The LIRR's contingency plan involves shuttle buses from six different LIRR stations and Nassau Community College, Park and Ride setups from two locations, and designated carpool lots setup at several Long Island state parks.
There will be shuttle buses from the following LIRR stations to
- Ronkonkoma (to Mets-Willets Point 7 station)
- Deer Park (to Mets-Willets Point 7 station)
- Manhasset (to Mets-Willets Point 7 station)
- Hicksville (to Woodhaven Boulevard M/R station)
- Seaford (to Howard Beach-JFK Airport station)
- Bellmore (to Howard Beach-JFK Airport A station)
- Freeport (to Howard Beach-JFK Airport A station)
- and Nassau Community College (to Howard Beach-JFK Airport A station)
The shuttle buses will bring passengers to one of three Subway stations: Mets-Willets Point (from Ronkonkoma, Deer Park, and Manhasset), Woodhaven Boulevard (from Hicksville), and Howard Beach-JFK Airport (from Seaford, Bellmore, Freeport, and Nassau Community College). From here, passengers will be able to ride, presumably elbow-to-elbow with a couple hundred other commuters, into Manhattan.
The MTA has said that commuters would have to present a valid LIRR ticket to board shuttle buses. They did not say if they would actually be lifting tickets, or if you just have to flash one to board. Additionally, they have not been clear on whether or not New York City Transit will be cross-honoring LIRR tickets at the shuttle-bus drop-off points (and/or LIRR transfer stations for when people are coming home). The strike page on the MTA's website says that passengers will need a valid MetroCard to enter the subway, however, on a conference call Friday, the MTA clumsily answered that question saying something along the lines of "we will let them use their LIRR fare media to gain entry to the system". Again, another few minor, but important details that seem to be inconsistent or missing in the MTA's announcements thus far.
The MTA put the following map up on their website diagramming where the shuttle buses will go:
The diagram reveals a somewhat uneven distribution of the shuttle bus locations, and it particularly highlights the limited options available from Suffolk County. All LIRR riders from Suffolk County have just two options for shuttle bus service: at Ronkonkoma and at Deer Park. My house isn't even shown on this map--it's way off in the right margin of this page.
For those looking to avoid the shuttle buses and the potential disasters they might become, the LIRR is also setting up two Park & Rides at both Citi Field and Aqueduct Racetrack to funnel even more people onto the 7 and A trains. The MTA doesn't seem too concerned by the fact that adding busloads and parking-lots worth of people onto already very crowded subway lines (particularly the 7) will cause too much trouble--hopefully they're right.
Parking at Citi Field and Aqueduct will be free to commuters during the duration of the strike. On days where there is an evening game being played at Citi Field, the lots will close to new commuters at 12:00n; if there is a day game, new commuters will not be allowed in after 9:00a.
The MTA will encourage car-pooling at these seven designated locations:
- Sunken Meadow State Park
- Hecksher State Park
- Belmont Lake State Park
- Bethpage Sate Park
- Hempstead Lake State Park
- Valley Stream State Park
- and Farmingdale State College
All of the above additional means will augment the existing non-LIRR options people have for getting around Long Island, like Nassau County's lousy excuse for a bus system, NICE, and it's even more sporadic Suffolk counterpart, SCT. It might be worth your while to to give the LIRR's Alternative Routes Guide (normally designed for PM Peak service implosions, but possibly applicable in this case depending on your station) a once-over.
I have embedded the audio from Friday's conference call discussing the strike contingency plan below (if you subscribe to the site by e-mail or RSS, you may have to view the post in your web browser to see/hear the embedded content). In the remarks by the MTA officials, I was disappointed by the amount of back-patting or grandstanding the MTA did during it. There were multiple mentions to the 1994 strike and how this contingency plan is just so much better than that one. This time around, the MTA is transporting slightly more people by shuttle bus and only marginally increasing capacity by adding in a potentially useless ferry. At the end of day, if this plan is five times better than what was implemented during the 1994 strike, but it is only half as good as it should be, it's not really a cause for celebration.
There are still several inconsistencies or things where information is still missing. While the MTA is promising to go all out in terms of customer communications this time around, they should be careful not to cast the net too wide. Even yesterday the words coming out of the mouths of the MTA officials conflicted or complicated what was up on their website, and if they can't even get all that in line, they're going to have a tough time doing that on a much larger scale, and keeping all of the interested passengers and media outlets informed at the same time.
