LIRR to Lease 8 MARC Cars for Summer Service

This item appeared first in News and Notes: May 25, 2017

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It’s only taken 21 years, but it seems the LIRR has finally owned up to the fact its diesel fleet is too small for what’s currently needed, and is doing something (albeit small) about it. On Wednesday, the MTA Board approved an inter-governmental lease that will allow the LIRR to lease between eight and 21 coaches from MARC, a commuter rail operator that runs in the Baltimore and Washington areas in Maryland. The lease calls for a lease of eight cars this year, with up to 21 in future years. The cars will be used to add seats on diesel trains during the busy summer period.

It’s good the LIRR is finally doing something about its too-small diesel fleet, but eight cars only scratches the surface. The insufficiency of the LIRR’s diesel service is a problem year-round, and the benefits of a larger diesel fleet should be clear. As a quick review, these problems first started with the purchase of the LIRR’s current diesel fleet in the mid-1990’s. The procurement, which was signed-off by then-LIRR president Thomas Prendergast, had over 3,200 fewer seats (a 15% reduction). Eight additional single-level cars will yield about 856 more seats, still short of what the LIRR’s old diesel fleet had, and more importantly, short of what the LIRR needs…

Last year the LIRR had an average of 1,004 standees on diesel trains on summer Fridays, between heavy ridership on Montauk trains, and trains on other diesel branches being short of cars. The additional seats will definitely help, but it won’t be enough for about half of summer weekends (there were more than 856 standees on seven of the fifteen summer Fridays in 2016…). The graph below shows standees on diesel trains last summer—the red dashed line is 856 seats:

Poor service in diesel territory is not a one day a year problem—the LIRR fails to meet its own Maximum Vehicle Headway guidelines at every station in diesel territory, and ridership suffers as a result. The LIRR could conceivably support a procurement for 95 more bi-level cars to improve service 365 days a year, right now. But solving the big deficiencies in diesel territory seems to be nowhere on the Manhattan and Ronkonkoma Railroad’s radar.

The lease is definitely a step in the right direction, and it seems now that Thomas Prendergast is no longer the Chairman and CEO of the MTA, it seems the LIRR is at least ready to start acknowledging the problem. But more needs to be done—now.