The New York Metropolitan Area, of which Long Island finds itself included within, is an area spanning over 13,000 square miles, has a population of almost 24 million people, and had a gross metropolitan product of nearly $1.39 trillion in 2013. At the center of it is New York County, which sits on the island of Manhattan. Manhattan has developed into a huge metropolis where hundreds of thousands of people work every day. Naturally, they all can’t live right near the CBD, so, over the course of time, people moved out away from the CBD, first to the outer boroughs, and then even further out into the surrounding counties, and then those people commuted back into the CBD. On the average weekday, over 600,000 people who live in the suburbs ride, drive, bike, or walk into the city.
The LIRR has been around on Long Island for about as long as you can get, and while it was originally built to bring people from Brooklyn to Greenport where they would board ferries to travel to New England, it has been operated primarily as a commuter operation for much of its history. Historically, a large percentage of the working age population has worked in Manhattan, fitting the stereotypes of the typical suburb. As the LIRR and its ridership grew, its infrastructure and particularly its service patterns, were built around this pattern. A cursory glance at the LIRR’s timetables shows an impressive peak-direction operation with tons of morning trains heading straight into New York, and a similar amount coming back east in the evening. Upon further inspection, it becomes clear that there hasn’t been all that much consideration for people who work on Long Island during the day, whether they live in the city and work out on Long Island (reverse commuters) or they both live and work on Long Island (intra-island commuters).
However, in recent years, there has been a noticeable shift away from large hordes of Long Islanders working in Manhattan. More and more people are taking jobs that are located on Long Island that are closer to home, and while the LIRR’s ridership continues to grow slightly from year-to-year, they haven’t really done anything to adapt with this shift in the working population.
The first graph at the right shows where people who live in Nassau and Suffolk County work. In 2015, about 162,321 Long Islanders make their way into Manhattan to go to work, and while that’s a significant amount (about 128 full 12-car trains), it’s dwarfed by the rest of the pie—the 2,690,679 Long Islanders who don’t work in Manhattan, or over 94% of the total population.
As you might imagine, making significant planning decisions for things like infrastructure improvements and how service patterns are going to be aligned with only the orange portion of the chart at the top-right in mind is a slippery slope. The LIRR is leaving an enormous amount of riders on the table, and while all of the 2.7 million Long Islanders who don’t work in Manhattan probably aren’t all going to be well served by the LIRR, there’s likely a significant chunk that would like to use the LIRR to get to or from work, but can’t or won’t because service patterns don’t fit their needs.
Unfortunately, the current state of the LIRR’s constrained infrastructure does not lend itself to more reverse-peak and intra-island service. East Side Access will mark a pivotal point for the LIRR, allowing them to operate many more trains throughout the system. But the question will be, will they use that new-found capacity to align service patterns to serve Long Island as a whole, or just the Manhattan-bound rush-hour commuters. The question is, will they take advantage of it?
The LIRR is undertaking a number of readiness projects that will increase capacity at certain key locations on Long Island so that they can make the most of the new capacity East Side Access will bring. Unfortunately, while many of these projects are going to increase the LIRR’s ability to run Manhattan-bound service, the improvements are coming at great sacrifices to the LIRR’s non-Manhattan commuters and Long Islanders who don’t work in Manhattan. The Jamaica Capacity Improvement Project is going to streamline the interlockings through Jamaica, allowing the LIRR to run more trains to Manhattan, but that’s coming at great expense to the railroad’s service to Brooklyn—to accommodate these changes, a new platform F is going to be constructed on the south side of the station and it’s proposed that Brooklyn service is going to be relegated to a cross-borough scoot that add an additional up-and-over transfer and more travel time for everyone who currently commutes into Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn (i.e. not Manhattan). Similarly, projects like the Mid-Suffolk Electric Yard in Ronkonkoma are going to allow the LIRR to store more trains in yards out on Long Island so that they can operate more peak-direction service to Manhattan, but running more trains along the Main Line is going to come at great expense to reverse-commuters, who will have to deal with even longer gaps in service the city out to Long Island than currently exist today.
I’m not saying that the LIRR ought to uproot its entire commuter operation into Manhattan now to serve the reverse-peak and intra-island commuters, but to ignore the enormous potential for increased ridership that improved reverse-peak and intra-island service can bring would only be detrimental to the LIRR, and Long Island as a whole. Companies are very reluctant to put their offices out on Long Island because of the lack of public transportation options during the reverse-peak periods. Meanwhile, commercial development has exploded in places like the Hudson Valley and northern New Jersey where reverse-peak commuter rail service is significantly better than what we have here on Long Island. Metro-North in the Hudson Valley and NJTransit in New Jersey have seen the benefit in strong reverse-peak and intra-county service, and they have benefited greatly from it. It’s time for Long Island and the LIRR to get in on the action.