The MTA is still banking on lots and lots of people telecommuting during a potential disruption. They were touting that a few hundred companies had "agreed" to let their employees who live on Long Island telecommute, but for many telecommuting is not practical or not possible. I'd need a 116-mile long stethoscope to telecommute, and I don't think they make them in such lengths just yet.
No matter how you look at this plan, one can only imagine how much of a mess it's going to be for the duration of any disruption. Should the unions decide to strike, and a decision to strike would be exclusively and undeniably the decision of the unions, they would be causing a great inconvenience to anyone who would need to go anywhere on Long Island during such a disruption. Hopefully the two sides will be able to negotiate a deal in time to avert a work stoppage (and we can subsequently file this horrid contingency plan in the nearest trash bin), but at the moment, that doesn't seem to be too likely.
Not the MTA's fault, you really can't replicate a large commuter rail system with buses but this is nothing more than a fig leaf. If you really, really, really have to get to Manhattan and your hours are flexible I'd suggest driving to the Cross Island, up to the Bronx, to Pelham Bay Parkway and try and park near the 2 or 5 Trains. Service is frequent and these lines pretty much cover most of Manhattan. Same route back out puts you just about in Nassau County. Not good at all but the real fun on the roads will start on the Queens Border
ReplyDeleteNow if the MTA can actually be present to negotiate a contract we can avoid a strike. Where are they this weekend? They don't care.
ReplyDeleteMTA to Suffolk: Drop Dead
ReplyDeleteIn the MTAs defense, many Suffolk commuters will drive to Ronkonkoma to take the train anyway. Would have liked to see an option from Port Jefferson but the fact of the matter is most Suffolk county residents have cars and will probably prefer commuting to Queens or Manhattan by car rather than school bus...
ReplyDeleteWell I guess my point is why do Freeport, Bellmore, AND Seaford all get buses, but Babylon, Port Jefferson, and Speonk do not? Why does the MTA website give you all these different options with only NICE and SCT had no mention at all?
ReplyDeleteI mean, look at the map, those three are literally next to each other.
The plan is an utter joke, and shows how little the MTA values Long Island commuters who pay $300 or more a month to take the LIRR. First of all, there's absolutely no reason to be using un-air conditioned school buses when NYC Transit has a fleet of hundreds of express buses. Last time I checked that would be at least 500 MCI Coach buses, leaving out Staten Island. The MTA should be suspending express bus service in all boroughs except for Staten Island, and use these buses to shuttle LIRR Commuters to the subway. Except for Staten Island, most NYC Express buses are lightly patronized and there are alternatives nearby. Not so for the LIRR. Then there's NYC Transit's reserve local bus fleet which could be used. There is no reason, none at all. Just the MTA treating Long Islanders like garbage once again. Then there's the lack of stations served, only two on the same line in Suffolk. What about the Montauk branch? The Port Jeff branch? Sure no plan can replace the LIRR, but they should be able to do better than this. Buses should be available at Huntington, Smithtown, and Stony Brook on the Port Jeff line, Farmingdale, Deer Park, and Ronkonkoma on the Ronkonkoma line, and Speonk, Patchogue, and Babylon on the Montauk line. In Nassau at least there is NICE Bus as an alternative. The MTA's current plan is useless. Nassau folks should look into using NICE Bus, the folks in Suffolk should look at 7 Bus, which does stop in Melville and Ronkonkoma and has a $10 strike fare special. I would hope Hampton Jitney does something similar. I just hope this strike is avoided altogether, the MTA seems to be in no hurry, taking the weekend off, I guess Prendergast and his friends wouldn't want to miss a weekend in the Hamptons.
ReplyDeleteWhich is exactly what they shouldn't be doing. We dont need more people driving, we need people taking buses. The MTA blew it once again. They have many buses from the city they could've used, but have chosen not so, as they wouldn't want any city folks to feel any pain whatsoever, even though we pay so much more than they. Really time to have the LIRR seperate from the MTA...
ReplyDeleteYup, I know. The Babylon Line is already spoiled with great service. Suffolk really gets screwed, Port Jeff line is completely ignored. And of course they leave out local bus options. NICE has already posted about it's options for the strike, unfortunately with so many buses OOS with breakdowns they dont have the equipment available to add much. But its still a better option than sitting on an hot 100 degree school bus. Thats how much MTA values us...thats all they could come up with. It just makes my blood boil!
