LIRR Commuters Comment on Train Timeliness

In the July 26 edition of the New York Times, an article entitled "95% of Trains Are on Time? Riders Beg to Differ" explored the gap between the official word on train arrival times and perception by the trains' riders. The examination described the results of its findings as having been culled from information on 2009's train trips "involving the region's three major commuter railroads, using records requested by The Times that had not previously been made available to the public," amounting to a staggering "more than 685,000 trips" for that year.

The piece named the Port Jefferson-to-Penn Station train as among the slowest of those via Long Island Rail Road lines. Using one example, when a train departing from Port Jefferson would ostensibly arrive in Manhattan at 9:23 a.m., the Times reported that "it was recorded as being late on 1 in 6 trips, and passengers said that statistic was generous." 

RELATED: Read up Holbrook's tragic train crash from 1935

This claim was later amended in a correction dated July 29, which said that the article had "referred imprecisely to one of the slowest routes on the Long Island Rail Road, the trip from Port Jefferson to Penn Station. While only one train on that route leaves during the morning rush — defined as 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. for the analysis in the article — that is not the only train that makes the trip on weekdays. A train leaves Port Jefferson for Penn Station at 5:44 a.m." 

The article also states that progress in terms of on-time performance has been made since the late 1960s when, it said, more than one-fifth of LIRR trains ran late. In addition, rush-hour delays were framed by LIRR officials as a logistics problem, as "dozens of trains" have to come and go hourly from Penn Station's limited number of platforms.

Patrick Aro, 41, "reverse commutes" from his new home in Queens (he'd lived in Huntington prior to his move for four years) to his job as a researcher at Stony Brook University. Normally a rider to the Port Jefferson station from Jamaica, he said that on this occasion, his choice of the Ronkonkoma station was an anomaly.

"It's usually on time, but the reverse rush hour service to Stony Brook is limited," he said. "I'm generally pleased with the level of service, but when classes are in session just as many people reverse commute, so it ends up being just as crowded due to the limited service."

"But any impression I have of the Ronkonkoma station is fairly new," he added, laughing.

The Ronkonkoma line was never specifically mentioned in the article, but satisfaction with it among the commuters interviewed varied depending on the time of departure.

Mark Davidson, 46, of Coram, said he was mostly satisfied with the service from Ronkonkoma. A money market trader in New York City, Davidson commutes on the 5:29 a.m. train to Penn Station.

"I'm not happy with the rate increases, but it's better than driving into Manhattan," he said, adding that traveling with the general public often translates to a lack of privacy that requires a more tolerant mindset, as does being at the mercy of other variables like weather conditions.

"I understand that with things like bad weather, they'll be issues," he said.

Liz M., 38, of Bohemia, commutes daily to Manhattan for her job in the insurance industry, as she has been doing for 15 years. More recently, she'd begun to catch the train departing at 6:24 a.m., as her previous train of choice, the 7:19 a.m., was "always delayed."

"There's a bigger difference in the evening," she said. "The 4:51 p.m. train is much more accurate, but the 5:41 p.m. is 15 to 20 minutes late on average. That'd be my biggest gripe. The system's been around forever, you'd think they'd know how to manage it better. It's not brain surgery."