Early shuttle riders: A disruptive headache
Diego Alvarez, 41, is happy there’s a settlement. But, he said, “It’s been a headache,” with his typical 1-hour commute from an LIRR station within walking distance of his Seaford home turning into a 2 ½ hour ordeal.
“We didn’t want this,” he said outside the Hicksville LIRR station as he was about to step onto a shuttle bus to an A subway train stop in Howard Beach, near Kennedy Airport. “We’re already paying so much for the train.”
Alvarez then planned to take the A train to 42nd Street in Manhattan for his audiovisual job. He starts work at 9 a.m. but arrived at the shuttle bus at 5:40 a.m. With traffic and the long subway ride, he didn’t want to take the chance of arriving at work late.
Alvarez and other passengers did not have to wait in line for the buses, which were assembled in the parking lot, one arriving as another departed about seven or eight minutes apart.
Melissa Kamper, who grew up in East Meadow and now lives in Buffalo, said the settlement didn’t help her.
Kamper arrived at Penn Station from Buffalo on May 6, visiting her parents in East Meadow and then her girlfriend in Philadelphia. Her Amtrak train back to Buffalo is scheduled for 10.20 a.m. but she was at the Hicksville station at 5:50 a.m.
On a normal day, the trip on the train from Merrick into Penn would be an easy hour ride.
“People need a living wage,” she said, “but it was disruptive. But I guess that’s good. Disruption works.”
David Olson covers health care. He has worked at Newsday since 2015 and previously covered immigration, multicultural issues and religion at The Press-Enterprise in Southern California.
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