STUCK IN ITS TRACKS

LIRR’s tweak move

The MTA rolled out a slew of tweaks Monday seeking to allay last week’s commuter rage over crushing crowds on Long Island Rail Road trains and blown connections due to its rushed route changes to accommodate the $11 billion Grand Central Madison hub.

But at least one MTA board member said the tweaks would likely be insufficient and officials will have to give the schedule a more thorough reexamination, which could take weeks.

The biggest changes Monday involved adding cars back to Penn Station-bound trains and shorter wait times for the much-complained-about shuttle service between the LIRR’s hub in Jamaica and Atlantic Terminal, which replaced most of the direct service between the suburbs and Atlantic Terminal.

“It helped, but it’s like putting a tourniquet on a serious injury,” said Gerry Bringmann, who is the LIRR riders representative on the MTA board.

“I think they gotta go back to the drawing board,” he added. “They gotta really sit down and analyze the data and the rolling stock and figure out what they can do. But what they’ve got in place, it’s not gonna work.”

The LIRR announced Monday that it would boost the shuttle to Brooklyn again on Tuesday with 10 more trains combined running during the peak morning and evening hours, cutting waits for service down to an average of 7-8 minutes. Additionally, the LIRR will hold the shuttle trains if there are connecting passengers approaching.

“I think it’s going to be a huge improvement for our customers,” said interim LIRR President Cathy Rinaldi.

Caught in ‘crush’

“We’re going to run it much more like a Grand Central to Times Square shuttle, so that you see a train there, the train pulls out, there’s going to be another train on the opposite platform with its doors open that you can get into,” she added.”

The flurry of changes rolled out late Sunday and Monday came after a week of commuter fury at the new schedule, which appears to have badly misjudged demand for service to the MTA’s new $11.2 billion train hall for the LIRR under Grand Central.

Over the summer, the LIRR said it expected roughly 45% of its Manhattan-bound passengers to opt for the new East Side service.

In response, the MTA moved a ton of capacity to Grand Central in two ways: by shortening the trains running to Penn Station and axing most one-seat service between Long Island and Brooklyn and replacing it with a new shuttle between Jamaica and Atlantic Terminal.

But only 30% of the LIRR’s Manhattan commuters made the switch to Grand Central during the first week, leaving crush loads on trains still bound for Penn Station and overwhelming the Brooklyn shuttle service.