LIRR

A Newsday video story highlights the way commuters have adjusted to the reduced LIRR service this week.

As the Long Island Rail Road prepares for another day without full service, the latest word from the agency is that it will take several days to restore full service. “Over two-hundred wires need to be checked for possible damage from the fire,” the LIRR said in a press release.” Once the repairs are completed, intricate and thorough testing must be performed on the switches and signals. From the preliminary LIRR investigation into the incident, it appears that the cause of the cable fire was weather-related; it is still under investigation.”

Still, the majority of service is moving through Jamaica now albeit at slower speeds. For the morning rush, the authority offers up these words of advice:

While the Wednesday AM Rush service plan includes cancellation of 33 westbound AM rush hour trains, the LIRR will be running 75 percent of the 144 trains that normally operate. However, there will be residual delays from added station stops. Customers will be able to exit or board trains at Jamaica Station, however trains stopping at Jamaica will not be held for scheduled connections to/from Penn Station, Atlantic Terminal, Hunterspoint Avenue, and Long Island City. LIRR station personnel will be available at Jamaica to assist customers with service information.

The service on the Port Washington Branch will operate normally while there is still no train service between West Hepstead and Valley Stream or westbound service from St. Albans. The full list of canceled trains is available here.

PM rush service is as follows with canceled trains at the above link. The MTA estimates that 66 percent of evening trains will run as scheduled.

Aside from the regular Port Washington service, the evening rush hour service from Penn Station will consist of dedicated trains making local stops to Huntington/Port Jefferson, Ronkonkoma/Greenport, Long Beach, Babylon and Montauk. Customers are advised to board trains that do not require a change at Jamaica.

LIRR is offering Hempstead and Far Rockaway-bound trains only from Atlantic Terminal in downtown Brooklyn, which can be reached by subway. There will be no Hempstead and Far Rockaway service from Penn Station.

The following changes will also be in effect:

• Oyster Bay: Travel to Mineola for connections to all Oyster Bay branch stops.
• West Hempstead: Travel to Valley Stream where buses will be available to take them onto to their home stations.
• Patchogue, Speonk and Montauk: Customers can connect to those trains at Babylon.
• There is no train service between Valley Stream and West Hempstead – bus service will be provided for train service at Valley Stream.
• There will be no eastbound train service from St. Albans – bus service will be provided between St. Albans and Jamaica.

I’ll continue to offer updates as more information becomes available.

A graphic from The New York Times highlights the importance of the Hall Tower to LIRR operations east of Jamaica.

As the Long Island Rail Road continues to recover from the fire that knocked out the Hall Tower signal just east of Jamaica, the agency announced a reduced schedule throughout the day on Tuesday. The LIRR will run at 75 percent capacity in bound to New York City and 60 percent capacity outbound. This could be the reality on the ground for days to come as crews must check over 200 wires for possible damage.

For now, all service along the Port Washington Branch will continue to operate normally. The LIRR’s plans for the other lines during peak and off-peak hours are as follows, and for the why of it, check out how The Times explains it today:

It seems improbable that a piece of ancient machinery, a contraption of levers and pulleys designed in 1913, would be critical to the successful operation of one of the nation’s largest commuter railroads.

But the machinery, which remained on fire for about an hour, controls the 155 track switches at a crucial choke point: Jamaica Station, which 10 of the railroad’s 11 branches must travel through to get in and out of New York City.

With no way to direct trains onto their proper routes, railroad workers scrambled onto the tracks, spikes and mallets in hand, to lock the switches into place manually so that trains could travel by, a practice known in railroad parlance as “block and spike.”

:

Tuesday AM Rush

Thirty-three westbound AM rush hour trains — or 25 percent of the normal capacity — will be canceled. The complete list of canceled trains can be found here. As a result of the cancellations, the MTA expects residual delays from added station stops. Says the Rail Road, “Customers will be able to exit or board trains at Jamaica Station, however trains making scheduled stops at Jamaica will not be held for scheduled connections to Penn Station, Atlantic Terminal, Hunterspoint Avenue, and Long Island City.” LIRR personnel will be on hand to provide directions, and Manhattan-bound customers may be better off transferring to the E, J or Z trains at Jamaica.

There will be no train service between West Hempstead and Valley Stream with buses available at Valley Stream. Westbound trains will not run from St. Albans, and again, shuttle buses will provide service.

Eastbound reverse-peak service from Atlantic Terminal and Penn Station will operate at regularly scheduled times but with anticipated delays en route. There will be no eastbound train service from Jamaica to Locust Manor, Laurelton and Rosedale. The MTA will run buses instead.

