LIRR ridership showing some signs of recovery

Despite dropping for another month, the Long Island Rail Road's ridership showed some signs of life in October, taking into account an anticipated service disruption that caused the agency to lose thousands of riders, officials said.

As it has been for 21 of the past 22 months, LIRR ridership in October was lower than during the same month in the previous year. The LIRR carried about 6.8 million people last month, about half a percent less than in October 2009.

But LIRR officials say the drop is largely attributable to low ridership over the weekend of Oct. 23 and 24, when the LIRR drastically limited service in order to work on the "Jamaica Cutover" project to upgrade the switching and signal system. LIRR chief financial officer Mark Young said the agency lost about 99,000 typical riders that weekend.

"If not for the cutover, we actually would have seen a growth of about one percent," Young said.

Even with that loss, the LIRR so-called "non-commutation" ridership - customers traveling during off peak hours - was higher than during October 2009 by about 14,000 customers.

LIRR ridership has had a mostly steady decline since late 2008. Officials have said the poor economic climate is largely to blame, because fewer people have jobs to travel to.

Making the already shrinking ridership even worse in recent months have been a number of planned and unplanned incidents, including an August fire at Jamaica that affected service for a week and a September tornado that knocked dozens of trees onto tracks.

SEE PHOTOSLIRR trains and commuters through the years

Young said the combination of weather problems, the fire, the Jamaica Cutover and the fact that Long Island did not host the U.S. Open golf tournament this year accounts for about 400,000 fewer riders in 2010 than in 2009.