After a disastrous and infuriating first week of the much-hailed and eagerly anticipated opening of the Grand Central Madison Eastside access terminal, we now learn that the MTA was warned a decade ago that the Long Island Rail Road’s Jamaica hub would be overwhelmed and face frequent commute meltdowns —just like the ones commuters have been forced to endure all week. The chaos was coming, but the decision-makers at the MTA disregarded the warnings.
According to the New York Post, the MTA has known this since 2012, when an analysis of the Jamaica, Queens station’s capacity was completed that simulated service changes nearly identical to the ones launched by the MTA this week.
In part, the analysis determined that: “Evaluation of the new operation on the existing conditions indicates an inability of the current infrastructure to accommodate the higher volume of service during the morning peak period and evening westbound direction due to cascading delays.”
The simulation showed trains arriving into Jamaica on-time 93% of the time under the then-current runs, even when encountering routine service disruptions, like a medical emergency on a platform or a mechanical problem with a train.
But the on-time percentage with the new service plummeted to just 72%, a 21%-point drop, the analysis prepared by San Diego-based TranSystems Corporation determined.
The predictive study found that the operational collapse occurred even if the MTA simplified the Jamaica operation by eliminating one-seat service from Long Island to Brooklyn and instead ran a shuttle to Atlantic Terminal — and even if officials cut timed transfers to boost station capacity by reducing the amount of time trains spend parked at the platforms. In short, even if they took some evasive measures to avoid the chaos that would ensue, the situation would essentially remain untenable.
A key fix, the analysis determined, was to replace the low-speed switches that run through Jamaica Station — which limit trains to just 15 mph — with more modern systems that allow trains to run at 30 mph or faster.
MTA officials approved spending $85 million to do just that in 2020 — some eight years after the engineering report was completed. While that may be the fix, that project is not expected to be completed until December 2027. What happens in the intervening four years?
That devastating analysis report was not made public by the MTA, instead, it was heavily excerpted in an academic article that the firm subsequently prepared, which was published in 2014.
“If that report is valid, then the railroad shot themselves in the foot,” said Gerry Bringmann, a non-voting member of the MTA Board of Directors who heads the LIRR Commuter Council.
MTA spokesman Michael Cortez tried to justify the disastrous rollout by saying that, “The LIRR increased weekday service from 625 trains per day to more than 900 trains per day and has factored existing infrastructure into that effort,” but his words, meant to soothe the furious commuters who endured the pandemonium this past week, are not convincing.
For his part, the current MTA chairman, Janno Lieber, apologized to riders during a state budget hearing in Lower Manhattan and promised that tweaks to the schedule coming next week will help alleviate the overcrowding on the trains to Penn Station and Atlantic Terminal.
“We’ve had a tough, tough week on the Long Island Rail Road,” the MTA’s top boss told state Senators during the hearing. “We have to fix what’s diminished our riders’ confidence.”
The MTA announced that it was adding three more LIRR morning shuttle trains to Brooklyn, which will run at 7 a.m., 7:29 a.m. and 8:09 a.m.
While all the attention is riveted to the Jamaica and Brooklyn hubs, the Long Island riders have their own woes and have been holding rallies to protest the abysmal changes.
