A rail waste of LIRR $$
Hamptons shuttle runs nearly empty
All aboard the Long Island Rail Road’s most unnecessary train.
In yet another stunning example of LIRR waste, the MTA-managed line in March started running a single train car — staffed with up to three employees — to link eight of the Hamptons’ poshest towns.
The ambitious South Fork Commuter Connection, which took LIRR honchos and local and state officials four years to plan and includes a fleet of state-financed shuttle buses at each stop, was supposed to draw commuters out of their cars and ease traffic on the congested East End.
“It’s not working,” said Jay Fitzpatrick, an architect and longtime resident of Southampton. “Nobody’s taking it.”
He said Thursday that he counted six passengers get off an early-morning train in Southampton. Four then boarded one of two shuttle buses.
Officials would not provide financial or ridership figures for the new service of the besieged railroad, where at least half of its 7,945-member workforce is earning six-figure salaries, with one worker making more than $300,000 in overtime pay. The OT windfall is being probed by the feds.
The Hampton Hopper buses are provided to the towns at a cost of $1 million a year by the state Department of Transportation, with routes designed to ferry passengers to nearby hospitals and schools.
Thomas Neely, the transportation and traffic director for Southampton Town, told The Post last week that “very few people are taking the shuttle buses,” and local Hamptons officials have cut the buses from four to two at each station.
In addition, the five-day-a-week shuttletrain service, which costs $4.25 per ride, will now be cut to four days, in order to accommodate summer crowds arriving from the city. The LIRR is eliminating Friday service on its South Fork Commuter Connection in favor of more trains from Penn Station, forcing the handful of commuters back onto congested roads.
A Hamptons shuttle train — if it’s needed at all — would have been most necessary on Fridays in the summer when merchants, domestic and restaurant workers are commuting to service summer crowds.
“This just wasn’t thought through well enough,” said Lin Restivo, who in March began taking the train from her home in Hampton Bays to her boutique in Bridgehampton, a 20-minute journey.
Now she has abandoned the train altogether and is back on the road along with the “trade parade” of contractors and landscapers who clog up County Road 39 on the East End. The commute from her home has stretched to an hour each way.
Neely said he is sympathetic to the commuters, but claims there is little that can be done since the LIRR lacks the infrastructure to run both the shuttle service and Penn Station summer trains.
An LIRR spokeswoman said, “We’re open to amending the schedules depending on customer demand, whenever and wherever we have the cars and track capacity to do so.”