauk at 10:00am on March 23rd.  Quite a few people take the trains out to Montauk to participate in the festivities there, and the LIRR will also provide additional trains to and from Montauk on that Sunday as well as build up consists of existing trains to provide for added capacity.

The exact details for the trains have not been put out by the LIRR yet, but you can expect an extra train that will run about an hour ahead of train 8704, which departs Jamaica at 8:10am and arrives Montauk at 10:46am.  You can also expect an additional eastbound train that will originate at Babylon and will trail train 8704, leaving Babylon a little before 9:00am and making all local stops to Montauk.

Coming back westbound, the LIRR will typically run a train that emulates the summer-only train 8705 that leaves Montauk around 1:30pm.  The train will make all local stops to Babylon before making its way to Jamaica, arriving there around 4:30pm.   The westbound extra will end up having to meet train 8710 (an eastbound train to Montauk) at Southampton (in Manual Block territory), so hopefully the train will not be that behind schedule as to not delay that meet.  (The eastbound extra also sounds like it will have a meet someplace east of Patchogue, probably at JJD, at some point  in the morning as well).

The LIRR has also lengthened consists on the regular trains in years past, so expect them to do something similar again this year.

So hopefully, the LIRR will get through St. Patrick's Day this year without too many incidents.  I'll hold an "over/under" of how many trains will be delayed in the comments and I'll come back after the big event to see how bad it actually was.   Cross your fingers and hope for the best!