LIRR aiming for regular service Tuesday, roads improving after storm, officials say

The LIRR aimed for regular service Tuesday morning and town and county crews cleared most major roadways as the region went back to work following a weekend nor'easter with near-record snowfall.

The Long Island Rail Road had a barrage of service disruptions Monday morning, some storm-related, including an hourlong suspension of service in and out of Penn Station at the height of the rush; a train derailment in a Port Jefferson yard that caused four trains to be canceled; another four cancellations attributed to switching problems in Valley Stream, and dozens of other delays throughout all of the railroad’s 11 branches.

In a statement, LIRR president Phillip Eng attributed some disruptions Monday to "residual weather issues and an Amtrak switch failure."

The LIRR’s issues continued through the Monday evening rush, with several delays of up to 40 minutes, including on the Port Jefferson and Ronkonkoma branches.

Meanwhile, town crews struggled to plow roadways from the storm that was declared a blizzard in Suffolk, and dumped the second-highest daily snowfall amount on record for Long Island.

Brookhaven Highway Superintendent Dan Losquadro said on Monday roads were passable after parts of the area received nearly 24 Inches of snow. The majority of the day was spent widening roads, clearing intersections and or cul-de-sacs.

"Your primary focus has to be getting those roads open and accessible," he said. "Making sure those roads are passable doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re pushed back all the way to the curb. Sometimes that does take a couple of days."

Some residents failed to remove vehicles off the road when the state of emergency was declared, creating clean-up "headaches," Losquadro said.

"Especially in a large storm like this when you do get those folks who leave their cars on the street it really causes headaches because it’s a large volume of snow that’s still left out in the road," he said.

In the Town of Southampton, which got hit particularly hard by the storm, all the roads are "passable," said Public Safety & Emergency Management Administrator Ryan Murphy.

"In many cases, they still have some snow on them," Murphy said of town roads, adding that "cascading" delays for bus services can result, as each stop may take a few minutes longer.

In Islip, Tom Owens, commissioner of department of public works, said approximately 6,000 tons of salt were dropped in the town between Friday and end of business Monday.

On Tuesday, more salt will be dispersed along with "checking those icy conditions to make it safe for school buses and then as the temperatures rise, scrap the road off" of snow, Owens said. "I’m thinking a couple of warm days and it will be back to normal again."

County roads were also in decent shape, officials said.

"The majority of county roads have already been cleared and are down to blacktop," Nicole Russo, a spokeswoman for Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone said in an email.

Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, whose new administration had its first bad-weather test, said Monday that he mainly encountered blacktop when he set out to assess conditions

Suffolk County Transit, which also suspended all service Saturday, was still dealing with storm-related disruptions, officials said, including detours on some routes and delays it attributed to "snow-covered and icy streets." By Monday afternoon, the situation had shown signs of improvement.

Also Monday, several Long Island school districts switched to remote instruction under the state’s "COVID-19 Snow Day Pilot Program," a renewed state policy that allows districts to go virtual in the event of bad weather or other natural disasters.

The policy first took effect in 2020-21, as a way of providing more schedule flexibility during the pandemic.

With John Hildebrand and Keldy Ortiz

By Alfonso A. Castillo

alfonso.castillo@newsday.com,joan.gralla@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.