The LIRR and Port Jefferson have never really hit it off in their 143-year history. All the conditions exist for the LIRR to be really successful in this part of Long Island—Port Jefferson has a pretty vibrant downtown, it is the southern terminus of the Bridgeport-Port Jefferson ferry, a vital link on and off Long Island, it’s in the heart of the North Brookhaven area which is one of the few places on Long Island that has seen considerable growth in recent years, and it’s a miserable place to get to/from by car (you’re either stuck hitting every light on Nesconset-Port Jefferson highway (NY-347), or you have to work your way up from the LIE on Patchogue-Port Jefferson Road (NY-112)).
But despite all of those factors, peak-direction ridership from Port Jefferson is weak at best and reverse-peak ridership to Port Jefferson is almost non-existent. This is due mostly to the fact that the Port Jefferson station isn’t actually in the Village of Port Jefferson—it’s in the hamlet of Port Jefferson Station, which is more than a mile to the southeast of the main village center and the waterfront. Now I have done that that walk before (actually it was a run the last time I did it), and it’s doable, but it’s not something that I would want to do with any luggage, children, at night, or anytime it’s raining, snowing, cold, or hot. And there’s no real/coordinated bus connections either, so overall it’s not well connected to the area it’s supposed to serve.
Back in March there was a large fire at the abandoned Lawrence Aviation site a little to the southwest of the Village. The run-down industrial site has been the site of several suspicious fires in the past and it’s overall a plight on the area. The night of the fire I was chatting with a Village of Port Jefferson councilmember on Twitter and he expressed an interest in the LIRR moving its yards from their current locations to the Lawrence Aviation site. The idea was likely precipitated by the LIRR’s recent decision to move some of its ‘dead line’ equipment (a set of old, abandoned-looking, graffitied rail cars) from Morris Park to the Port Jefferson West Yard while they do work near the diesel maintenance facility west of Jamaica. Local officials, who have been trying to stimulate growth in the struggling Port Jefferson Station community haven’t been super thrilled with these ugly things just sitting there.
Relocating the yards would not only move the noise and vibrations from the LIRR’s diesel equipment to a less populated area but also give the LIRR more room for expansion. The Lawrence Aviation site is larger than the size of the current yards, and they can theoretically have the run of the place. The lack of an electric storage yard on the Port Jefferson Branch has long been a problem—Huntington was never meant to be a permanent end of electrification, so as a result, there’s very little capacity to store trains there. I think extending electrification to Port Jefferson is reasonable and desirable (and 70% of my fellow Long Islanders agree)—doing that and building a larger electric yard on the Lawrence Aviation site would kill two birds with one stone. Moving the yards would also enable the development of the land on which they currently sit (potentially even by the MTA)—as there has been significant interest in building up the Port Jefferson Station area.
If we’re going to talk about moving the yards, why not give some thought to moving the station as well? The station’s current location makes it very impractical for people who want to visit Port Jefferson to either work, shop, or catch the ferry to Bridgeport to do so by train. While putting a station at the intersection of Broadway and Main Street would not be possible, I think it could be reasonable to relocate the station to unused land in PSEG LI/National Grid’s Port Jefferson power station just to the north and east of the Village center. The tracks can break from the current Port Jefferson Branch alignment and run north-northeast on the PSEG LI right-of-way to the new station site on the water.
This location would only be a half-mile from the waterfront and downtown Port Jefferson (while the current station is about three-quarters of a mile further). Not perfect, but definitely an improvement over the current situation, especially if the west shore of Port Jefferson Harbor is built up a little more. It would also likely improve travel times, since the PSEG LI right-of-way is a straight shot, and the last two miles of the current Port Jefferson Branch alignment is definitely not.
Such an alignment could look like this…the yards can be moved to the Lawrence Aviation site and are expanded, and the station can be moved to the PSEG LI/National Grid site closer to downtown Port Jefferson. There are definitely strong pros and cons to both locations—the Port Jefferson Village station site is closer to the ferry and village center, but the Port Jefferson Station station site is in a growing area itself, it’s much easier to reach by road, and connecting the development its relocation would enable to transit would be valuable. I suppose it comes down to the issue of whether Port Jefferson should be viewed as an origin (i.e. a place where people live and commute from) or a destination (i.e. a place where people from outside the area travel to). Since I suspect most Port Jefferson residents who commute to the city drive to Ronkonkoma anyways, I think moving the station and targeting it more as a destination would be better for the area overall.
