Dangerous Roads newsletter: Nightmare travel week reveals fragility of transportation system

Heading home late Thursday night after a long day in Manhattan covering LIRR labor negotiations, Grand Central Madison — and my Long Beach Branch train — were far more crowded than usual. The reason? An afternoon track fire inside one of the East River Tunnels knocked out all LIRR service to and from Penn Station, the busiest train station in the United States. Service remained limited through the Friday evening rush hour.

Had I already been at Penn when service shut down, I may have opted to take the E train to Jamaica. But doing so would have come with its own problems, as several subway lines were temporarily suspended Thursday afternoon after an M train struck and killed a person in Queens.

Some of those commuters using transit last Thursday may have done so to avoid the George Washington Bridge, which saw several lane closures a day earlier because of debris falling from the ceiling above the lower deck.

I suppose my commute would have been worse if I worked out of the Newsday newsroom Thursday, as a sinkhole near Exit 49 of the LIE — the one closest to Newsday’s Melville offices — swallowed up a car Thursday afternoon and forced a temporary shutdown of one of Long Island’s busiest roadways.

And this was all before an LIRR union strike shut down the busiest commuter railroad on the continent for three days, sending tens of thousands of commuters scrambling to get where they needed to go without a train to get them there.

I can’t remember a more surreal stretch of time on the beat since becoming Newsday’s transportation reporter, and it’s not over yet. Although, thankfully, word came down Monday night of a settlement to the LIRR labor dispute, trains aren’t expected to be fully running again until later Tuesday afternoon.

The events of the last few days helped put into focus the importance and delicate nature of our region’s transportation network. More than Manhattan’s breathtaking skyline, or Long Island’s gorgeous beaches, it is a critical component of what makes the New York metro area livable. Buses operate on roadways that connect to subways that connect to rail systems that connect to airports that connect you to just about anywhere in the world.

When that network goes down, employees can't get to work to earn a living, or have to spend $900 on Uber rides; children can't visit their mom in the hospital; it takes three hours to pick up your parent's ashes; businesses are hurt by having no customers or workers; final exams and graduations are missed; medical visits aren’t made; and medical problems get worse.

There will be a lot of lingering resentment coming out of the events of the last few days. We'll do our best to figure out why all this happened. But for now, we've all got somewhere to be.

Readers speak up

Many regular transit users may have gotten a reminder about the dangers of Long Island's roads when the LIRR strike pushed them to drive instead. This reader needed no reminding.

I drive to work early, about the times bars are closing. I can say I never see police on the parkway or the LIE in the morning, or the afternoon for that matter. Besides the lack of enforcement, the horrible road conditions and poor or no lighting at all (some sections of the roads I travel have had the lights out for years) the roads are certainly not getting safer to travel.

Andrew Leibman, Levittown

Expanding newsletter

We're expanding this newsletter to address transportation concerns beyond just dangerous roads. Any thoughts on the LIRR strike? Send us your suggestions for topics you’d like to see covered, and any suggestions for a new name for the newsletter to roads@newsday.com.

By Alfonso A. Castillo

alfonso.castillo@newsday.com@alfonsoreports

Alfonso Castillo has been reporting for Newsday since 1999 and covering the transportation beat since 2008. He grew up in the Bronx and Queens and now lives in Valley Stream with his wife and two sons.