LIRR riders react on first day of planned service changes

As a new wave of buses rolled in around 11:15 a.m., passengers crowded outside Hicksville’s Long Island Rail Road station, scrambling to find the bus going to their destination and then jockeying for a seat once they found it — the result of service changes set every weekend this month.

Christopher Lewis, 21, of Ronkonkoma, said he was growing frustrated as he waited for an LIRR bus. He works nights at construction sites in New York City on Fridays, and then faces a long commute home in the morning. The buses add an extra hour to his trip.

“I’d normally be home by now,” he said outside of the Hicksville station about 11 a.m. “It would usually be a straight ride, but now I have to take the train from Jamaica to Hicksville and then get off and get on a bus. It’s an extra step; it’s not right.” 

Lewis said he wished that the LIRR had taken into account people who have to work on weekends.

“Not everyone has the weekend off,” he said. “They should do this at night.” 

Service changes are in effect on two branches of the Long Island Rail Road because of work on positive train control and the Double Track project. Buses are replacing trains between Ronkonkoma and Hicksville Saturday and Sunday while work on the Double Track project is underway, the LIRR said. These service changes will be in place for every weekend in August. The railroad advises arriving up to 45 minutes before normal train times.

There also will be widespread peak and off-peak schedule changes Monday through Friday on the Ronkonkoma, Babylon, Far Rockaway and Port Jefferson branches for the Double Track project, the railroad said.

In between periods of heavy rain Saturday, customers bustled in and out of the Hicksville LIRR station. Every space in the parking lot was full.

LIRR employees directed small groups of customers on and off buses to train stations farther east.

Chris Sorochin, 58, of Farmingdale, usually takes the LIRR on Saturdays. He rides the Ronkonkoma line from Farmingdale to Hicksville, then takes a county bus to get to his part-time job as a tutor in Manhasset.

Sorochin, a teacher, said the schedule changes have been ongoing for months while the LIRR completes work on weekends at the Farmingdale station. Taking an LIRR bus has meant adding an extra 20 minutes to his commute, but he said he’s gotten used to it.

“It’s really not bad,” he said. “Under the regular schedule, I still had to wait for an hour for the county bus. The LIRR bus gets me here at 9:06 and then the county bus gets here at 10.” 

Anna Kim, 18, of Dix Hills, said she often takes the train into the city on summer Saturdays. The changes don’t bother her, she said. She prefers to leave directly from Hicksville anyway and started her trip there Saturday.

“I just looked at the schedule and showed up,” she said, waiting for a 9:58 a.m. train to Penn Station. “I feel like the price maybe should be lower, but generally I don’t have a huge problem with track work.”

Earlier on Saturday, service on the Port Washington Branch had been reduced from half-hourly to hourly because of positive train control testing between Woodside and Bayside in Queens. But half-hourly service had been restored in both directions around noon. Similar testing will occur there every weekend this month, from 7 a.m. to noon Saturdays and from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sundays.

The Double Track project is expected to improve service and reliability on the Ronkonkoma Branch and reduce delays by adding flexibility, the railroad has said. Positive train control uses radio transponders on trains and tracks in an effort to prevent crashes.

Denise Pempsell said she was concerned about how the changes would affect her trip to her 50th high school reunion in Hauppauge. Pempsell, of midtown Manhattan, was hoping to take the LIRR to Central Islip, but instead arranged for a friend to pick her up in Hicksville on Saturday morning. She was uncertain about how the bus system would run, she said.

“There is supposed to be a tour of the high school at 1 p.m. and I was worried about making it on time,” she said.

Still, she said her trip on the train went according to schedule. She’s used to planning ahead, as a Manhattan resident.

“It can be crazy in Manhattan,” she said. “You just have to get your ticket ahead of time and arrive early.”