Last June, California Chrome was in contention for the first Triple Crown at the Belmont Stakes since 1978. Attendance at the 2014 Belmont Stakes was one of the biggest the New York Racing Association (NYRA) had ever seen, and a very large number of those riders, nearly 40,000 to the racetrack and 30,000 home, took the LIRR to and from Belmont Park. Things didn’t go nearly as smooth as anyone would’ve liked, and as the Belmont Stakes is position to see another potential Triple Crown winner, the LIRR believes that they are better prepared for this year’s crowds.
The railroad has historically had trouble moving a large volume of people out of the Belmont Park station, and the layout of the overall Belmont Park complex as well as the timing of the even only helps amplify that problem. On the Belmont Stakes day, there’s a number of smaller races that occur throughout the day leading up to the big Belmont Stakes race in the late-afternoon. But after that race, there’s only one or two small races afterwards before the whole event is over, so the event typically ends quite rapidly. The grandstand at Belmont Park is also linked via an overpass to the LIRR station platforms so it’s just a short walk (about 700 feet) from the grandstand exit to the staircases down to the trains. (As I have postulated before, a long walk between a venue and the transit station is actually better, as it causes the crowd to spread out and not all arrive at the station at one time).
As long as I can remember, getting everyone out of Belmont Park has been some sort of an issue after the Belmont Stakes because the spur just isn’t designed to instantaneously move several thousand riders out of the park at once. The 2014 Belmont Stakes was an exceptionally difficult one for the LIRR. The lure of being able to see a potential Triple Crown brought tens of thousands of more people to Belmont Park than would normally come, and the LIRR saw record ridership on its trains. When the big race came, California Chrome did not make it to the finish line in first place and over 30,000 people who just watched the day’s main attraction not live up to the hype made a bee line to the train station to get home.
Getting everyone out of Belmont Park at the end of the Belmont Stakes was slow—trains continued to run into the evening, and the LIRR even added additional trains, and at the end of the night, everyone got out by the last scheduled train out. With attention diverted from the Triple Crown, the long waits for the train and the similarly long waits to get out of the parking lots at Belmont Park drew national attention. And at the end of the day, the NYRA and the LIRR made the news because things were slow—not because people were severely injured, someone died while waiting in line, two trains collided, or anything like that. Getting everyone out was slow, and it’s slow every year after the Belmont Stakes when it draws ‘normal’ crowds, and it’s not like it was orders or magnitude slower after last year’s Belmont Stakes either.
Nevertheless, there were a lot of questions being asked of the LIRR and what they could have done to make things not as slow as it was. I wrote at the time that things went as well as they could be reasonably expected to go given the physical constraints on the racetrack spur, and I still think that was the case. Communication could have been better, though it could be a sunny and warm day in the middle of April and the LIRR’s communication could use some improvement. There was a lot of talk about what the LIRR should do for this year to make this not as unpleasant or slow as it was last year. After the September MTA Board LIRR Committee meeting, LIRR President Patrick Nowakowski gave us a general idea of what the railroad planned to do at Belmont Park. Their plan included constructing a high-level platform, lengthening the station tracks so they could accommodate 10-car trains, and fixing up the east leg of the wye that leads onto the racetrack spur so that they can line trains up on the Hempstead Branch and bring them into Belmont Park from the east instead of relying on only the one west leg track to get onto and off of the racetrack spur.
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| LIRR crews working on the new platforms at Belmont Park, seen from the Cross Island Parkway (Photo: Uli Seit/Newsday) |
Over the course of the winter, the LIRR has constructed two high-level platforms at Belmont Park—one between station track 7 and former yard track 8, and one between station tracks 3 and 4. The new high-level platforms are 10-cars long, which is two more cars than the previous platforms held. The LIRR said it is not going to use the remaining platforms that were not upgraded to high-level platforms (which actually results in a net loss of two station tracks).
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| The two new high-level platforms at Belmont Park. (Photo: MTA Long Island Rail Road/John Spoltore) |
In total, the LIRR has spent about $4 million on its share of the improvements. There was no word on what the source of funding is (considering that the improvements were not included in the 2009-2014 Capital Program and there was no reallocation request of any sort to transfer the funds from another project, I suspect it came out of the LIRR’s already tight operating budget). $4 million is a lot, and we could play the what-else-could-you-buy-for-$4 million game, but if you were to look at ticket sales data for 2014, the LIRR sold about $445,000 in tickets to Belmont Park in 2014. It will take the LIRR almost 9 years of record breaking crowds buying round-trip tickets to the Belmont Stakes to come up with the $4 million in fare revenue to break even on the station improvements. And since there’s not a Triple Crown contender racing in the Belmont Stakes every year, it’s likely going to take upwards of a decade to break even on the station improvements.
This is a consequence of the fact that, outside of the Belmont Stakes Day one day a year, the Belmont Park station is used by either very few riders or not at all for the rest of the year. Racing only occurs at Belmont Park Wednesday through Sunday for a few months in the spring, late summer, and fall. Back in 2009, when the MTA was coming up short, the MTA cut regular service to Belmont Park, only keeping it around on the weekend before and the weekend of the Belmont Stakes. Regular service was eventually restored, however, only with a substantial operating subsidy to the tune of $150,000 from the New York Racing Association. When regular service to Belmont Park was cut, it was only used by 35 riders a day, and it’s reasonable to believe that it’s similar today (that gives an average operating cost of nearly $30 per passenger). As a result, these improvements are really only being made for one day a year—the day of the Belmont Stakes. I question the wisdom of spending all of this money on a station that the LIRR voluntarily runs trains to one day a year—especially when there are daily riders that are either delayed or stand on one or both of their trips almost every weekday of the year.
Making these improvements wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if the LIRR had bigger and better plans for Belmont Park (like turning it into a Park & Ride and running regularly scheduled service from it), but if that’s not going to be the case, the LIRR better hope that the Cosmos do end up building their new stadium at Belmont Park, otherwise it’s an awful lot of money to spend for a station that’s used one day a year.
The station improvements will make for a nice press conference, but high-level platforms and longer platforms still don’t fix some of the major infrastructure obstacles—there’s still the long and sharp curve to get out to the Main Line, you still have to cross over the Main Line tracks at grade, and you still have to deal with thousands of people flooding the grandstand exit at once. This year’s Belmont Stakes will be an interesting test for the LIRR—it’ll show whether or not spending $4 million on a station that’s used once a year was a big waste of money, or a colossal waste of money, and now that American Pharaoh has won the Preakness Stakes, it’s now vying for the Triple Crown, so the LIRR better be ready!
