LIRR riders plot out ways to get to work
Coram resident Susi Nunez usually takes the LIRR to visit her ailing mother in the city on the weekends, but opted not to make the trek because of the strike.
“Right now, as we speak, my mother is in the hospital and I’m trying to go see my mother, but there’s no way for me to go out there,” she told Newsday at the Brentwood LIRR station on Sunday afternoon, as she was changing buses.
Nunez said she doesn’t know how to efficiently commute to the city without the LIRR, adding that the one bus route available is “a headache.”
“There’s only one bus that I know. I’m googling on my phone map. It says take the 4 bus to the last stop, and then from there I have to switch over to the Nassau buses, and then after that switch over to Jamaica, Queens to take the regular trains. That’s the only way,” she said.
“Hopefully the train will start working, but who knows,” she added.
Nelson Medina, a Riverhead resident who was at the Brentwood LIRR station on Sunday afternoon, said he was approached by a man who was trying to get to New York City and was confused about why the trains weren’t running.
“I’m like, ‘wow, you’re not going to get there. You gotta get somebody to come get you here,’” Medina told Newsday about the interaction. “It’s a very big inconvenience. But I get it. The operators are looking for more money. But …, [they] have to come to some sort of agreement.”
Medina has family in New York City but “luckily” did not need to travel that way this weekend. He said that, if an emergency happens, he’ll have to shell out for an Uber.
“God forbid something happened and I got to rush,” he said. “I can call somebody for an Uber — 100%. But it’s just very inconvenient.”
Sam Kmack covers the Town of Islip for Newsday. He is a graduate of the University of Southern California and previously worked as a city watchdog reporter in the Phoenix metro area, as well as an investigative journalist at the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting.
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