Tuesday PM Rush

The LIRR’s plan for Tuesday evening is similar to Monday’s. Approximately 60 percent of the 120 regularly-scheduled trains that leave Manhattan will run, and the agency expects canceled trains, delays and no connections at Jamaica Station.

In addition to the Port Washington service, evening rush service from Penn Station will include dedicated trains making local stops to Huntington/Port Jefferson, Ronkonkoma/Greenport, Long Beach, Babylon and Montauk, but police will be engaging in serious crowd-control measures at Penn Station. MTA officers will carefully regulate the number of people entering the LIRR section of the terminal, allowing customers in as trains become available. Crowding is also a concern at Jamaica.

LIRR is will be offering Hempstead and Far Rockaway-bound trains only from Atlantic Terminal in downtown Brooklyn. There will be no Hempstead and Far Rockaway service from Penn Station.

LIRR customers were also advised of service changes if heading for the following destinations:

• Oyster Bay: Travel to Mineola for connections to all Oyster Bay branch stops.
• West Hempstead: Travel to Valley Stream where buses will be available to take them onto to their home stations.
• Patchogue, Speonk and Montauk: Customers can connect to those trains at Babylon.

I will continue to update with more information throughout the day.

After an earlier incident knocked out 10 of the LIRR’s 11 train routes, the MTA announced this evening that partial service has been restored on all routes. The authority says that “very limited service” through Jamaica has been restored but that trains do not have the ability to switch from one track to another east of that station. There are no regularly scheduled transfer at Jamaica tonight, and the MTA advises of us of the following service changes:

• Far Rockaway and Hempstead Branch customers must catch their train from Atlantic Terminal, Brooklyn.
• Customers for all other branches please depart from Penn Station.
• Montauk Branch customers, please take a Babylon Branch train and change at Babylon.
• Oyster Bay Branch customers, please change at Mineola.
• Port Jefferson Branch customers, please change at Hicksville or Huntington.
• West Hempstead Branch customers, please change at Valley Stream for bus service.

Currently, New York City Transit and MTA Bus routes are honoring LIRR fare tickets, and the MTA does not know how the switch fire will impact rush hour tomorrow morning. City Room has more on the cause and impact of the fire on the switching technology:

The fire occurred around 11 a.m. on Monday after an electrical surge in two or more cables embedded in the tracks near Jamaica Station, officials said. The surge fed into a crucial control tower just east of the station, known as the Hall Tower, and sparked a fire in the ancient equipment that controls the station’s track switches.

That equipment, which was designed in 1913 and requires individual workers to use levers and pulleys to move switches, is scheduled to be replaced this fall with a modern, computerized system.

To restore some service, track workers used mallets and spikes to physically lock the switches into place so that trains could move through the station.

It sounds as though Long Island-bound commuters should just prepare for a leisurely trip home tonight and try to remain as calm as possible throughout this ordeal.

Due to a fire at a switching tower east of Jamaica Station, all Long Island Rail Road service except for trains running on the Port Washington line is currently suspended. Service has been suspended since shortly after 11 a.m. this morning, and LIRR officials are not sure when trains will head east. “We are not going to be able to operate all of our trains in the evening rush hour,” Sam Zambuto, an LIRR spokesman, said to City Room.

Michael Grynbaum and Andy Newman have more:

The railroad is currently unable to control the switches that allow trains to change tracks just east of Jamaica Station, a juncture point for 10 of the railroad’s 11 branches. The problem means that trains headed to and from New York City cannot pass that point.

The railroad has suspended nearly all its trains until the problem can be resolved, but trains on the Port Washington branch, the one route that does not pass through Jamaica Station, are continuing to operate on their tracks through northeastern Queens to Nassau County.

The fire, believed to be electrical, began in the switching tower around 11:10 a.m. and was under control by noon with no injuries, said a Fire Department spokesman, Steve Ritea. “It was fairly contained, not a lot of damage,” Mr. Ritea said. But the flame apparently did enough to throw the railroad’s switching system out of commission.

According to LIRR officials, as many as 240,000 travelers may be impacted during rush hour, and the agency will announce the alternate travel plans later this afternoon. MTA watchers, however, are not optimistic that tonight’s rush hour will be a smooth one. “You’re talking a major disaster here,” William Henderson of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Council to the MTA, said to The Times. “You are going to have a lot of people who are looking for ways to get home tonight.”

Henderson noted that the Jamaica Station, which could be reached via the E, J or Z trains, is not designed to handle the large crowds that may descend upon it later this evening. Additionally, the MTA does not yet know if service will be able to run east of Jamaica tonight. I’ll update this post as more information becomes available, and the MTA’s website will have the latest real-time travel information as well.