ReplyDeleteOh, are the unions actually interested in negotiating in good faith now that they see the writing on the wall? Or are they still pushing the same exact deal, just with a different sized font...
ReplyDeleteI drew this up, I feel this makes a little more sense.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.dropbox.com/s/5pdx9wtsf8anp8w/LIRR_Contingency.png
Negotiations resume Monday. Turns out the unions would not show up on Saturday unless the got an extra days pay and all the copper they could carry
ReplyDeleteWhat I don't really understand is why there are only 350 shuttle buses. It seems like there would be a lot more available:
ReplyDeleteThe NYCDOE has 2306 diesel-powered school buses under contract (1). Some of those are the small buses that can only transport about 15 people, but let's assume there are 1500 full-size (can fit 50 people) school buses available. (Given the proportion at which I tend to see the big vs small buses on the street, that seems like a reasonable guess). That's already 1500 buses, from NYC alone. If you add in the buses from Westchester, Nassau, and Suffolk Counties, it looks like those would have about 800 buses that could be used (2).
Then, during the bus bridges after Sandy the MTA publicized that it was using 330 buses (3). Even assuming they increase service on express bus routes in Queens and do not cancel routes elsewhere, that leaves about 300 buses spare.
Companies like Academy, Greyhound, and Coach USA all offer charters and have spares as well. If even 200 buses could be obtained from the NYC area, that would already be significant.
In total, that's 1500 + 800 = 2300 school buses, 300 transit buses, and 200 coach buses. If school buses can carry 50 people, transit buses around 80 (they are designed for standees), and coaches around 70 (including standees), that gives a total of 115000+24000+14000=153000 people transported, if each bus fills up once.
Of course, buses could have exclusive lanes (superior to even HOV lanes) along the highways so they could avoid the massive traffic jams bound to occur. Assuming even every third bus could make two trips from Long Island to Manhattan in time, that's 200000 people, or two-thirds of the LIRR's ridership. That's 13 times what the MTA promises to be able to transport.
While my estimates are probably overly high, the point stands. Why is there such a small amount of buses?
(1) http://schools.nyc.gov/Offices/Transportation/default.htm
(2) The population of NYC is approximately 8.3 million, and Westchester+Nassau+Suffolk is about 4 million. Assuming the ratio of people to kids (and thus to buses) is more or less equal, that yields ~800 buses. There's probably even more given that Long Island is less dense than NYC, but let's take a conservative estimate.
(3) http://www.empirecenter.org/publications/the-mtas-sandy-feat-bus-bridges/
The TWU in New York has specifically said that it is not interested in helping union-bust the LIRR, and the express bus services in particular operate with fixed subsidies by the City. I don't think the City would be very happy to pay for services it wouldn't be getting during a strike period.
ReplyDeleteThat's really robbing Paul to pay peter. There is simply no way to even come close to replicating the rail service that the LIRR provides. We're arguing the difference between woefully short and depressingly short here. It's not like the MTA has the extra equipment needed to move 300,000 people just laying around in depots.
ReplyDeleteSomebody said something that made lots of sense why not make a long island transportation authority?
ReplyDeleteI hear u obviously mta management is taking this strike so serikusly they took the weekend off!!
ReplyDeletejust what Long Island needs...another "authority" . We saw how well the power "authority" served us during Sandy. We see how well dumb-ass stupid water "authorities" serve Nassau County.. Precisely what does a water "authority" do????? Long Island "Authorities" are cesspools of corruption and privilege pure and simple . Thanks no. Long Island has proven it can't properly manage "Authorities". My ticket would cost $1,000 a month to line some politicians pocket
ReplyDeleteYou are much, much more expensive to serve than people in the city. The same number of dollars spent on running a bus (or a train) can serve far more people in New York City than in Nassau or Suffolk. This is simply because people in NYC live closer together.
ReplyDeleteThe NYCDOE can't stop transporting schoolchildren to school. That would not be legal. Many of those school buses have to be used for their intended purpose.
ReplyDeleteThey will be lucky to get the 350 buses.
ReplyDeleteThe Sandy bridges used NYC Transit buses with NYC Transit drivers. They're afraid to use them, because they think the NYCT unions will refuse to do the work.
ReplyDelete