The new LIRR terminal at Flatbush and Atlantic Aves. is now open for business. (Photo courtesy of New York City Transit)

In 2004, the glaringly suburban and sterile Atlantic Terminal Mall complex opened as the first part of Bruce Ratner’s plan to take over a little corner of Brooklyn that doesn’t really want him there. Yesterday, after $108 million and over 30 months past due, the LIRR’s new Atlantic Terminal Pavilion finally opened.

The new building, designed by John di Domenico, is one of soaring ceiling and natural light that replaces construction tunnels and, before that, a rundown terminal. Sitting atop 10 subway lines and a busy LIRR hub, the new three-story structure is indeed a welcome improvement. According to the LIRR, the building was made of limestone, granite and glass, and its soaring atrium “allows natural light to reach the below ground LIRR concourse and subway station.” The building also features a new ticket office, public bathrooms and a new waiting area.

Efforts to rebuild and replace the Atlantic Terminal have a rather tortured history. The original station, built in 1907, was torn down in 1988, and the area has been in a state of flux since then. (For views of the old terminal, click here and here. John di Demonico’s design was chosen 13 years ago and construction began, with a price tag of $82 million, in 2002.

A.G. Sulzberger of The Times had more:

The completion of the $108 million update to the transportation hub — which has been called “Brooklyn’s Grand Central Terminal” for its approximately 25,500 Long Island Rail Road passengers and 31,650 subway riders each day — coincides with major redevelopment efforts in the neighborhood, including a new mall directly above the station and a proposed $1 billion basketball arena just blocks away.

Jay H. Walder, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, described the improved Atlantic Terminal as “a place, simply put, that you’d want to take a subway from or to.”

The semicircular outside walls and ceiling of the three-story pavilion are paneled with glass, allowing light to flood through the half-moon shaped atrium — replete with an artistic interpretation of a craggy bluff — and down a granite staircase to the remodeled limestone-clad platform level below. The architect, John di Domenico, said the design remained essentially unchanged in the thirteen years since it was chosen.

While many — from commuters passing through to Borough President Marty Markowitz — praised the new structure, others are dismayed with the anti-terrorist designs seemingly thrown in with little regard for the building. The Brooklyn Paper slames the coffin-like bollards that mar the sidewalk in front of the pavilion’s entrances. Gersh Kuntzman calls the building, airy on the inside, a “bunker” outside, and other architects agree.

“Obviously, the original design did not consider a terrorist attack,” Hayes Slade said. “In fact, the entryway presents a particularly open face to the street, which is aimed at transparency and access. Our society is at an odd transitional moment regarding how we deal with considerations of potential terrorism versus safety, mobility, openness.”

After the jump, a video tour of the Atlantic Terminal Pavilion, via the LIRR’s YouTube account.

A rendering of the soon-to-be completed Atlantic Terminal LIRR entrance.

For years, the LIRR entrance at the Atlantic Terminal has been shrouded in construction. While the Atlantic Terminal mall opened in 2004 with promises of a rebuilt LIRR entrance to follow, the project has been encumbered by seemingly never-ending delays. Shocking, I know.

While I was away on vacation, The Local, The Times’ Fort Greene and Clinton Hill blog, dug into the causes behind the delay. In response to a reader query into the state of the delays, Michael Szeto uncovered an answer — and a revised timeline — for the project:

According to a spokesman for the Long Island Railroad, the project at Atlantic Terminal will be completed this fall. There are two phases of construction and the final phase is being completed now.

The first phase of the project involved Flatbush Station improvements. It was completed on time in 2005. The last phase centers on the new entrance pavilion that was scheduled for completion in 2007 but “unforeseen site conditions,” according to a spokeswoman for the LIRR, extended the project for two more years. There was a need for additional steel and building materials and the work areas were smaller than expected, which slowed the pace of construction, the spokeswoman said.

It is of course both surprising and not to hear about the reasons for the delay. The project needed more materials and the work space, hardly a secret when the MTA fielded bids on the entrance, ended up being “smaller than expected.” No wonder Mayor Bloomberg wants to trim some of the bureaucratic mess from the MTA and streamline internal operations.

We never hear about the penalties built into the contracts the MTA awards to contractors who can’t finish projects on time or near budget. I have to hope, however, that the authority is not on the hook for what seems to be, over and over again, a faulty bidding system. Getting the lowest bid would seemingly save the authority money, but then again, they get what they pay for.